“And what if you weren’t a jinni? What if you were free from their rules?”I stare at him. His jaw tightens, his eyes steely with determination that frightens me to my core. A cloud drifts across the face of the crescent moon, and the courtyard darkens. Here and there, the grass is still bent where Aladdin and I danced just hours earlier. I drop my gaze and glare at it, shaking from head to toe.“Don’t say it, Aladdin. Don’t you even think it.” Dread rises in me like a storm cloud, dark and menacing.Aladdin moves closer. He takes my hands. His skin is warm and crackling with energy, setting me on fire.“I have one wish left,” he murmurs. “And this one is for you.”“No, Aladdin! Don’t speak it. Don’t make the Forbidden Wish. The cost—”“Damn the cost. Zahra, I wish—”I stop him with a kiss.Because it is the first thing I think of to stop the terrible words. Because he fills me with light and hope and deep, deep fear. Because I have been longing to for days.”

“For the last few centuries, these jeweled fruits have been my constant and sole companions. The greatest treasure in all the world, as comfortless as light to the blind.”

“Find me, my thief.”

“A kind of childlike purity to her repose that made the thought of kissing her seem vile.”

“To have thought that, with the right tests and the right lectures, I could be made into a cold-blooded, heartless killer. To have thought that I could ignore the beating of my own heart long enough to stop the beating of another's.”

“If people could fall apart, why couldn't they fall back together?”

“Everytime he looked at her she felt brighter inside, and she yearned to keep his attention, to hold his gaze.”

“It slowly dawns on me what it is, the sensation that has bridged the gap between how I saw the world yesterday and how I see it today. It compensates for my lost keenness and even makes everything around me a little brighter. Hope.”

“A body can't live without a heart. And I can't live without you.”

“Love is nothing more than elevated levels of dopamine, nor-epinephrine, and other chemicals. But the way Uncle Antionio's face lights up as they dance... I wonder what it would be like to feel that. To let the chemicals of romance take over for just a little while. Then I remember that I am immortal and that my body doesn't work like everyone else's. Who knows if I can even feel love?”

“I think of the five generations it will take before [Mr. Perfect]'s born, and I want to scream. I want someone now. I want someone who will look into my eyes and understand everything behind them.”