Near Baghdad, a sandstorm forces her down, and she sits on the plane’s tail with her revolver, goggles caked with sand, listening to what might be the howling of wild dogs, might only be the wind.

I will go soon. I hate the never-ending day. The sun circles me like a vulture. I want a respite of stars.

She couldn’t fathom that others did not see her for what she would become, that she did not wear the fact of her future like some eye-catching garment. Her belief that she would fly saturated her world, presented an appearance of absolute truth.

Marian does not seem like a child to him, nor like an adult. She has an avidity that unnerves him.

She considers flying to see Jamie but finds she doesn’t want to leave Alaska, is frightened by the thought of crossing back into her old life. So maybe she’s not quite herself again, not that she’s foolish enough to think there is one fixed version of a person.

She had yielded. She had come aboard like a piece of baggage, silent and passively unwieldy.

He could not make peace with the magnitude of suffering in the world. It registered in him as a wave of heat and tingling, an acceleration in his heart and a lightness in his head—a sensation both puny and unbearable. The only way to live was to shut it out, but even when he turned his thoughts away, he was still aware of it, as one who lives

He spent the night in a fever. He ached to kiss Sarah, to feel her slender torso against his. He thought he might actually trade his life to see her naked. He wanted, with an uneasy undertow of shame, to do to her what he had seen that unknown man do to Gilda so long ago, to press her under his weight, to dredge and rut and dig at her. Most of all,

Matilda didn’t know, of course, about the crates bound for Gerald de Redvers. She had forgiven Lloyd so much already. He could not expect her to forgive this.