“So she was ‘my lady’ now, not ‘miss’. That was what she had always wanted, wasn’t it? Why did the words chill her? There was something so cold and final about it, like the click of a door closing behind her. Her childhood was over, and now there was only her place in the ‘great game’, and whatever role Uncle Maxim had chosen for her. There was no going back.”

“He saw the reflection of her face in a compact mirror as she painted on her re lips. She did it with such care, he had felt she was trapping something behind the colour.She had touched life, played with it a little, bit it was a slippery bugger,and finally we must close the door, and leave it behind.”

“She felt the shiver starting in the back of her spine, the mixed inkling of fear and excitement ignite in her. She shouldn’t be feeling this way. He should disgust her. Because of him, her friends had just given up their mortal lives. Her friend Jacob, had been attacked by Unseelie. People had died from the very hands that were now so close to her. The very ones she wanted close to her.”

“Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked.”

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”

“But she let herself think of Jay. And of the kiss. And suddenly the damp chill that had been clinging to her evaporated in a wave of heat that started in her belly and spread like an uncontained blaze, flushing her from cheek to toe.She realized that she was smiling now, and she had to force it away, not wanting anyone to see her as she searched in vain for the missing girl, grinning like the village idiot.”