“He was under no illusion that he was going to be taken to the campfire to roll around with Laurent. If anything, he was going to be taken to the campfire to watch Laurent do some inventive sidestepping.”

“It was with a shock that he felt the touch of Laurent's fingers against the back of his wrist. [...] Laurent was shifting the fabric of his sleeve, sliding it back slightly to reveal the gold underneath, until the wrist cuff he had asked the blacksmith to leave on was exposed between them. 'Sentiment?' said Laurent.'Something like that.'Their eyes met and he could feel each beat of his heart. A few seconds of silence, a space that lengthened, until Laurent spoke.'You should give me the other.”

“I should make you watch, said Laurent, while he's stripped down for every man in the troop to have him."Damen stepped forward. "You don't mean this. You need him as a hostage.""I don't need him continent," said Laurent.”

“This," said Laurent, "is a little more—"It was a word of sharp points: "—intimate," he said, "than ice." "Too intimate?" Damen said. Slowly, he was kneading Laurent's shoulders.He did not usually think of himself as someone with suicidal impulses.”

“To Laurent, in the same voice, he said, 'Calm down.'Laurent said, 'I wasn't finished.''Finished what?' Reducing every man in the room? Jord isn't any kind of match for you in this mood, and you know it. Calm down.'Laurent gave him the kind of look a swordsman gives as he decides whether or not to slice his unarmed enemy in half.”

“He wasn't sure how it would be, butwhen Laurent saw who was beside him,he smiled, the expression alittle shy but completely genuine.Damen, who hadn't been expecting it,felt the single painful beat of his heart.He'd never thought Laurent could looklike that at anyone.”

“Laurent wasn't loved. Laurent wasn't liked. Even among his own men, who would follow him off a cliff, there was the unequivocal consensus that Laurent was, as Orlant had once described him, a cast iron bitch, that it was a very bad idea to get on his bad side, and that as for his good side, he didn't have one.”