“She had abruptly flipped from the southern belle and was now putting on the extremely businesslike air of those perfectionist women who'd only worked in the professional world for two or three years before stopping to have children and were now terrified of not being taken seriously.”

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He had the two wards of the fucking Marshal of the fucking Southern Provinces in a stolen car. An entire continent away from where the two of them were supposed to be. In the Broken. Where they had beat up some Broken children. Well, if those children weren’t broken before, they were surely broken now. Fate, that broody, vicious, fickle bitch.”

“I love you', though, were three words she had often heard during her twenty-two years, and it seemed to her that they were now completely devoid of meaning, because they had never turned into anything serious or deep, never translated into a lasting relationship.”

“I have seen something of this world," she said over the trays, "and there are but two sorts of women in it-- those who take the strength out of a man, and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am this.”

“When Chveya was seven years old she had understood perfectly how the world worked. Now she was eight, and there were some questions.”

“And now she's right where she wants to be,Lucy thought with a stab of fury. How easily men were taken in by women! A few tears, some sweet Southern helplessness. Oh,it must have been ridiculously easy for Raine.And here she, Lucy, was, harboring the woman under her own roof! It had the makings of a fine farce.”