“The glow flares bright—bright as the billion-year-old light around us. Bright as a sun.Almost every particle in the universe was once part of a star.First, hydrogen condensing and collapsing, bringing radiance to the void.Furnaces burning bright, then fading, giving all they had left back into the cosmos.Carbon and oxygen. Iron and gold.Vast clouds swirling with their own gravity. Coalescing and disintegrating.Generation to generation.The remnants of stellar alchemy, stirring into life, then consciousness.Crawling from the oceans. Taking to the skies.And from there, back to the stars that birthed them.A perfect circle.”

“His eyes move to my lips, and I know he’s thinking the same thing; I can feel it in the way the air charges between us. I can almost taste him half an inch away, can feel the way the tiny hairs on my skin lift and reach for him like plants seeking the sunlight.”

“He can’t take his eyes off the stars, but I can’t take mine off his face. I can see the stars reflected in his eyes, can see the wonder of it in the way his mouth opens but no sound comes out. His eyes, his face—they’re beautiful.”

“What does it mean?” Flynn turns to gaze at me, eyes finally meeting mine.I find myself smiling because I know exactly what it means. “It means the clouds are clearing on Avon.”

“He can’t take his eyes off the stars, but I can’t take mine off his face.”

“When faced with the choice of living one breath longer or cashing in right now, most folks will take the extra moment. That single extra breath. Even when your world stops spinning and gravity dies and the blood glitters in the air like a galaxy of warm red suns all around you. A lot can happen between breaths, after all.”

“Nothing ceases to exist. Energy does not perish, it merely changes forms. The ones you love, the ones you lose, they still exist as long as the cosmos does.”

“Numbers do not feel. Do not bleed or weep or hope. They do not know bravery or sacrifice. Love or allegiance. At the very apex of callousness you will find only ones and zeroes.”

“I would say inhuman, but your kind perfected the clockwork of murder long ago.”

“Clear skies, cousin". Good luck, he means. There are never clear skies on Avon, no blue, no stars. But we don't give up hope, and we use those words to remind ourselves. Clear skies will come, one day.”

“And now, born from the ashes, she’s a warrior in bloodied black.”