I had seen ardency in men's eyes, but I had only felt it once. With Flauvic, false and therefore easy to dismiss. I suddenly wished that I could feel it now. No, I did feel it. I did have the same feeling, only I had masked it as restlessness, or as the exhortation to action, or as anger. I thought how wonderful it would be to see that spark now, in the right pair of eyes.

The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.

They're safe,'' he said. "And you're not made of glass". He swept me up in his arms. I laughed. "And I'm not made of glass." He carried me into our room and kicked the door shut behind us.

Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into womens books except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.

Because you showed one face to all the rest of the world, and another to me.

Despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.

We'll abduct Garian. Or Jason." "And—?" "And dump them into the ocean. Nobody would ever pay a ransom for them.