“And it was kind of funny to see all these professional fighters unwilling to get within a mile of the female. Then again, if you wanted to survive doing the work they did, accurate risk assessment was something you developed early -- and even Qhuinn, who was the object of the protective instinct the Chosen was rocking, wouldn't have dared touch her.”

“The energy it sapped from him, not being able to protect her. You wouldn't think that something you couldn't do and were not doing would take any energy, but it did.”

“You do understand," she continued, "that unless I had an object to love -- or, more accurately, a someone to love -- if I did not have such a relationship within myself, then I would not be capable of love at all? You would have a god who could not love. Or maybe worse, you would have a god who, when he chose, could love only as a limitation of his nature.”

“I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy.”

“I do remember what I said. The promise. To protect her. If I'd done that ... even if I didn't make it, you wouldn't've had to jump. I want you to know I did save you. Not when it counted, of course. But after that. Every night after that. I'd see it all again, do something different. Faster or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways ...Every night I save you.”

“He feared what getting involved with her might mean, but he wanted this deal involving chocolate and would risk lying with something not entirely female to get it.”