With the infinite patience of one who has learned to live broken, he awaited her return.

She was a girl and she was a queen and back in the mists she was a woman who had seized the moon from the sky and drunk its light so that she would never die. And she never had.

She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox’s tongue. She tastes like hope.

A pause came between them, and it was so full of Akiva that Karou imagined she could smell him.

Head held high, she stepped toward the block and sank to her knees, and it was then that Akiva started to scream. His voice soared over the pandemonium - a scream to scour the souls of all gathered, a sound to drive ghosts from their nests.

And just so you know, the invaders are always the bad guys. Always.

It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.