“Our memories make us... even the darkest of them all.”

“Well, Kaleb’s voice whispered in Nikita’s mind, it seems this will make strange bedfellows out of us all.”

“Contact would hurt, might be fatal, and yet she couldn’t stop herself. Obsession or compulsion, she didn’t know, but she did know that before this was over, she’d either end up in Dmitri’s bed . . . or one of them would bleed darkest red.”

“I don’t want to lose my memories. Don’t make me forget. I would rather die asElena, than live as a shadow.”

“You do realize this makes your wings even more unique.""Are you saying you shot me as a cosmetic procedure?”

“Some women,” Dahariel said in that same hard tone devoid of any hint of humanity, “getunder a man’s skin until digging them out makes you bleed.”

“I don’t want the … issues between us”—raging sexual arousal fused with the red haze of the anger that licked the air—“to bleed over into our working relationship. Let’s agree to stay out of each other’s way as much as possible, and be polite when it’s not.”