The Knight and the Butcherbird

by Alix E. Harrow

I couldn’t stop smiling—the euphoric, hysteric smile of a woman who has been lying on her lover’s grave and has just felt the earth move beneath her.

Why do people change, Sir John? Because they are cursed, pursued, poisoned, trapped, under siege. Because they have to.

and they lived happily ever after, until they didn’t, because nothing does.

Death, now, was the bride, who could not keep hold of her shape-shifting lover.

But I no longer knew her. She’d changed out of all recognition, shed her sick body like a skin and become something else. I could cling to her, like that loyal bride to her groom, until both of us were covered in blood—or I could let her run free. And hope that, one day, I could run after her.