I have been surrounded by love letters you two have built each other for years, encased in tents.

The circus arrives without warning.

I have been surrounded by love letters you two have built each other for years, encased in tents.

You send me all these roses. Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up. I’m running out of vases. I didn’t know roses came in so many colors. You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain. I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. And you don’t get it. You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language. You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl.

Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.

Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?

I have never lied, “ Mr. Barris counters, standing as well. “I do not share what I am not at liberty to say. I gave my word and I intend to keep it but I have never lied to you. You never even asked me, you assumed I knew nothing.