I would give up a thousand happy endings just to go back with you to your valley, and live as we did. I’d give up every fairy tale I’ve ever known just to hear you say my name again.

She was so tired, after all – tired of fairy tales and magic and empty castles, tired of wanting so intensely that she didn’t know what she wanted.

There were maybe thirty or forty of them – nothing to how many were in the ruined library – but these had been cared for, protected and preserved against the years. And though they showed wear, cracked spines and corners rubbed such that the dye had faded, it was the kind of wear from use, the wear her own family’s books had shown before they sold them. These books were read, many times. These books were loved. The.

We won’t fade quietly into this darkness.

None of this was what held Yeva’s gaze. Because in the bottom of the valley, straddling the river nestled in the foothills, was a castle.

There is something out there, he’d said. Something cunning.

It has been so long since we have heard a voice that was not screaming.

But I’m struggling to convince myself that logic had anything to do with it.

I heard her voice, her stories, her softness as she spoke of her family, and her iron as she spoke of me – I heard her scream, and I moved without thought.

Flirtation was already outside Marian’s expertise, but trying to seem receptive to his advances was all the harder when he made none.