Soman Chainani

Then she saw Agatha. “You there! No smirking!

CALL THAT THING OFF!” Tedros yelled as he deflected Grimm’s arrows into the well with his training sword.

Tedros smiled. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
She fainted in his arms.

Agatha heard a bloodcurdling shriek and spun to Sophie, back in her body, lips scrunched against Hort’s.

Hort released her. “Oh, the hand. Oops.” He popped another mint leaf. “Should we start again?”

“You APE!” Sophie kicked him and he crashed into the mint bush, onto the snacking skunk, which raised its tail and sprayed him in the eyes. Hort staggered around, ramming into coffins—“I’m blind! I’m blind!”—until he smashed into Sophie’s again, which slammed shut, sealing his skunked body in with hers. Aghast, Sophie rammed the glass, but it wouldn’t budge.

No one fights fair.

To the End of Ends

That’s why love is the ultimate test. It forces us to grow, to be better, and even then, sometimes it’s not enough. We get in our own way. We’re our own worst villains. But only a true villain believes he can control love. Love can’t be controlled any more than a wildfire can. It lives in the balance of fate and free will, Man and Pen. We do our part, we hope, we wish . . . but it writes its own story in its own time, the way it’s meant to be.

Relief.

As if at last he had the answer to what made a king. Not blood. Not birthright. But something deeper: faith. Faith his father had in him. Faith Tedros never had in himself. Until now. Because he was a better man than his father, loyal to his princess, loyal to his heart. Because he’d be a better king, having chosen not the queen who would compensate for his shortcomings, but would love him for them. Because of who he was deep in his soul, rather than what he thought should be. He was free. Finally free. As if in being told he wasn’t a king, he found the reason to be a king.

“In time, the truth will be written, no matter how many lies someone might tell to obscure it. And the truth comes with an army.”

isn’t that what love is? That magical force that makes you more you.