“She should think about her own soul, what she was going to do with this funky tattered pond dank item. Dark and stained, a ruined thing.”

“I think," Ella said, "that what a woman does or doesn't do should be up to the woman, and she should make up her own mind and not change it when the wind starts to blow. I think a woman should be who she is, not what others expect her to be. And if she wants to go to a dance looking for a man, she should go and not feel like she has to explain herself. And if she want to have her own farm, she should do that and not feel like she has to explain that, either. And…I think you should be quiet now.”

“The dank smell of death in that alleyway haunted her senses, her memories. She kept thinking this was the end—this was what death felt like, what death looked like. Death was a …‘Vampire,’ she whispered.”

“Lily kept her smile. She knew a little something about loss and what it was all about in the end. She searched for her answers in those items left behind.”

“Ella knew she should be horrified. Zane had killed someone for just touching her. But, and she might burn in hell for thinking this, she thought it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. In a perverted way, she also found it romantic. She finally had someone who wanted to protect her. My very own vampire in dark armor.”

“It made her chest hurt, how much she felt in this moment. She knew she should not say anything impetuously. But under the light of the stained glass window, the flickering candlelight of their shared memories, it felt like simple unexamined honesty. No matter what the darkness brought back to her tomorrow."I'm in love with you.”