“What little strength he had left flowed out of him and was soaked up; his bones and veins and skin held nothing but tiredness and pain.”

“Pain is like rain, it covers your skin and soaks in bone-deep, but it eventually recedes and allows fresh things to grow.”

“She was nothing. He had everything. And for what little it was worth, he was embarrassed by his own strength.”

“Pain held no terror for him. Pain was, if not friend, then family, something he had grown up with in his crèche, learning to respect but never yield to. Pain was simply a message, telling him which limbs he could still use to slaughter his enemies, how far he could still run, and what his chances were in the next battle.”

“There seemed to be almost nothing left of Lalitha; she was breaking up on him the way dead songbirds did in the wild-they were impossibly light to begin with, and as soon as their little hearts stopped beating they were barely more than bits of fluff and hollow bone, easily scatterd in the wind-but this only made him more determined to hold onto what little of her he still had.”

“She was gauging him, trying to work out what cards he had up his sleeve. For now he might be able to keep her off balance by smiling meaningfully and dropping hints, delaying the moment in which she realized that she held all the cards, and that his well-brushed sleeves held nothing but his arms.”