Brynne Delerson

He was no older than the rest of them judging by his face, but his drawl suggested a decadent, world-weary forty-year-old.

After a long, long pause, during which Luca breathed wetly into his fingers and refused to relinquish the kind blacks and sparkling browns that were dancing on his closed eyelids, Perse coughed.

An exhalation jerked out of Matti in three parts, nearly soundless.

The sky was cloud-strewn and glutinously bright.

haecceity

a jaw that had a one-night stand with a razor a week ago and hadn’t liked it.

Closed shoes seem strange and painful in the heat, and in Fetter’s eyes, the weight and solidity of those boots make it clear that they are not footwear but weapons. They are not for walking, but for kicking, for grinding down, for breaking doors, for bruising bodies and the earth.

Now, there’s probably some poor reader out there who’s going to protest with some nonsense along the lines of “Um, well actually, humans are herd animals!” And that may be true. But more than anything else, humans have historically proved to be in-need-of-therapy animals.

Just to be clear: It’s not that Lucas hates other people. He just really enjoys being where other people aren’t. He works well in groups as long as it’s groups of fewer than two people.