“But if she'd realized that nine desiccated zombie nymphs would be waiting for her, she never would have come down here.”

“She'd realize Steve was her soul mate and that she would never love anyone as much as she loved him.”

“She'd assumed she'd be married and have kids by this age, that she would be grooming her own daughter for this, as her friends were doing. She wanted it so much she would dream about it sometimes, and then she would wake up with the skin at her wrists and neck red from the scratchy lace of the wedding gown she'd dreamed of wearing. But she'd never felt anything for the men she'd dated, nothing beyond her own desperation. And her desire to marry wasn't strong enough, would never be strong enough, to allow her to marry a man she didn't love.”

“She would always be living her life backwards, she realized, trying to regain something perfect that she'd lost.”

“It didn't matter. If she was to have any hope of saving Bellusdeo and Maggaron now, she needed to finish what she started; the anger and the self-recrimination would just have to wait. She'd no doubt she'd return to it later; unlike laundry, she'd never left self-recrimination undone.”

“Bell lifted her hand to her chest. Her heart beat so quickly. She was floating out on a tide of agony, and soon she would be carried so far she'd never come back.”