She was more beautiful than he remembered. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t that she had changed or that his vision had sharpened. He was just less afraid of her beauty now.

Darlington was. He’d go to hell for me, for you, for anyone who needed saving.” “Alex,” Michelle said, dusting off her skirt, “he’d go to hell just to take notes on the climate.”

Practical, merciless, a survivor who would keep walking, keep fighting no matter what God, the devil, or Yale threw at her. Was she a knight? A queen? A demon herself? Did it make any difference?

She’d never liked that phrase, diamond in the rough. All that meant was they had to cut you again and again to let the light in.

“Darlington?” Alex stammered. “I … Where are you going?” “To get some clothes, Stern,” he said, climbing the steps and leaving bloody footprints behind. “A man can spend only so much time without trousers on before he begins to feel like a deviant.” Alex stared up at him, one hand on the banister. The gentleman of Lethe had returned.

That was the problem with love. It was hard to unlearn, no matter how harsh the lesson.

She didn’t want to relinquish this feeling of power, this elation. He tasted like honey. But she knew better than to get used to a drug like this. She could only hope she wasn’t too late.

My new Dante is eager and I suspect my primary task will be to keep that enthusiasm from killing him. How easily he speaks of magic, as if it is not forbidden, as if it does not always ask a terrible price.

“Galaxy Stern,” Darlington said, his eyes flashing gold, “I have been crying out to you from the start.”