“Daily her tactics grew more sly and underhanded. Last night the audacious wench had picked the lock to hischamber! Because he'd had the foresight to barricade the door with a heavy armoire, she'd then gone to his door inthe corridor and picked that lock. He'd been forced to escape out the window. Halfway down he'd slipped, crashed the last fifteen feet to the ground, and landed in a prickly bush. Since he'd not had time to don his trews, hismanly parts had taken the brunt of his abrupt entry into the bush, putting him in a foul mood indeed.The wench sought to unman him before his long-anticipated wedding night.”

“Coyness wasn't the only thing Ardetta had been aggressive about and he'd had to summon up all his southern chivalry to turn her down gently. When he'd relented and obliged her with a kiss, she'd been on him like ugly on an ape. He'd narrowly escaped her clutches with his honor intact.”

“He didn't go down to dinner at all that night, didn't eat, didn't drink, simply thought of his wife, trying to decide what to do with her. He'd wanted her to suffer, and she'd suffered. He'd wanted her to pay for her deceits, and she'd saved his life. He'd wanted to torment her with the knowledge that she would never see him again and had instead created his own private hell. He wanted her to come to him again, giving herself to him as she had that night before her attempted escape, and he wanted to hear words she would never speak. He'd even started lying to himself as he lay sleepless in his bed, reliving each moment of their last night together, telling himself it was real, that she'd meant every word. He was going mad.”

“Will only looked at her. There had been light in his eyes on the stairs, as he'd locked the door, when he'd kissed her--a brilliant, joyous light. And it was going now, fading like the last breath of someone dying. She thought of Nate, bleeding to death in her arms. She had been powerless then, to help him. As she was now. She felt as if she were watching the life bleed out of Will Herondale, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.”

“He'd been so angry at her -always pushing his buttons, that girl. But then he'd taken her into his arms, and all that anger had blazed into a darker, hotly possessive need that had urged him to bend his head, bite down on the throbbing pulse in her neck, leave a mark.”

“Elyon was restoring the Great Romance. Teeleh had stolen his first love, but now Justin had reclaimed her. The price had been his own life. He'd taken her disease on himself and he'd drowned with it, inviting them to embrace his invitation to the Romance by following him into the lake to drown with him. To live as his bride!”