“I’m sure he did,” I reply. He hasn’t texted me saying that he didn’t, and Imogen hasn’t responded to my text yet, so something is keeping them both busy. “I think they’d be cute together.”

Her curly hair is pulled up into a bun atop her head, wrapped with the same purple scarf from last night. “Long distance sucks, though.”

“Well, I guess it would, but a few hours isn’t really that far when you think about it.” I nurse my dirty chai latte, and it hits the spot right where a good eight hours of sleep is missing.

She snorts. “A few hours? Jess, Asheville and L.A. aren’t even in the same time zones.”

“Who says I’ll be in L.A. for the next few months? There could be a job that lands me here for a while. And then after that, who knows?”

Harper stares at me, blinking, before she figures it out. She lives here in Atlanta. It wouldn’t be a few hours for us. She grins around the straw of her latte, and the glimmer in her golden-brown eyes is almost as intoxicating as the thought of starting something with her—something real.

A story that I get to tell.

“After all,” I add flippantly, because I can’t keep her guessing, “someone needs to save Carmindor.”

“Indeed,” she replies, trying to disguise her delight, but her knees are bumping under the table and she is not very good at hiding her excitement. “And you’re okay with playing Amara again? Happy?”

I wish interview questions were this simple. Maybe from now on they will be. I lean over the table to meet her halfway, studying her perfect lips and her perfect eyelashes and the perfect curl of her dark hair. The paparazza in the SUV focuses her fish-eye lens on us.

Are you happy? my heart asks softly.

“Yes, I am,” I reply, and I kiss her. I kiss her in front of the entire world, the first word on the first page of the rest of my life.

#AMARALIVES

By Elle Wittimer

[EXCERPT FROM ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY]

IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that a fandom in want of a princess will save that princess. And sometimes it’s the princess who saves the fandom.

At the twenty-fifth-annual ExcelsiCon in Atlanta, Georgia, this past weekend, it was revealed that the director of Starfield, Amon Wilkins, leaked the confidential script for the sequel. This morning, the studio announced that they have fired Mr. Wilkins from the project and replaced him with N. A. Porter—the directorial name of none other than Starfield’s original princess, Natalia Ford.