Kerrigan Quotes

People with weaknesses get killed by the people who lack them. Notice I'm not dead.

Love is quite like reading, I expect. Once you know how, you can’t ever imagine not doing it.

We both grew so used to each other, so comfortable with the naturalness and ease of our friendship, that we became sloppy about keeping our relationship a secret. It was not that we were physically demonstrative or obviously in love, more that it had become impossible for us to hide our close involvement. We had gradually acquired the unmistakable air of old-love: finishing each other's sentences and speaking to each other with an offhand, presuming intimacy that was eventually noticed.

Of course it's all-consuming, but love- real love- doesn't destroy or smother. It's the very opposite of a weakness. Love strengthens. It liberates. It molds itself to every fiber of your being and fortifies you where where you may be broken.

The last thing he heard was the sound of his Fairy, his wife, screaming his name. His last thought was he had failed her. He had lost her forever.

In this way, I was able to place my own concerns aside and curl myself up in the cocoon of somebody else's imagination. My life was suspended - I was in neither one place nor the other.

There are only two indisputable facts in this world: One, that the sun will set in the west. And two, that I'll come for you. Always.

Sometimes I feel that I could stand in the middle of the square and scream and thrash about like a wildling, and no one would notice.

It is an easy thing to commit a sin and say that ‘the devil made me do it,’ and then cast that sin on him. But this life has taught me that we make ourselves into the monsters that we are. That the blood we spill is on our own hands.

All that is or ever was good in me begins and ends with you. Every time I said you were mine, I meant that I was yours. Always. Always.

It was written in those stars that we meet.” His voice gathered a tender fervency that unstitched something from inside Mena’s soul. “We are bound in some inescapable way, thee and me. I’ve known it since I first laid eyes on ye in that dress.

Mena knew men like the Laird of Ravencroft Keep rarely existed, and when they did, history made gods of them. Or demons.

Kerrigan?" she choked, cupping his face in both of her hands. "Come back to me." Suddenly, he drew a deep breath before he opened his eyes to look up at her. Instead of their normal black hue, they were a bright, crystal blue—the same color they had been when he was human.

I give ye my vow as Laird of the Mackenzie clan that if I happen to encounter the man who hurt ye, I’ll put my dagger through his eye.” He’d done his best to keep his voice light, but he meant every word. She stepped back into his embrace with an ironic noise. “And they say Highlanders aren’t romantic.

You'll never be rid of me now." It would have been a tease from a less serious man, but coming from Dorian, it sounded like a dire warning. "You may come to regret it. My demons will haunt our lives." Farah reached for his wrist, stilling his hand and capturing his eyes with her own to make certain he understood her words. "I don't mind battling a few demons when I'm living with their king." She smiled. "And I think, after a time, we'll chase them away together.

You deflowered a Baron’s daughter, no, a Commissioner’s daughter—your boss’s daughter—before her wedding and got her to pay you for it? Christ, Morley, I’ve misjudged you all this time. Color me bloody impressed.

All I’m asking is for you to have mercy on me, wife. If there is a battle to fight, a villain to face, I beg you to allow me the honor. Because the cruelest thing you could do, is sentence me to a world without you in it.

She glanced up from his lips to those dark eyes that smoldered with his fire. She remembered now what they had looked like as she'd seen him before Morgen had entered his world. "Your eyes used to be blue." "That was a long time ago." -Seren to Kerrigan

Hidup ini kadang keras,tetapi kita membuatnya jadi lebih keras lagi melalui cara pandang kita.

They were perfect for each other. Two restless souls that would never be still. And would no longer have to wander alone.

Love is quite like reading, I expect. Once you know how, you can't ever imagine not doing it.

Seorang ibu akan selalu khawatir memikirkan anaknya, setiap hari selama hidupnya.

Nothing else need be said between them. No words or platitudes uttered. No fears or sins confessed. He saw absolution in her eyes. Understanding. Acceptance. And still he gave her a moment. A warning. A chance to escape. Because once he got his hands on her, there would be no stopping him.

I recall being quite captivated when we first met," he said lightly. "Helpless, I daresay." Farah's snort turned into a reluctant laugh. "Don't be charming. It doesn't suit you." The glimmer in his blue eye became a twinkle, the curve of his mouth lifted a little too far to be called a smirk anymore. But a smile? Almost... "No one's ever accused me of being charming before." "You don't say." Lord, were they- flirting?

She tilted unsteadily forward, like a siren beckoning him to his destruction. He had about as much power against her. In that moment, they both knew it.

Kiss me like you never meant to kill me.

Secrets were always covered up and, once revealed, could never again find the darkness.

I don't think I believe in villains. Heroes either. Just people. People with agendas and the things they're willing to do to get what they want.

Oh, she’d let justice take its course… Because justice, as everyone knew, was a woman.

Kupikir orang tidak akan bisa membuat komitmen sebelum benar-benar jatuh cinta. Sekarang aku tahu, kita tidak akan bisa mencintai dengan tulus sebelum membuat komitmen.” “Inilah kesempatan terakhirku dalam cinta, bukan karena aku sudah terlalu tua untuk menjalin cinta dengan orang lain, tetapi karena sudah waktunya berhenti. Berhenti berlari, mengejar sasaran bergerak yang kusebut kebahagiaan itu, dan merasa berbahagia dengan apa yang sudah kumiliki.

He clutched her to him with a desperate strength that almost hurt. "I will love you for your light, if you can love me through the dark times. And that love will be like the clear night sky when the moon is full. Not like the sun....but beautiful and bright enough to find our way.

Most people need much stronger fortification than a strawberry tart before facing me,” he said wryly. “Yes, well, I’ve found that a well-made dessert can do anyone a bit of good in a bad situation.

You’re not learning if you’re staring out the window daydreaming, Mr. Kerrigan said. Marianne, who had lost her temper by then, snapped back: Don’t delude yourself, I have nothing to learn from you.

Maiden, mother, virgin, whore. They don't write our stories anymore..." Cady began. "Vampires, lairds, pirates, earls - we're taking smut back for the girls," Vee, Gemma and Myrtle recited in unison.

She felt safe here in the arms of this dangerous man. It was like returning to a home that had been destroyed and rebuilt. The same bones, same structure, but a new core that felt more foreign than if you hadn't ever known it from before. Walls and obstacles constructed by hands that were not her own. But it didn't matter to her. She'd learn this man he'd become, renovate with her love what could be improved upon, and accept and adapt to what she could not repair.

The rough pad of his thumb dragged across the split on her lip as light as a whisper. She felt his caress in her bones. And elsewhere.

Still pleasant as a cornered hedgehog, and as well mannered as a badger, I see.

It occurred to Gavin that the first thought a groom had upon spying his bride shouldn’t be to wonder whether or not she wore knickers.

Intuition was just the brain processing information more quickly than one's consciousness could comprehend.

..aku sangat diberkati karena bisa menikmati segala cara sederhana yang dia tunjukkan untuk mencintaiku.

Dougan would rather have submitted to his thousand tortures than to have you submit to one. He wouldn't have survived your suffering. He loves you that much.

He was a living, breathing sin. In her bedroom.

I’d never leave you, Fairy.” “Truly? Not even to be a pirate?” “I promise. I might be a highwayman, though.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

She was artless. Guileless. And in her presence, he was something he’d never been before. Helpless.

Miss Felicity, if my manhood could be threatened by learning something from a woman, then I wasn’t much of a man to begin with.

Everyone is a whore, Fiona." I felt rather than heard when he unfolded himself from the settee. He wasn't so much a warmth or an essence behind me. But the absence of either. "We each merely offer different parts of ourselves for use, do we not? Our sex. Our blades. Our muscles. Our mind. Our time. Our souls.

You're a terrible man for the blankets, said Kerrigan. I'm not ashamed to admit that I love my bed, said Byrne. She was my first friend...She will house me in my last hour and faithfully hold my cold body when I am dead. She will look bereaved when I am gone.

She looked up at him with those eyes, and Dougan experienced a pang of love so intense and ferocious it felt as though it didn't belong in this holy room. He began the incantation he remembered from watching once from behind his mother's skirts when he was young. 'Ye are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone. I give ye my body, that we two might be one. I give ye my spirit, 'til our life shall be done.' Farah needed a bit of prompting to remember all the words, but she said them with such fervency that Dougan was touched. Slipping a ring of a willow herb vine onto her finger, he recited the sacred olde vows with perfect clarity, but translated them into English for her sake. 'I made ye my heart At the rising of the moon. To love and honor, Through all our lives. May we be reborn, May our souls meet and know. And love again. And remember.' She looked lost and mystified for a moment, then announced, "Me, too.

There was nothing her Ash could not overcome. Nothing he'd not endured. He had a resilience and strength only belonging to men of myth and ancient Gods. He was her own, personal legend." Chapter 22, page 243

Of all the evil Farah had had a chance to glimpse in this room, Dorian Blackwell's smile, full of his own blood and teeth and challenge, had to be the most frightening Farah had witnessed in her entire life. His eyes were dead, devoid of any hope or humanity, the milky blue one utterly motionless but for the reflection of the torchlight lending it an unnatural pagan gleam.

His eyes touched every part of her. Even parts that may never have been touched before. They flashed with lightning, singing along her nerves with electric currents of heat. A sultry, answering thunder whipped through her, calling forth a storm so unexpected, she almost felt betrayed by her own body.

I was thinking,” he said some time later as she paused for a drowsy yawn. “Since ye doona have any family to love anymore, ye could love me …” Instead of meeting her gaze, he studied the way the pristine white of her petticoat bandage made his hand look that much grubbier. “That is, if ye wanted.” Farah buried her face in his neck and sighed, her lashes brushing against his tender skin with every blink. “Of course I’ll love you, Dougan Mackenzie,” she said easily. “Who else is going to?” “Nobody,” he said earnestly. “Will you try to love me, too?” she asked in a small voice. He considered it. “I’ll try, Fairy, but I havena done it before.” “I’ll teach you that, as well,” she promised.

Kerrigan?" she tried again. "Aye, Lady Mouse. I am here." Relieved, she smiled at the sound of his voice in her head. During the day, he was oft silent. But at night…at night he would speak softly to her and tell her of his travels through time as he eluded those who were after him. "Where are you today, my lord?" "I'm in Venice, during a carnival. It's beautiful here. There are minstrels and acrobats all around. Plenty of places to hide from Morgen and her spies." "You are safe?" "Aye, Lady Mouse. I am always safe. But I've no wish to talk about me. How are you doing?" "I miss you." She swore she could feel his pain as well as her own. "I miss you as well and I think of you constantly." -Kerrigan and Seren communicating though their thoughts as they were apart.

I don’t know about heaven, but I know hell exists. I’ve spent most of my life there.” He ignored her soft sound of distress. “But through all that. Through everything that’s been done to me, I’ve only ever believed in one thing.” “What’s that?” she whispered. “That the sun would set in the west, and that I would come for you.

If I've learned anything in my life, it's that there is no darkness so absolute that it cannot be dispelled by the faintest of light," she explained. His face softened as his eyes touched her, and his boot slid forward. "My sweet Fairy." He exhaled on a painful breath. "You can't imagine darkness. You are the only light I've ever known." His tender words didn't match his pitiless features, but Farah still found hope. "You must believe that my light is more powerful than your darkness. And so let me touch you, instead. And everywhere that my fingers touch your flesh, they will clear away the blood and filth that you see, and will leave behind the light I've always wanted to give to you.

I vow on this holy ground that when this is all over, I’m going to bend you over the first available surface and fuck you sideways. Got it?

He laughed, a big, open-mouthed laugh that made her think of words beginning with the letter O.

You can't make another person happy: they have to make themselves happy.

When you are young, feelings are your truth. Love is how you feel. The years have taught me that love is not an emotion that you feel about someone, but what you do for them.

Well, if he was already damned, he might as well follow his wicked impulses all the way to hell. At least he’d get to taste her again.

Go to a church if you want to judge, Madam, we’re all here to commit a cardinal sin, maybe several.

If we see each other again, Mercy Goode…” he warned in a voice made of sex and honey. “Be ready for me to taste the rest of you.

And if you wake me before nine in the morning again, I'll pate your liver and have it with my breakfast. Now get out. - Millie

Blackwell had become that jaguar she'd evoked the first time she'd laid eyes on him. His shoulders rolled and bunched just so he settled in for a feast.

He held on to me so tightly it was as if he was trying to stop my heart from breaking by holding it together.

Samantha imagined that in another life, she and Alison could have, indeed, been friends. Had she not been about to rob the train.

Alison’s gaze gentled. “Tell me, Samantha, have you ever been to Scotland?

An eye patch covered his damaged eye, only allowing glimpses of the edge of his scar, but the message illuminated by the fire didn't need both eyes to be conveyed. 'I have you now.' How true that was. Her life depended on the mercy of this man who was infamous for his lack of mercy.

All that is or ever was good in me begins and ends with you" he breathed. "Every time I said you were mine, I meant that I was yours. Always. Always, Lorelai, I've been yours. I'd go through everything I've suffered in my nearly forty years on this earth if it brought me to this moment.

Dougan had almost completely forgotten about the food, for his entire body was suffused with the most intense and exquisite sensation he'd ever known. It was something like hunger, and something like fulfillment. It was wonder and awe and yearning and fear encapsulated in a tender bliss.

Always move forward. Every problem you encounter is an opportunity for you to prove that you are Batman in a business suit. When shit goes down and the sheep freeze up, you need to answer the call and start throwing haymakers. Batman doesn’t do damage control. Batman does damage. If you drop me down a well, I won’t waste energy crying “Why?” like Nancy Kerrigan after taking a nightstick to the knee. I will tunnel out of there like my grandparents did when they were escaping the Nazis. Eventually there will be a time for reflection, accountability, and divine retribution, but not until you get out of that goddamn hole.

If you take goodwill for granted and get sloppy, you might get away with it once or twice, but you won't get away with it for ever. You should always treat the things that treat you good with respect, because otherwise you will suffer for it. More important than that is the fact that it's just the right thing to do.

For the first time, he kissed her as if he should be doing nothing else. As if his mind was empty of naught but this moment. And the next. As if they were immortals who might go on kissing for a hundred years and never tire of it.

He was The Demon Highlander, elder brother to the Blackheart of Ben More. These monikers, they were not granted by the happenstance of birth or marriage, like a Marquess or an Earl, they were earned by means of ruthless violence and bloodshed. It was easy to forget that fact beneath the grand chandelier of this lofty keep. That was, until the fire in the hearth ignited the amber in his eyes, lending him a ferocity that even his expensive attire couldn't tame.

Tell me you doona want this. Tell me that ye didna feel this storm brewing between us since the very first day we met. That a part of ye didna know that this was an inevitability. I knew from the first time I saw ye that it was my destiny to claim ye here in the mists. And ye must take me, Mena... all of me. Make demands of yer own. Lay claim to the pleasure I'm willing to offer ye.

It wasn't the many slashes and scars marring his chest that caused her sudden gasp, though she felt the pain of each one. It was the unparalleled beauty of his physique that stole her breath. Dorian's body was rendered by some ancient god of war. No Greek sculpture could compare, no artist could re-create the sleek, predatory masculinity rippling through the complex landscape of his torso.

The lass was no damsel. He’d prepared himself for a hard sell, one that might require a few extra knee-weakening smiles, perhaps so much as a seduction, but he’d never in a million years expected the disaster that landed his arms. The disaster named Alison Ross.

Warmth stole into Murdoch's voice at the memory, and Farah's heart clenched at the picture of her Dougan not yet a man, and yet not a boy, regaling a room full of hardened prisoners about the graveyard capers and bog adventures of a ten-year-old girl in the Scottish Highlands. "He described ye so many times, I feel as though any of us would have recognized ye had we seen ye on the streets. He told us of yer kindness, yer innocence, yer gentle ways and boundless curiosity. Ye became something of a patron saint to us all. Our daughter. Our sister. Our... Fairy. Without even knowing it, ye gave us- him- a little bit of sunshine and hope in a world of shadow and pain.

Still canna resist the draw of the devil." A tremor sliced through Farah at the old woman's words. Dougan had called himself a demon the first time they'd met. If that sweet boy had been a demon, then Dorian Blackwell certainly was the devil. And Farah was, indeed, helpless to resist his dark allure.

Farah gaped, unable to fathom his brutality. She shouldn't be shocked, she'd been around the worst sort of criminals for more years than she'd care to admit. But, somehow, it astounded her that one so cultured, so relaxed and wealthy and tailored, could issue such a threat with a civil tongue. The criminals of her acquaintance were dirty and foul with explosive tempers and crude language. Blackwell threatened violence as though discussing the price of Irish potatoes.

Oh, Dougan, why send me this dark horse?' Farah inwardly railed. 'Why ask the devil in the flesh to find and protect me?' Young Dougan couldn't have known how the man in front of her would affect her. How dangerous he truly was, because of the reckless impulses pouring through her veins and settling in the most secret of places. He couldn't have known how much Dorian Blackwell secretly thrilled her. How his eyes on her made her feel helpless and powerful at the same time.

A dark shadow leaped from the stairs, his long coat flowing behind him like demon wings, landing in between her and Warrington. Dorian. He looked like the devil, come to take his minion. His hair black as obsidian. His scarred eye glittering with so many dark things, Farah couldn't identify a single one through her shock.

I honor their journey through this world, and hope they have found peace in the next. That … I might also find peace.” She studied the napkin in her lap. “Sometimes, though, I fear the weight of my sins will pull me into the abyss. I hope if God exists, if we are to stand judgment, that justice is more compassion than vengeance.

It is easy to make friends, but not so easy to keep them in the long term. You cancel a couple of arrangements because you are tired, or it seems too far to travel in traffic, and then next thing you know you have not seen somebody you considered a close friend in over a year. In the small town where I grew up, you saw the same people day in and day out for years. My mother was friends with the girls she went to school with until the day she died. I enjoyed the anonymous freedoms of the city, but now I wondered if I had enjoyed them enough to justify being lonely in my latter years. I missed seeing people every day, meeting old friends and making new ones.

Rich as Midas, they said, powerful as a Caesar, and ruthless as the devil. So he didn't have a pretty face for the ladies to coo over, but a man such as Dorian Blackwell drew feminine notice wherever he prowled. Fear and fascination proved to be powerful tools of seduction, and women reacted one way or the other toward the dark giant.

You are not a hole in my heart, you are the whole of my heart." ... You said that when you met me, my eyes were dead. They were dead. I was dead. And if I lose you, they will be again. ... There's a darkness in me, Lorelai one I'm afraid will consume your light. But, God help me, I can't let you go." ... That isn't how light works, is it? Darkness is easily overcome. Not light. The smallest hint of illumination ... can slip through the most infinitesimal crack. It is never the other way around." Chapter 22, page 246.

Meeting my brother was the single most incredible, wonderful event that had happened to me in my life up to that point. "I'm going to meet my brother," I said to the taxi driver, just to see how it sounded. Just for the novelty of saying out loud the words "my brother" for the first time. He was uninterested, and it thrilled me that the extraordinary thing I was experiencing seemd to be so ordinary to an outsider.

The rest of us, we'd lay down our lives for years, but Blackwell... he'd do that and more. He'd rip the beating heart from his chest. He'd give up his soul if ye'd only-" "It is making a rather large and fallacious assumption that I have a heart to give... or a soul." Dorian Blackwell's smooth voice didn't echo through the washroom as theirs did. He slithered into their midst with a serpentine stealth, striking before Murdoch's words uncovered any of his secrets. Gasping, Farah sank deep into the bath, thankful the water was now cloudy with soap, though she did draw her knees under her chin and anchor them with her arms, just in case. "Get out!" she insisted in an unsteady voice. "I'm indecent." "That makes two of us." He'd moved closer. So close, in fact, that Farah knew if she looked behind her, she'd find his mismatched eyes staring down at her from her towering height. Perhaps, despite the opaque water, he could see the flesh that quivered just below the surface. The thought sent bolts of heat and mortification through her. "Leave," Farah ordered, unable to face him for fear she'd lost her nerve. "Stand up and make me.

Then ye must go to her, claim her, right away.” She stood, as though ready to shoo him from her house. “Ye make it sound so easy.” He stood as well, feeling large and encumbered in her dainty room. “Nothing worthwhile is easy,” she quipped. “Ye helped to dismantle the East India Company. Ye’ve stormed castles and replaced entire regimes. Should she resist ye, lay siege to her defenses and scale her walls, Lieutenant Colonel, it’s not as if ye doona ken how to do that.

She balled her hand into a little fist, her expression turning fierce. “You haven’t any idea the strength it takes to be a woman. In my experience, it is men who are the weaker sex. Either too undisciplined to control their baser, primal instincts or, conversely, they are too fragile to endure the discomfort of honesty or integrity. Yet women endure and survive by whatever means we are able. And still we are either property or playthings. We have as much use in the eyes of the law as a cow or a fertile plot of land. It is not wrong to mistreat us. To objectify us. To shame and demand things of us and bend us to your will. That is your right as a man and our duty as a woman. Is it any wonder the world is in chaos?

In a world where men paint the ground with blood, the stars gave me a reason to look up. They’re a map when ye’re lost, and points of light when all is dark. I ken why you think it makes them seem friendly.” “Yes,” she agreed. “I suppose that they remind me that the world always turns. That things are constantly changing. This moment, every moment, whether good or terrible, will pass into oblivion and so I must live it. I must see it through. And, eventually, a new day will come again.

She’s been mistreated and she knows I’m a violent man. She’s terrified of me…” “And yet?” Mary prompted. “She yelled at me,” he said incredulously. “It’s been decades since anyone dared … she told me I couldna issue her orders, and that she was a woman with free and independent will. She called me an overbearing brute.” “Oh, Lord.” She hid a laughing smile behind her fan. “What did ye say to that?” “I kissed her. And she kissed me back.” “Marry her, Liam,” she ordered, snapping the lace fan closed. “As soon as you can. Tomorrow if possible.

To no longer be able to abide the comfort of human contact. How did he stand it? No wonder he was so very remote. How could warmth touch your heart when it wasn't even allowed near your skin? It could have been regret that softened his features, but it was impossible for her to tell. "You're thinking of Mackenzie," he murmured. Ashamed that she'd been thinking of Blackwell and not her Dougan, Farah nodded, not trusting herself to make a sound. For the second time since they'd met, he raised his hand to her face, only to pull it back again. "Is there no pity in your heart for me?" Farah turned from him then, dashing madly at her cheeks. There was, of course, but she didn't dare show it to him. "Do you deserve my pity?" she asked, her voice thick with tears. "Probably not," he answered honestly. "But the boy I once was might have.

A jewelry box? Ballerinas? She'd been such an active girl that any jewelry she'd been given would have been lost or broken right away. It was Faye Marie who'd loved- "My sister," she gasped, then louder. "My sister!" She clasped her hands together in a pleading gesture. "My lord, I beg pardon of you, but you're mistaken. I believe you gifted that treasure box to my older sister, Faye Marie. She's the one who loved ballerinas. I was obsessed with-" "Pegasus." The old justice's eyes melted from cold to kindness. "It was a trick question. I'd forgotten your birthday was so close to mine, and shared my spice cake out of pure guilt." His lined face wrinkled as he smiled with a fond memory. "You were a kind little soul, unspoiled for a girl raised in such wealth. You forgave me instantly and informed me that spice cake was, indeed, your favorite present ever received.

Well, if he was already damned, he might as well follow his wicked impulses all the way to hell. At least he’d get to taste her again. Liam sprang toward her, grasping her wrists and pulling her back down to him. He sank his fingers into her luxurious hair, loosening the intricate coiffure there, and pinned her head between his two strong palms as he took her wicked mouth with his own. It was in the joining of their lips that Liam found what he’d come to the chapel seeking. He kissed Mena with a reverence he’d never felt in the entirety of his life. Driven by a hunger that welled from the darkest, most heretical depths of his soul, he knew he’d finally found something worthy of his worship.

You understand, don't you, Mrs. Mackenzie?" Blackwell murmured, his hard mouth barely moving as the intensity of his regard pinned her to her seat. "The deeds of a willful youth." A thrill of danger kissed her spine. "Horseshit!" Morley roared. Dorian turned back to face him, and Farah was able to let out a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding as the black spell he'd woven over her suddenly dissipated. "For shame, Morley," he mockingly chided. "Such language in front of a lady." "She is my employee," Sir Morley gritted through clenched teeth. "And I'll thank you not to bother about her if you want to keep the vision in the eye you have left." "I can hardly help myself. She's such a ripe piece of skirt.

I think this dress will stun the nobility, and leave them stupefied with envy and lust," Madame Sandrine announced with relish. "I'm just glad it's not crimson, like everything else you drape," Farah said to her husband as she glanced at her transformation in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors across from the raised podium on which she stood. The creation of blue silk evoked the midnight sky, as it wrapped her bosom and waist in bejeweled gathers before cascading from her hips in a dark waterfall. The shamelessly cut bodice was lent a hint of respectability by folds of a shimmering diaphanous silver material draping from a choker of gems about her neck and flowing down her shoulders like moonbeams. To call them sleeves would have been a mistake, for all they concealed. Madame Sandrine threw a teasing look over her shoulder at Blackwell. "How fitting that the color of blood is the one you prefer the most." "Not for her," Dorian rumbled. The seamstress lifted a winged eyebrow, but didn't comment. "Voila. I believe that is all I'll need from you today, Madame Blackwell. I can have these finished in the morning, and in the meantime I have a lovely soft gray frock hemmed with tiny pink blossoms that will bring out the color in your cheeks.

Christopher Argent kept stealing disbelieving looks at Farah, his blue eyes reflecting the ambient glow like an alley cat's. Dorian understood why the man would dare in his presence. First, because Christopher Argent was an unfeeling, fearless killer-for-hire. And second, because most of the incarcerated men at Newgate had considered Dougan's Fairy some mythical creature, a sight too rare and beautiful to be beheld by a common man. Maybe even a fancy born of an imagination keen enough to take possession of the prison. To meet her was to gaze upon a fantasy realized, to remember the desperate yearnings of a lonely prisoner bereft of kindness, mercy, or beauty. To be blinded by the embodiment of all three of those things. For a man like Argent, one born to incarceration, the sight might have him reassessing some long-held cynical philosophies.

Jakub, darling, Welton has set out breakfast, it isn’t polite to keep him waiting.” Millie hated the breathless note in her voice. “But we were in the middle of a lesson.” Jakub reared back, settling into some kind of fighting stance. “I have a center line, and no one can push me off it. Well, Mr. Argent can, but no one else. I can punch anyone who tries to touch me in the throat, or thrust the heel of my hand into his nose. Also, I can pry off a kneecap with a knife, even a jam knife, Mama. And—” “Jakub,” she said more firmly, realizing Argent had taught her son the same things he’d shown her only yesterday. He hid his mulish frown by looking at the floor. “Yes, Mama.” He slunk past her, his shoulders so dramatically slumped that she wondered if she’d also let him spend too much time in the company of actors. “I’ll be along, kochanie,” she said more gently. “I need to discuss something with Mr. Argent.” As he plodded down the hall she heard him mutter to himself, “I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned the kneecaps.