The Ballad of Never After (Once Upon a Broken Heart, #2)

by Stephanie Garber

She believed that people could change; she believed that everyone’s life was like a story with an ending that was not yet written, and therefore everyone’s future held infinite possibilities.

Dark was for stars and dreams and the magic that took place in between days.

Happy endings can be caught, but they are difficult to hold on to. They are dreams that want to escape the night. They are treasure with wings. They are wild, feral, reckless things that need to be constantly chased, or they will certainly run away.

Like all admirers of fairytales, she’d always loved the scent of books.

She used to think love was like a house. Once it was built, a person got to live in it forever. But now she wondered if love was more like a war with new foes constantly appearing and battles creeping up. Winning at love was less about succeeding in a battle and more about continuing to fight, to choose the person you loved as the one you were willing to die for, over and over.

You can’t go around murdering people because they’re a problem.”

“Want me to kill any of them for you?” “No, they’re just gossiping.” “Then what if I merely give them the urge to cut out their own tongues?”

<3

And it struck her how intimate words could be, how they could be spoken only once, for only one person, and they would never be heard again, they would disappear like a moment, gone almost as soon as you realized they were there.

If two people really loved each other and they were willing to fight for that love, if they were willing to go to war for each other, day after day, then it didn’t matter what they were up against. Love would always win as long as they never stopped fighting for it.