“The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.”

“Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.”

“I drank some of that lake! I might have choked on a fish or a frog or a...a...a turtle!""It is wisest to keep one's mouth shut while sifting."She skewered him with a frosty stare. "Now you tell me." Damn the fairy, anyway. There she stood, feeling ragtag and bedraggled, and he only looked more beautiful wet, all drippy and shimmery gold-velvet, his hair a wet tangle to his waist. "Come Gabrielle," he said, extending his hand, "we must keep moving. They can track me by what little magic I'm using to sift, but only to a general vicinity. We need to keep sifting, to spread out their search.""Is there anything else it's wisest to do that I should know about before we just pop off again?" She tucked her hands behind her back so he couldn't grab her and just sift rather than answering her. Besides, she needed a minute to brace herself for the next bout of traveling in a manner that defied all the known laws of physics. "You might try kissing me. Better my tongue than a frog, no?" Dark eyes sparking gold, he reached for her. "Close contest.”

“As she watched, he examined the can intently, read the ingredients, then returned it to the shelf and chose another, repeating his thorough study of it.The contrast between his rough, tough-guy appearance and the domestic act he was performing did funny things to her head.She had a sudden, breathtaking vision of a dark-haired little boy sitting in the seat of the cart, laughing up at Cian, grabbing at his swinging braids with chubby little fists, while his daddy inspected the ingredients on a jar of baby food. Her mind’s eyepicture of sexy, strong man with beautiful, helpless child made something soft and warm blossom behind her chest.”

“The Tuatha De do not speak of Tuatha De matter to"--he gave her an icy sneer--"mere mortals.""Well, mister-mere-mortal-yourself," she bristled right back at him, "maybe you'd better get used to it, because whether or not you like it, you need at least one of us 'mere mortals' to help you become a pompous-asshole-fairy-thing again."He tried to maintain his icy stare, but his lips curved despite his efforts and he shook with silent laughter. A pompous-asshole-fairy-thing. The indignity of it. Had any of his race ever been called such a thing? Nothing cowed the woman. Nothing. "Point made, ky-lyrra," he said dryly.-Gabrielle and Adam”

“If he were any other man, I might have suspected him of substance abuse, of being coked up or something. But Barrons was too much a purist for that; his drugs were money, power, and control”

“raking a hand through his hair, he forced his attention to the text she'd left on the coffee table, refusing to dwell on the disconcerting fact that a part of him had taken one look at the lass in such proximity to his bed and said simply: Mine”