If Lada was the spiky green weed that sprouted in the midst of a drought-cracked riverbed, Radu was the delicate, sweet rose that wilted in anything less that the perfect conditions.

Why does IPCA use them if they’re evil?” he asked, confused.
“They aren’t evil. They aren’t even really immoral, per se. They’re amoral. They don’t operate on the same level that we do. For a faerie, the only thing that matters is what they want. That’s their good. Anything else is superfluous. So like how they kidnap people, not a big deal—they want the person, they take him. Or killing someone. If you live forever, how much does one mortal life matter in the scheme of things? When you exist outside time, cutting off the forty years a person has left is a non-issue. They don’t even notice.

Many of the male faeries had their shirts unbuttoned and chests bare. (How’s this for freaky: no nipples or belly buttons.)

Faeries are unaffected by alcohol, but much to her surprise—and the faeries’ undoing—they get very, very drunk on carbonation. Using copious amounts of Coke, she was able to discover a single faerie’s true name.

We are that tree," he said, then rode ahead...
It was twisted and small but green, growing sideways in defiance of gravity. It lived where nothing had any business thriving.
Lana did not know whether her father meant the two of them or all of Wallachia. In her mind, the two had become indistinguishable. We are that tree, she thought..We defy death, to grow.

Sometimes I wanted to take a memory - one perfect memory - curl up in it, and go to sleep.