The harshest lesson of all was that which ran contrary to the teaching of his own personality. - Tanith Lee

I said, “When you are on your deathbed, Erran, pray that you never meet me in the place you are going to.”

The Prince then remembered the white-haired Theel in the Castle of Bone, who had also been kind, if a little odd, and he wondered why such nice creatures always seemed to live in bad places with wicked things going on all around them.
“That’s easy,” said the girl, seeming to read his thoughts as the other Theel had done. “The bad places are where we can do the most good.”

The irony of her story is merely that her love became, in the end, her motive rather than her goal, the doorway rather than the house.