Once upon a time in a kingdom of magic, a princess was born with a heart of glass. Her glass heart beat normally, but each time she tightened her fists and wailed, tiny cracks appeared on its surface. The king and queen warned their daughter as she grew: Do not be moved to anger. Do not weep with sorrow. Do not quail with fear. Most of all, do not love: for however strong your love, sooner or later, your heart will break. And while any other broken heart might mend, a glass heart could only shatter.

The princess obeyed her parents. She knew neither joy nor sorrow, neither rage nor relief, and above all she resisted the lure of love. Until one day a knight came to the kingdom, fair of hair and blue of eye. From the moment she saw him, her glass heart was filled with love.

Eleanor paused in her reading, her fingers trailing under the words. “How much of it is true?” she asked.

“I don’t remember anymore,” Wander said. Her fingers traced the illustration on the opposite page: a princess extending her hand to a dashing knight, clad in armor. He had pale hair and sharp good looks, and his eyes gazed upon the princess with adoration. “Perhaps the true story still exists in the Library of Endersea—it is said its shelves contain every story from every world. But it is lost to me forever.”

“In the book, she falls in love, but the knight dies,” Eleanor said. “Her heart breaks into a thousand pieces. She dies, too.” It was the saddest story in the book.

“I didn’t die,” Wander said quietly. “But it hurt so much I wished I had. That’s the only part I remember. The pain of it. You need to guard your heart, as I did not. Promise me that.”

She touched her fingertips to Eleanor’s chin, tilting it up. Her eyes glinted with reflected moonlight—and so did the shards of glass that danced and swayed around her. Her heart, Eleanor thought. It was with her still.

“I promise,” she whispered, and Wander nodded, satisfied.

“Sleep well,” she said. “The hounds won’t trouble you.”

Eleanor lay back down as Wander left, closing the door behind her. But even knowing the hounds would not plague her dreams, she couldn’t sleep. She stared at the ceiling instead, and thought of Jenny and Ben and baby Naomi, and of her parents, and crushes, and all of the things that felt even a little like love.

Wander was right. She couldn’t worry about those things right now. She needed to be strong. Strong, but cold and clear as glass.

Six