I think I speak for everyone," he says, "when I say you have earned the title of Dauntless".

To me, when someone wrongs you, you both share the burden of that wrongdoing—the pain of it weighs on both of you. Forgiveness, then, means choosing to bear the full weight all by yourself.

Drink this," she says. "What is it?" my throat feels swollen. I swallow hard. "What's going to happen?" "Can't tell you that. Just trust me." I press air from my lungs and tip the contents of the vial into my mouth. My eyes close.

I was so afraid that we would just keep colliding over and over again if we stayed together, and that eventually the impact would break me. But now I know I am like the blade and he is like the whetstone- I am too strong to break so easily, and I become better, sharper, every time I touch him.

He is strong, and lithe, and certain. And he is mine.

All I want to say is that when you stop being delusional and start feeling desperate because you're too inept to figure this out on your own, you know who to come to.

For me, it feels like driving from truth into a lie, from adulthood to childhoold. I watch the land of pavement and glass and metal turn into an empty field. The snow is falling softly now, and I can faintly see the city's skyline up ahead, the buildings just a shade darker than the clouds.