“Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.”

“When she spoke, the words were rote, taught to her by her captors, dead and empty, and forced. But her voice was rough, like silk torn by sharp diamonds, and I believed, truly, that she wanted nothing more than to disappear into the Tower and never emerge again. "Please, Saint Sigrid, take me in from the storm and teach me to steer through darkness, for I am lost, and I cannot see the shore." I did not move for a long moment. Then, slowly, I reached out my hand to her and whispered, "Come, Lady, I will cut your hair for you." Her hand slipped into mine, hard and cool.”

“If he closed his eyes he could dwell in the circuit of air that had once held her, he could hold his breath and be inside her again, within the close and burning borders of her- she stood here, washed her hair in this sink, wrote upon this wall, ate roasted chicken at this table. There was no place he could enter where she had not also been, her echoes hanging in the air like pages hung to dry. No place that did not suppurate in her absence, which was not ringed with the light of her old selves, like film burned with a cigarette.”

“The man who knelt before her would have sprung from her needles, even down the ghostly flecks of silver in his hair. She had not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wishes for tallness, or that a man kneeling might thrill her.”

“In addition to all the other kinds of magic there is Yes Magic and No Magic, and Mallow is wonderful fierce at No Magic. Sometimes that is the last magic you can hold on to, when all the rest has gone.”

“You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar and wonder where she got it. You will always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.”

“Hats change everything. September knew this with all her being, deep in the place where she knew her own name, and that her mother would still love her even though she hadn’t waved goodbye. For one day her father had put on a hat with golden things on it and suddenly he hadn’t been her father anymore, he had been a soldier, and he had left. Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.”