“Screw you, cowboy!” she yelled after him, saying the word exactly as she had before. “And that horse you rode in on.”And—Whoops!—now everyone in the diner had turned to look at them.Zane turned around to her with amusement on his face. “Very original, princess.”

“Everyone had told her, since she became a princess-in-training, that she was very likely the most beautiful woman in the world. Now she was going to be the richest and the most powerful as well.Don't expect too much from life, Buttercup told herself as she rode along. Learn to be satisfied with what you have.”

“He was waiting there for her beside the pool - a great black horse with shoulders like polished ebony and the water still streaming from his mane and tail. Morag stood and looked at him for a long moment. The great horse looked at her and never moved.“Will you trust me?” he had asked her the evening before, and she had trusted him then. She trusted him now, and so she walked towards him. She grasped his mane, and still the black horse never moved. She stood on a stone beside him, swung herself onto his back, and the black horse moved.”

“You’re safe now .. .and I love you.”She lifted her face and turned to him, her eyes wide at his words, her lips soft and trembling. “I love you,too, Robert,” she said very quietly. “I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“Hands quivering, she reached toward him. "Don't." He turned his back to her, facing the door. That word had stopped her once before. But not now. Not now that she had glimpsed through the funeral front of Varen's own eternal Grim Facade. Despite all the dark armor, the kohl eye liner, the black boots and chains, she saw him clearly now. She peered through the curtain of that cruel calmness, through the death stare and the vampire sentiments and angst and, behind it all, had found true beauty.”

“When Livia turned, she had to tip her head back to see his face as she handed him his cardboard. He’s beautiful.”