Дочь дыма и костей

Серафимы — высокий ангельский чин, по крайней мере, так гласят христианские предания. К ним Бримстоун относился с презрением.

Она не хотела, чтобы ее отпускали. Ей хотелось, чтобы ею дорожили. Хотелось, чтобы у нее оставался дом и семья. Навсегда.

Разве дружба удержится на отговорках и лжи?

— Жизнь? Тело, ты имеешь в виду? Это всего лишь конверт, Кэроу. Твоя душа — другое дело, а ей, насколько мне известно, ничто не угрожает.

— Неужели моя жизнь так мало значит для тебя?

— Что значит — не страшный? Как я рычу? А как кусаюсь? Кого угодно хватит удар. Просто у тебя ледышка вместо сердца.

Ее охватило желание, насыщенное, как тающий на языке шоколад.

В это самое мгновение его образ в мерцании света от крыльев показался таким... правильным, таким совершенным. Это чувство полностью завладело Кэроу. Оно было ласковым, как упавший на блестящий пол солнечный лучик, и ей захотелось уютно свернуться в клубочек в его свете.

Не сожалей о добре, дитя. Оставаться честной наперекор злу - значит проявить силу.

Я не загадываю желаний, дитя. Я надеюсь. Это совсем другое. Желания обманчивы. Надежда правдива. В надежде есть своё волшебство...

"To the baths, then. To make ourselves shiningly clean."
Like vegetables, she thought, before they go in the stew.

He learned to go into his pain, like it was a place. From within it, things looked different - sharp-edged - and felt and sounded different, too, tinny and cool. Pain was like a lens that honed everything, his senses and instinct, and it was there, through relentless trial and repetition, that he did it. He achieved invisibility. It was a triumph that would have garnered him fame and the emperor`s highest honors, and it gave him a cold satisfaction to keep it to himself.

"To take from the Universe, you must give," said Akiva.
"But... why pain? Couldn`t you give something else? Like... joy?"
"It`s a balance. If it were something easy to give, it would be meaningless."
Karou said, "You really think joy is easier to come by than pain? Which have you had more of?"

They were children of the harem, offspring of the seraph emperor, whose hobby was breeding bastards to fight the war. Their "father" - and they spoke the word through clenched teeth - visited a different concubine each night, women given as tribute or handpicked as they caught his eye. His secretaries kept a list of his progeny in two columns, girls and boys. Babies were always being added, and as they grew up and died on the battlefield, they were stricken unceremoniously off.

He hissed. "Do you think I can`t make you talk?"
To which Izil replied with a smile, "No, angel. I don`t think you can." And then he pitched himself off the minaret, carrying Razgut with him, to fall two hundred feet and shatter against roof tiles below.

She was torn between the urge to flee and the fear of turning her back on him.

Sometimes, maybe most of the time, she forgot to see Brimstone. He was so familiar that when she looked at him she saw not a beast but the creature who, for reasons unknown, had raised her from a baby, and not without tenderness. But he could still struck her speechless at times, such as when he used that tone of voice. It slithered like a hiss to the core of her consciousness and opened her eyes to the full, fearsome truth of him.
Brimstone was a monster.