Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.

A longing for books was nothing compared with what you could feel for human beings. The books told you about that feeling. The books spoke of love, and it was wonderful to listen to them, but they were not substitute for love itself.

The Dark Fairy touched her chest. No heart, like her sisters. So where did the love come from?

What was she hoping to gain from his death? That it would numb the pain of his betrayal, or heal her injured pride? Her red sister didn't know much about love.

What was this yearning, tearing at her insides like hunger and thirst? It couldn't be love. Love was warm and soft, like a bed of leaves. But this was dark, like the shade under a poisonous shrub, and it was hungry. So hungry. It must have some other name, just as there couldn't be the same word for life and death, or for moon and sun

Secrets... nothing eats away at love faster.

Was she happy? Yes. And no. Because now the words were back, and with them the name that had spun gold around her heart for so long she hardly remembered how things had felt before him.

He bent over Farid and wiped some soot from his cold forehead. "Roxanne knows it," he said. "She'll tell it to you. Just go to her and... and tell her I've had to go away. Tell her I'm going to find out if the story is true." He spoke with a strange kind of hesitation, as if it were infinitely difficult to find the right words. "And remind her of my promise— that I'll always find a way back to her, wherever I am. Will you tell her that?

You'd like him back, too, wouldn't you?"It was difficult for her to turn her eyes away from Farid's face. "He'll never come back," she whispered, and look at Dustfinger. She didn't have the strength to speak any louder. All her strength was gone, as if Farid had taken it away with him. He had taken everything away from him.