It's always darkest before the ultimate sparkle.

My dad was a Presbyterian minister. Yes, I am one of those dreaded P.K.s - Preachers Kids. Be afraid.

What frightens you? What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged? Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire? Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside?

They kept the lie going, and the people loved it.

Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.

I'm sorry,' he says simply. 'People make mistakes, Gemma. We take the wrong action for the right reasons, and the right action for the wrong reasons.

And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try.