“I had felt the shot coming; I hadn’t realized the bow was loaded with this very quarrel, perfectly calibrated to hit him hardest. What part of me had been studying him, stockpiling knowledge as ammunition?”

“I felt lighter when I had finished, and for once emptiness was a sweet relief and a condition to be treasured.”

“I rose to standing, like Lars upon the barbican, the dark city spread at my feet. Lights twinkled in tavern windows, bobbed at the Wolfstoot Bridge construction. Once I had been suspended over this vast space, hanging and helpless, at a dragon’s mercy. Once I had feared that telling the truth would be like falling, that love would be like hitting the ground, but here I was, my feet firmly planted, standing on my own. We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”

“The resolve written in his eyes said no, but I could see exactly where I would have to push, and how hard, to break that resolve. It would be shockingly easy, but I found I did not wish it. ... Some part of him would break, along with his resolve, and I did not see a way to make it whole again. The jagged edge of it would stab at him all his life.”

“Orma moved a pile of books off a stool for me but seated himself directly on another stack. This habit of his never ceased to amuse me. Dragons no longer hoarded gold; Comonot's reforms had outlawed it. For Orma and his generation, knowledge was treasure. As dragons through the ages had done, he gathered it and then he sat on it.”

“Have you read Belondweg?""I coudn't call myself much of a scholar if I hadn't," he said.He was adorable and he made me smile, but I couldn't let him see.”

“Orma had given me a timepiece that emitted blasphemy-inducing chirps at whatever early hour I specified.”