“The voice sank through luce's skin and straight into her heart. Daniel's voice. He was calling to her. He wanted her. Needed her. Luce moved towards the sound”

“After such an emotional day with her own parents, the thought nearly brought Luce to her knees with sadness. Daniel was alone in the world.”

“He's not-" Daniel started to say. He watched a red-tailed hawk land in an oak tree over their heads. "He's not good enough for you."Luce had heard people say that line a thousand times before. It was what everyone always said. Not good enough. But when the words passed Daniel's lips, they sounded important, even somehow true and relevant, not vague and dismissive the way the phrase had always sounded to her in the past."Well, then," she said in a quiet voice, "who is?"Daniel put his hands on his hips. He laughed to himself for a long time. "I don't know," he said finally. "That's a terrific question."Not exactly the answer Luce was looking for. "It's not like it's that hard," she said, stuffing her hands into her pockets because she wanted to reach out for him. "To be good enough for me."Daniel's eyes looked like they were falling, all the violet that had been in them a moment before turned a deep, dark gray. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it is.”

“I thought I'd never find you," Luce heard her past self say."We will always find each other," Daniel answered, lifting her off the ground and squeezing her closer. "Always.""Hey,you two!" A voice shouted from a doorway in a neighboring building. "Are you coming?"Across the square from the empty lot, a small group of people were being herded into a solid stone building by a guy whose face Luce couldn't make out. That was where Luschka and Daniel were headed. It must have been their plan all along, to take shelter from the bombs together."Yes," Luschka called to the others. She looked at Daniel. "Let's go with them.""No." His voice was curt. Nervous. Luce knew that tone all too well."We'll be safer off the street. Isn't this why we agreed to meet here?"Daniel turned to look back behind them, his eyes sweeping right past the place where Luce was hiding. When the sky lit up with another round of golden-red explosions, Luschka screamed and buried her face in Daniel's chest. So Luce was the only one who saw his expression.Something was weighing on him. Something greater than fear of the bombs.Oh no."Daniil!" A boy near the building was still holding open the door to the shelter. "Luschka! Daniil!"Everyone else was already inside.That was when Daniil spun Luschka around, pulled her ear close to his lips. In her shadowy hiding place, Luce ached to know what he was whispering. If he was saying any of the things Daniel ever told her when she was upset or overwhelmed. She wanted to run to them, to pull Luschka away-but she couldn't. Something deep inside her would not budge.She fixed on Luschka's expression as if her whole life depended on it.Maybe it did.Lsuchka nodded as Daniil spoke, and her face changed from terrified to calm, alost peaceful. She closed her eyes. She nodded one more time. Then she tipped back her head, and a smile spread slowly across her lips.A smile?But why? How? It was almost like she knew what was about to happen?Daniil held her in his arms and dipped her low. He leaned in for another kiss, pressing his lips firmly against hers, running his hands through her hair, then down her sides, across every inch of her.It was so passionate that Luce blushed, so intimate she couldn't breathe, so gorgeous that she couldn't tear her eyes away.Not for a second.Not even when Luschka screamed.And burst into a column of searing white flame.”

“Before Luce could reply, a skinny, dark haired girl appeared in from of her, wagging her long fingers in Luce's face."Ooooooh," the girl taunted in a ghost-story-telling voice, dancing around Luce in a circle. "The reds are watching youuuu.""Get out of here, Arriane, before I have you lobotimized," the attendant said, though it was clear from her first brief but genuine smile that she had some coarse affection for that crazy girl.It was also clear that Arriane did not reciprocate the love. She mimed a jerking-off motion at the attendant, then stared at Luce, daring her to be offended.”

“Luce ignored the girls and felt around Ix Caut's own crippling fear. Something was running through her mind-a prayer. But not a prayer of sacrificial preparation. No,Ix Caut was praying for Daniel.Luce knew that the thought of him made Ix Caut's skin flush and her heart beat faster.Ix Caut had loved him her whole life-but only from afar. He'd grown up a few buildings away from her family's home. Sometimes he traded avocados to her mother at the market. Ix Caut had been trying for years to get up the courage to talk to him.The knowledge that he was at the ball court now tormented her.Ix Caut was praying, Luce realized,that he would lose. Her one prayer was that she did not want to die at his hand.”

“Will Daniel win or lose?" Luce asked, knowing the answer before the words had even left her lips."I can see how the idea of Daniel decapitating you does not maybe scream out romance," Bill said, "but really, what's the difference between his killing you by fire and by the sword?""Daniel wouldn't do that."Bill hovered in the air in front of Luce. "Wouldn't he?”