“I didn't know his age or how he liked his tea, I was wearing a terrible coat and I was drunk as a stoat - but this moment felt like it. The one I'd been waiting patiently for since I was a little girl. I'd worked so hard, for so long, at being ok with being single, but all of the things I'd told myself about independence were disappearing rapidly into the cold night. Right now, he felt like the only person who mattered in the whole world.”

“Something in my gut twisted so hard that it felt like I was being tickled by an invisible hand, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. Hope. It had been so long since I'd felt it that the sensation was like something living inside me, something wonderful waiting to break free, just like I was.”

“I'd been so lonely for touch that I'd run for miles at night with shin splints just to move through air. His arms, even in memory, were like a coat I could wear.”

“They weren't tears of sadness or even tears of joy. I was just overflowing. Like so many things since I'd been here, I didn't yet understand it, but I felt it.”

“Though I had fallen in love with Narian a long time ago, I was continually learning more about him. I'd always been familiar with his principles and his personality, but it was the little things that made a human being. Little things like how he was not accustomed to sharing his space-had I not been forced to hide in his bedroom during his exchange with the High Priestess, I would not yet have seen it. There are other things, as well. He was nearly fluent in three languages in addition to our own; he absolutely could not sleep on his back; and he didn't now how to handle being irritated with me.”

“I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.”