“Maybe the girl would get strong enough to withstand an ink exchange with one of the chosen faeries. If not, he could always give her to one of the weaker fey. It seemed a shame to waste a lovely broken toy.”

“I can teach you how to defend yourself some. Not" - he held her gaze - "that it will always keep you safe. There are times when no amount of training will stop what others would do.""So why..." She let the question drift away."Because it helps me sleep at night, because it helps me focus, because sometimes I like knowing that maybe if I were in danger again it would help."He kissed her forehead."And sometimes because it gives me hope that it'll make me strong enough to be loved and protect the one I would try to love.”

“Like many faeries she knew, he was sculpture-perfect, but instead of being wrought of shadows like those in her court, this faery had a tangled feel to him. Shadow and radiance. He didn‘t look much older than her, until she saw the arrogance in his posture. Then, he reminded her of Irial, of Bananach, of Keenan, of the faeries who walked through courts and crowds confident that they could slaughter everyone in the room. Like chaos in a glass cage.”

“Were you hoping for a quest? A seemingly impossible task that you could relay to your queen afterward? Would you like to tell her that you found and slayed the dragon for love of her?-Queen Sorcha”

“She stretched up on her tiptoes, tilted her head, trying to get even closer. Seth slid a hand around her waist and kissed her like she was the air, and he was suffocating. And she forgot about everything: there were no faeries, no Sight, nothing €”just them.”

“He might be out of her skin, but she'd left him as something other than what he'd been before- not moral, but not strong enough to deserve the title of Dark King.”

“She stepped closer to one of the statues. It looked wide-eyed, almost afraid as she reached out her hand.One of the women reached out and snatched Aislinn's still uplifted hand. "No."The women spoke all at once, not to her or to Keenan, but softly-as if to themselves-in a sibilant whisper. "He's ours. Fair exchange. Not yours to interfere.”