“He could sense Kshar underneath, and he knew he'd be able to sense him in whatever body. Unchanged, genuinely him.”

“He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day”

“I could only stare, any sense that maybe I understood him evaporating as it always did. I'd glimpse something underneath, and he'd snatched it away so fast it left bruises that called me a fool for hoping for more.”

“He never knew what hit him, and that would have comforted me, except . . . just for one second, he would have had to know, wouldn't he? There must have been a blur, a sense of the world exploding, a flashpoint of receiving more damage than a human body could endure. ”

“...in response to whatever Alice was struggling with, whatever had caused her to withdraw from him, he had chosen the arms of another woman instead of relying on his own fortitude, as if he'd somehow deserved more comfort than Alice herself had been able to give, or not. Which was part of marriage, after all, part of the vows: enduring those times. And this sense of entitlement seemed to him an even greater sin than infidelity.”

“She must have sensed she never really had him. That was a sadness of hers, he knew.”