“The riders, too, were like nothing she had ever seen before: ethereal men and women with pale visages, their cheekbones so sharply sculpted that she could see their skulls through translucent skin. They surrounded her and looked at her with steely blue eyes, each gaze an arrow staking her to that spot, and she could not close her eyes though the sight of them made her eyes burn as if she were looking at the sun.”

“She had never known that ice could take on so many shades of blue: sharp lines of indigo like the deepest sea, aquamarine shadows, even the glint of blue-green where the sun struck just so.”

“But at some point in her passage, the trees began to change. They stretched taller, and the soft, pale bark darkened, roughened. She put her hand to a tree and touched the lichen growing dark green upon brown, and it felt like old cork, dry and crumbling. Here the sun mellowed, took on the cast of late afternoon, and the shadows seemed to fall a bit longer; the forest had sunk into a deeper silence, magnifying what sounds did arise. The sudden, quick crash of a fox bounding through the brush was as loud as the slam of a great wooden door.”

“Kissing Amber was like falling into the sea: Her body surrendered to the pull of the tide, buoyed by the saltwater, every breath tasting like the ocean. Reese lost all sense of where the surface was. All there was, was this. Amber’s lips, her tongue, her hands stroking back Reese’s hair, curling around her head and holding her steady. If their first kiss had been a bit awkward, that was gone now.”

“And then there were her eyes. Two grey gimlets. They had a gaze that could strip wallpaper. They made you think that she could look deeply into your eyes and read the manufacturer’s label on the inside of your skull.”

“Men, women, and children she had never seen before and whom she had been schooled to think of as enemies were cheering her as though she were one of their own. She could make out only a little of what they said but she knew they were encouraging and welcoming her. Tightness welled up in her throat. She looked from the crowd to her husband, who was gazing back at her with genuine pride in his eyes. Without thought, she reached out a hand across the space that separated them. He took it and raised it to his lips.The cheers rose to heaven.For the first time in her life, Rycca felt what it was to come home.”

“He liked the way she talked. There was something in her eyes too. He saw it the first time when she had said, 'I've seen you before many times, and I always remembered you.' Josiah could not remember ever seeing her before, but there was something in her hazel brown eyes that made him believe her.”