“Leaving this changeling for George, she washed his ripe fruit, and bit and broke the skin. An intense tang, the underside of velvet. Then flesh dissolved in a rush of nectar. Juice drenched her hand and wet the inside of her wrist. She had forgotten, if she'd ever know, that what was sweet could also be so complicated, that fruit could have a nap, like fabric, soft one way, sleek the other.”

“Being dead filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, she was filled with her vast death, which was so new, she could not understand that it had happened.”

“Her perfume enveloped him as he reached for her. His hands smoothed over soft fabric before finding the warmth of her skin. She lifted her mouth to his and kissed him hungrily, greedily. She tasted so good. Like sin. Like every dirty thought he’d ever had.”

“[Daniel] was still glowing, as if lit from within. She could still clearly see his violet-gray eyes and his full mouth. His strong hands and broad shoulders. She could reach out and fold herself into her love's light.He reached for her. Luce closed her eyes at his touch, expecting something too otherworldly for her human body to withstand. But no. It was simply, reassuringly, Daniel.She reached around his back to finger his wings. She reached for them nervously, as if they could burn her, but they flowed around her fingers, softer than the smoothest velvet, the plushest rug. The way she'd like to imagine that a fluffy, sun-drenched cloud would feel if she could cup it in her hands."You're so...beautiful.”

“She was considered timid and morose. Only in the country, her skin tanned by the sun and her belly full of ripe fruit, running through the fields with Pedro Tercero, was she smiling and happy. Her mother said that that was the real Blanca, and that the other one, the one back in the city, was a Blanca in hibernation.”

“Can we go inside, Eve?"She inhaled quietly at the way his voice wrapped around her name. One deep syllable that had always made her wish she was called something longer and more complicated. Genevieve or Isabella. Something that would take him full seconds to say so she could feel it rumble over her skin.”