Page 22 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

Mal

Anya watched Christopher’s face. He hadn’t spoken Mal’s name aloud for a long time. It worked on him like a magic word: it was a name to conjure with. It burned with the hope that they would meet again.

The human creature is such a deceptively simple thing to look at. You can watch someone peel an orange or trip up a flight of stairs, and forget that inside they are both strange and infinite. Take a human by the wrist and you have in your hand a piece of unending longing.

As she studied his face, though, Anya thought that Christopher’s longing and hope were startlingly visible.

He had dirt on his skin and blood in his fingernails, but his eyes said, as clear as if he had spoken it, that he was a boy who was searching for something—or, she thought, somebody.

He still longed for the Immortal, to walk and talk with her again.