“She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.”

“Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she'd threatened him so brutally. When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.”

“I'd like to restrain from cruelty and not be thanked." ~ Katsa”

“If she took Po as her husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn't yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his forever. And, no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it was a gift. Her freedom would be not be her own; it would be Po's to give or to withhold. That he never would withhold it made no difference. If it did not come from her, it was not really hers.”

“You're beautiful this morning," Archer said, stopping before her, kissing her nose. "You're impossibly sweet in my shirt."That might be but she felt like death. She would gladly make the trade; how blissful it would be to feel impossibly sweet and look like death.”

“She expected the pain, when it came. But she gasped at its sharpness; it was not like any pain she had felt before. He kissed her and slowed and would have stopped. But she laughed, and said that this one time she would consent to hurt, and bleed, at his touch. He smiled into her neck and kissed her again and she moved with him through the pain. The pain became a warmth that grew. Grew, and stopped her breath. And took her breath and her pain and her mind away from her body, so that there was nothing but her body and his body and the light and fire they made together.”

“She would thump them both, and she would apologize to neither.”