“It's early spring, some late or early hour with Orion toppling backward onto the serrated edge of the mountains and not crying out but silent, silent as he tries to shoot the bull before it tramples him. Sometimes he is very peaceful not tonight. Tonight he is fighting for his life.”

“Sometimes, in the dark of night, when no one else could hear him but me, he'd cry out, like he was fighting some silent little war in his head.”

“So our chess game begins tonight, Duchess. At eleven o’clock. I will give you one hour to try to win, blindfolded or no.” His teeth showed very white when he smiled. “And then I shall win.” Jemma sniffed and turned up her nose. “Pride goeth before a fall, Duke.” “You will fall before me,” he said, his smile a blatant challenge. “Backwards.”

“He made his own silent screams then and tried to die. But I held him there.”

“Very early in my life it was too late.”

“Sometimes when we say "God is silent," what's really going on is that he hasn't told the story the way we wanted it told. He will be silent when we want him to fill in the blanks of the story we are creating. But with his own stories, the ones we live in, he is seldom silent.”