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

Why did I laugh at his sorry, bedraggled appearance? Because ridiculousness made a repellant situation more bearable.

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

If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, or how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people." "And a lot fewer poems and plays," I said, laughing as I splashed about in the scented water.

A wager?" I repeated. "Yes," he said, and gave me a slow smile, bright with challenge. ... "Stake?" I asked cautiously. He was still smiling, an odd sort of smile, hard to define. "A kiss." My first reaction was outrage, but then I remembered that I was on my way to Court, and that had to be the kind of thing they did at Court. And if I win I don't have to collect. I hesitated only a moment longer, lured by the thought of open sky, and speed, and winning. "Done," I said.

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.

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.