“What are you looking at, foreigner?” the guard demanded roughly. The smile was a little unsettling. A prisoner shouldn’t smile at his captors like that.“I’m just making sure I can remember you,” Gilan told him. “Never know when that might be useful.”

“I have something I need to tell you," he says. I run my fingers along the tendons in his hands and look back at him. "I might be in love with you." He smiles a little. "I'm waiting until I'm sure to tell you, though.""That's sensible of you," I say, smiling too. "We should find some paper so you can make a list or a chart or something."I feel his laughter against my side, his nose sliding along my jaw, his lips pressing my ear."Maybe I'm already sure," he says, "and I just don't want to frighten you."I laugh a little. "Then you should know better.""Fine," he says. "Then I love you.”

“I’m pretty sure you just made him that much more interested in you,” Guy explains. “Some guys like it rough.” He grins at Hope. “I know I do.”

“You know-" Eddis hesitated, not sure how far to push the Attolian Queen. "Go on." Attolia inclined her head."I was going to say that you look like a polecat when you smile like that.""Do I?" Attolia still smiled. "You look a little vulpine yourself."The two queens sat for a moment in happy agreement.”

“Are you ever afraid to go to sleep? Afraid of what comes next?”He smiles a sad little smile and I swear it’s like he knows. “Sometimes I’m afraid of what I’m leaving behind,” he says.”

“I have never learned how to arrangemy face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know—that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expressionwhich makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. Oh, no. When I don’t know what I’m doing, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing.When I’m excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently,I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, “You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like . . . miniature golf face.”