Did you feel that?' I asked him.He smiled sadly. 'Fitz, I have never needed to touch you to feel that. It was always there. No limits.

It was a terrible division, to feel such need for someone, and yet angry that need existed.

Perhaps once one realised how deeply one could bond with a creature as foreign as a dragon, all forms of human love seemed more acceptable.

I have to let you go,' he said in a cracked whisper. 'While I can. Leave me that, Fitz. That I broke the bond. That I did not take what was not mine.

She wears a freedom ring in one ear, you know, the earring that Chalcedean freed-slaves must purchase and wear to prove they have been granted their freedom. I asked her once if she had bought her freedom, or if it had belonged to her mother. She was quiet for a time, and then said it was a gift from her one true love.