Swoon Thursday: Swooning over Orma in Seraphina

Obviously, I am a bit rabid on here lately in my attempts to make up for lost time. Just go with it. Anyways, over at YA Bound, they have this weekly event on Thursdays called SWOON THURSDAY. They have a very sexy little photo to go with SWOON THURSDAY that participants are supposed to copy/paste onto their own blogs. I thought about posting it here, but ultimately decided against it. I do like the idea of swooning on Thursdays though.

So, on SWOON THURSDAY, you're supposed to reminisce about a book (or character in a book) you read recently that made you swoon. I swoon pretty easily (I think I've watched the Darcy-in-the-lake scene in the BBC Pride & Prejudice maybe 200 times? Literally...) so this was not a challenge. The one twist is that the swooniest scene I have read lately was not a romantic one but a moment of father-daughter love between a young woman and her uncle (who is basically her surrogate father). It occurs in Seraphina, which I just reviewed here, incidentally. This moment is between Seraphina, a half-dragon, and her uncle Orma, a dragon. The bond between Seraphina and Orma is actually one of the main reasons I love this book as much as I do.

A bit of background info before I present the passage that made me almost swoon to death. In Seraphina, dragons can take the form of humans, but they do not really feel human emotion. Dragons are typically cold and calculating and tend to be puzzled by the mere concept of experiencing an emotion, let alone being guided by one. Seraphina has long lamented the apparent coldness of her uncle Orma towards her. Orma basically raised Seraphina, and she loves him, but, though he is kind to her, he never really expresses any overt fondness towards her. This frustrates her to no end. Then a lot of stuff happens and people grow and life & death situations ensue, etc., and the following scene occurs.

WARNING: this is a little bit spoilery, but not as much as you might think:

"I can't bear that you'll be alone."
"Not alone. There are others of my kind. I'm going to find them."
"Who will kiss you? Who will rock you to sleep?" His voice was slow, drowsy.
"You never did that," I said, trying to tease him. "You were more father to me than my father, but you never did that."
"Someone should. Someone should love you. I will bite him if he will not."
"Hush. You're talking nonsense now."
"Not nonsense. This is important!" He struggled to sit up straighter and failed. "Your mother once told me something, and I need to tell you . . . because you need . . . to understand it . . . "
His eyes fluttered shut, and he was quiet so long I thought he had fallen asleep, but then he said, in a voice so soft I could barely hear: "Love is not a disease."
I leaned my forehead on his shoulder, all the words I'd never spoken to him rushing my throat at once, forming a terrible lump there. Hesitantly he stroked my hair.
"I'm not completely certain she was right," he murmured. "But I cannot let them cut you out of me, nor her either. I will cling to my sickness . . . if it is a sickness . . . I will hold it close to me like the . . . the sun, and the . . . "

For real, tell me that's not swoon-inducing!?!?