“And if you can believe it…she slapped me again. “What the hell is wrong with you? Stop hitting me!” I finally looked up at her, but she was a blur. She hit me so hard my damn eyes were watering (I was not crying – eyes water. I think we all know I’m a badass and I don’t cry).”

“No, I can just read you. Finally. I can't believe how blind I was. I can't believe I never noticed. Victor's comment...he was right." She glanced off at the sunset, then turned her gaze back on me. A flash of anger, both in her feelings and her eyes, hit me. "Why didn't you tell me?" she cried. "Why didn't you tell me you loved Dimitri?”

“Ivy rose to rinse the carafe. She leaned close to me, running the water to blur her words as she muttered, "What's wrong with her? She's crying over her tea.”

“I mustered all my strength, drew back, and swung.The sword's blade hit the side of her neck, hard and deep. She gave a horrible, sickening cry, a shriek that made my skin crawl. She tried to move toward me. I pulled back and hit again. Her hands clutched at her throat, and her knees gave way. I struck and struck, the sword digging in deeper into her neck each time. Cutting off someone's head was harder than I thought it would be. The old, dull sword probably wasn't helping.But finally, I gained enough sense to realize she wasn't moving. Her head lay there, detached from her body, her dead eyes looking up at me as though she couldn't believe what had happened. That made two of us.”

“I think, therefore I am, said a man whose mother quickly hit him on the head, saying, I hit my son on the head, therefore I am.No no, you've got it all wrong, cried the man.So she hit him on the head again and cried, therefore I am.You're not, not that way; you're supposed to think, not hit, cried the man.. . . I think, therefore I am, said the man.I hit, therefore we both are, the hitter and the one who gets hit, said the man's mother.But at this point the man had ceased to be; unconscious he could not think. But his mother could. So she thought, I am, and so is my unconscious son, even if he doesn't know it . . .”

“Todd!” she says again but this time in a way that asks me to look at her and I do and she stops Angharrad at the edge of the square and she’s looking at me, looking right into my eyes–And I read her–And I know exactly what she’s thinking–And my Noise and my heart and my head fill up fit to burst, fill up like I’m gonna explode–Cuz she’s saying–She’s saying with her eyes and her face and her whole self–“I know,” I say back to her, my voice husky. “Me, too.”And then I turn to the Mayor and I’m filled with her, with her love for me and my love for her–And it makes me big as an effing mountain–And I take it and I slam all of it into the Mayor–”