“Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.”

“These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.”

“She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.”

“The Marquess laughed her knife-like laugh again. “Do you think Fairyland loves you? That it will keep you close and dear, because you are a good girl and I am not? Fairyland loves no one. It has no heart. It doesn’t care. It will spit you back out just like it did me.”

“It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.”

“No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.”

“Truly, Autumn is my season,” the scarlet beast chorted. “Spring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love.”