“Gem thought it would be hilarious to shear his brother’s fine hair off while he was sleeping. Ever since then Menai decided he actually preferred the Mohawk. Both had inherited their mother’s Western Continent coloring, a blend of pearly white and sea grass green that set their bold sea-colored eyes off handsomely. And since they had grown old enough to realize this, they had become a pair of pre-pubescent manipulating terrors.”

“Mama’s gaze pierced her. As a girl, Minerva had envied her mother’s blue eyes. They’d seemed the color of tropical oceans and cloudless skies. But their color had faded over the years since Papa’s death. Now their blue was the hue of dyed cambric worn three seasons. Or brittle middle-class china. The color of patience nearly worn through.”

“Meanwhile, Jess and I looked like we had rats burrowed in our hair and since we both fell asleep without taking off our makeup, we had racoon eyes to go with it - not exactly beauty queens.”

“And the present sheared asunder from the past, like an iceberg sheared off from its frozen parent cliffs, and went sailing out to sea in lonely pride. All the past ages had accomplished was as nothing.”

“He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

“If Bacchus ever had a color he could claim for his own, it should surely be the shade of tannin on drunken lips, of John Keat's 'purple-stained mouth', or perhaps even of Homer's dangerously wine-dark sea.”