She smiled, if he could see that, and waited for him to ask the real question. But he was silent. He wanted her to volunteer the story, she realized, and she could just as easily choose to say nothing. But he deserved to know. They all deserved it, and Kirra already knew it, and Cammon may have guessed it, because Cammon could read souls, but Tayse was the only one she would tell.

Everybody's afraid of love, because love is what hurts the most.

Do you love me?" he asked. I fell silent. "For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.

Yes, Jenna, I love you with all my heart. And with my atoms and molecules and electrons and whatever further breakdown you require.

Sometimes we become what we see. Sometimes we take what we see and make it the model for what we refuse to become.

I realized a long time ago, with a certain amazement, that no mattter how important something is in your life, no matter how huge it is, how much space it takes up in your heart and in your thoughts, unless you mention it to other people, they have no idea it exists.

Yet the world is the same as it always was. It is merely that you see it with new eyes.