He laughed. It was a broken, painful, beautiful sound — half cough, half surrender — and it ended with him pressing his head back against the headboard and closing his eyes.
"There it is," he murmured. "That magnificent, infuriating stubbornness. Do you know, I think that is what did it. Not your face, not your cleverness, not even the way you looked in that stolen gown at the masquerade, though God knows that did not help. It was the stubbornness. The absolute, unyielding refusal to accept that the world is what it is. You look at a locked door and you do not see a barrier — you see a personal insult. It is the most terrifying and the most beautiful thing I have ever encountered in five centuries of existence, and I am including the time Lucien accidentally set fire to a cathedral."
"He set fire to a cathedral?"
"He was trying to impress a nun. It did not go well."
