Beautiful men and women with distorted shadows came and scorched their handprints onto doors before vanishing skyward, drafts of heat billowing behind them with the whumph of unseen wings. Here and there, feathers fell, and they were like tufts of white fire, disintegrating to ash as soon as they touched the ground.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy (ed. Hachette UK, 2011) - ISBN: 9781444722642