“Pressure is uncomfortable, but so are the gallows. Keep your secrets, wolfgirl. Dance your fists with Eldric’s, snatch lightning from the gods. Howl at the moon, at the blood-red moon. Let your mouth be a cavern of stars.”

“Guess what it is that turns plants to coal.Pressure.Guess what it is that turns limestone to marble.Pressure.Guess what it is that turns Briony's heart to stone.Pressure.Pressure is uncomfortable, but so are the gallows. Keep your secrets, wolfgirl. Dance your fists with Eldric's, snatch lightning from the gods. Howl at the moon, at the blood-red moon. Let your mouth be a cavern of stars.”

“It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.”

“You mind your tongue!” “Oh, I do,” I said. “I sharpen it every evening on your name.”

“You could write your way into happiness. It might not be the happiness you'd experience if Eldric pushed Leanne from a cliff, but there's a firefly glimmer in writing something that would please Rose.”

“Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.” “Whose arguments should I use?”

“The sea up close is enormous. I squeezed my eyes against it for a moment, which is ridiculous, like fighting a giant with a pin. It comes to you anyway, through your ears and nose and skin and tongue. It is a savage, muscular thing, a vast dim wetness battering at the land and the air and all your senses.”