"What was it like?" Manon asked quietly. "To love." For love was what it had been--what Asterin perhaps alone of all the Ironteeth witches had felt, had learned. "It was like dying a little every day. It was like being alive, too. It was joy so complete it was pain. It destroyed me and unmade me and forged me. I hated it, because I knew I couldn't escape it, and knew it would forever change me. And that witchling ... I loved her, too. I loved her in a way I cannot describe--other than to tell you that it was the most powerful thing I've ever felt, greater than rage, than lust, than magic."