You have the power to tear me to pieces, to wound me so deep and true that I'll never recover. What Rissa's death did to the boy I was? You have the ability to do a thousand times worse to the man I've become.

It wasn’t only his city that was healing, Raphael thought, his eyes catching the refracted light that betrayed Aodhan’s presence in the sky; his people were, too. And it had all begun with a single, vulnerable mortal who did not accept that to be an archangel was to be always right.

A life is not a waste of time.

The longer you live, the more mistakes you make. And the more sorrows you carry.