“And it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to take off your hat first!”

“I want you to take off the mask, Erik, do you hear me? I want you to take it off right now. -Luciana”

“Killing is like riding, you see. One never really loses the knack.”

“Men like Robin were never content, and men like Robin were all she would ever love, grasping, ambitious reflections of herself... He would begin to plot and scheme behind her back, building up a court faction... To emerge from that final conflict as the victor, it would be necessary to kill him. And she knew she was capable of doing it-- it was as simple as that.”

“Is the mask magic?" he demanded with sudden, passionate interest."Yes." I bowed my head, so that our eyes no longer met. "I made it magic to keep you safe. The mask is your friend, Erik. As long as you wear it, no mirror can ever show you the face again."He was silent then and when I showed him the new mask he accepted it without question and put it on hastily with his clumsy, bandaged fingers. But when I stood up to go, he reacted with panic and clutched at my grown."Don't go! Don't leave me here in the dark.""You are not in the dark," I said patiently. "Look, I have left the candle ..."But I knew, as I looked at him, that it would have made no difference if I had left him fifty candles. The darkness he feared was in his own mind and there was no light in the universe powerful enough to take that darkness from him.With a sigh of resignation I sat back on the bed and began to sing softly; and before I had finished the first verse, he was asleep.The bandages on his hands and wrists showed white and eerie in the candle-light, as I eased my skirts from his grasp.I knew that Marie was right.Physically and mentally, I had scarred him for life.”

“He saw the Queen and saw her for the first time with the mask of friendship removed, a figure suddenly as ruthless and terrible as ever her father had been... All their dazzling intimacy was an illusion, a mere straw in the wind, for in the last resort he was but a subject, as her mother had been.”

“I'm not concerned with paid assassins ... mindless, soulless animals who excel at nothing else. But you, Erik ... you love all the beauty in this world ... you are a genius in so many different fields. Why do you set yourself beyond the pale of humanity by such a despicable crime?"He took off the mask and turned slowly to let me see. "This face which has denied me all human rights also frees me of all obligation to the human race," he said quietly. "My mother hated me, my village drove me from my home, I was exhibited like an animal in a cage until a knife showed me the only way to be free. The pleasures of love will always be forbidden to me ... but I am young, Nadir. I have all the desires of any normal man.”