“While that mouth clearly deserves an opportunity to worship as many various bits of me and my shoe collection as I can shove in there, we're not done talking yet.”

“You have never laid your pride down, Freyrík. Not once, for me or anyone. You don't know what it means to give that up, even for a moment. And yet you ask it of me again and again and again! Tell me, Freyrík, what more can you wring from me? Have I not done enough for you to trust me, gods crack you?”

“You don’t deserve me. Why should I waste my time on some bratty little whore who only wants someone to beat him until he can get off without guilt, huh? Someone who can’t follow a simple fucking direction. You don’t even want what I’m offering! You don’t want to find yourself; you want to get lost.” Devon stalked to the closet, grabbed Nicky’s coat, and hurled it at him. “So get lost.”

“Now you die while we live on, and you’ve no one to blame but your selves. So do not speak of betrayal behind my back, humans. For the Great Betrayal is your shame, not mine. ~ Ayden”

“Gods cracked, Freyrík, they would have raped me!" He surged forward so suddenly Freyrík flinched and tripped away. "And no, I did not incite or invite their attentions. It is your people who paint me like a harlot and parade me round half-naked, your people who find it amusing to use my brethren like toys, your people who teach their children such high art of disrespect that boys think rape a pleasant way to pass an afternoon!”

“Perhaps you’d care to frame me and hang me in the hall ?"The First Wife reared back, her face twisting with confusion and scorn."Excuse me ?""You’re staring.""I do no such thing !”

“We? 'Twas me who found the marks, not you, not any of you Aegean fools. And your king is the biggest fool of all, for if he'd deigned to unbind me before he sent us here to die, I could have listened for what we seek and followed it that way. Now I am as impotent as you."If considerably less ugly and stupid.”