How the King of Elfhame

No one’s heart has to remain stone.

Stories can justify anything.

Having a heart is terrible, but you need one anyway.

“We who can never tell a lie. How can we do it?”

She speaks as though she supposes he’s never asked himself that same question, but he has. Many times, he has.

Cardan tries not to let his nerves show. “Because stories tell a truth, if not precisely the truth.”

“You told me that stories change,” he says. “And boys along with them.

“Who doesn’t want to control fate?” Cardan answered, setting his coin to spinning again.

The Roach slammed his hand down on the table, breaking the pattern. “Remember, all you really get to control is yourself.”

But no one chooses a future. You choose a path without being certain where it leads.

Choose one way and a monster rends your flesh.

Choose another and your heart turns to stone, or fire, or glass.

A heart of stone can still be broken.”

“Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”

Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted.

And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming.

But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.