Bound and Tide (Villains & Virtues)

by A.K. Caggiano

“All of you keep your mouths shut or, so help me dark gods, I will turn this griffin around, and nobody will be raining terror or destruction down on anything!”

So Xander was instead laden with the worst band of cohorts that could be written onto parchment. Red was capable and intelligent but that fatal mix of not at all martial yet supremely protective. Maia might be capable in about ten years if her hasty temper let her survive until then, but currently she acted as if she were invincible even when her bruises indicated otherwise. And Costa was…Costa—an easy target unless he turned himself sideways and then at least his thinness would make him difficult to hit.

Love made one wild and free but safe and sincere too, and it overcame birth and duty and even hopelessness because, in the end, it was the most transcendent of virtues, and even a villain understood that.