She had been too quiet when she had been sick. Tiffany was never that quiet, not even when she was asleep in class. She always had an air about her that practically filled the room and even though it made no physical sound, it was loud and larger than life. Just the opposite of how she was when the curse had bitten her, all quiet and still like cold stone sometimes and acting like a frightened injured animal other times, trying to make herself appear smaller in that big bed the Charming's had put her in. When she had acted like that it was impossible not to acknowledge that something was horribly, sickenly wrong.

Those had been the scariest days of his life, between that horrible afternoon where that horrible villain had sent her creatures to hunt them all and Tiffany had left him behind to go and fight where he couldn't be at all certain whether she'd come back alive or not and the days where Tiffany had been so sick she barely recognized him those few moments when she was lucid…

He had been so scared that he was going to lose her.

Being so physically broken up was hard for her, he could tell, feeling so helpless and stir-crazy being confined to one place while she knitted herself back together must have been absolute torture, he could tell that behind her tired smiles and soft words of trying to stay positive about things… it hurt her being unable to move or take care of herself.

He couldn't help but feel helpless too as he watched her heal.

At the very least he held some comfort in knowing that those sorry excuses of parents would not be darkening Tiffany's door anytime soon (not ever again if Edward had anything to say about it) the Charmings had made certain of that thank gods.

The girl was better off with the Charmings anyway, sure they were royalty and Tiffany had spent most of her life trying to distance herself from being at all royal-like, to prevent any attempts to be groomed to be married into a richer family by mentioned sorry excuses of money grubbing parents, but they were decent royalty with a reassuring grasp of what a family was supposed to be like.

And Tiffany had the Spiders as a family too, his mothers adored Tiffany just as much as she adored them, they got each other in a way, and sometimes it almost seemed as though Tiffany was more of a Spider than a Muffet.

He just hoped that she'd forgive them all for cutting her birth parents out of her life for good when she eventually found out. It wasn't exactly an easy subject to swallow either, because their daughter had been practically on death's door and they had been too angry at her to even go see her, in their minds it had been her fault for the fact that social services, and later the police were all over them for their crimes of child and staff endangerment, possession of illegal substances, shady things dealing with money, and… something to do with having an ancient mummy in their house…

The Charmings had attempted to be fair by offering visitation rights and update news to them on their daughter's condition along with the news that they would be officially taking the girl in as their foster child, but it never even got that far because Lord Muffet had practically thrown Tiffany's disinheritance papers in Queen and King Charming's faces and stormed out of the room

Very distasteful people those two.

Edward knew that eventually they would have to tell Tiffany that her parents weren't coming for her, that the Charmings wanted to adopt her, because as time marched on she had grown on them to the point where King and Queen Charming were recognizing her as their youngest child, the three Charming siblings were already swearing up, down, and sideways that Tiffany was their little sister, and even people outside of the family saw Tiffany as a bonafide Charming. With so many people thinking about her in this way it was going to come out eventually!

Although Tiffany probably already suspected that something was up seeing as how she was slowly starting to be introduced into the same homeschooling lessons as the other Charming children, and that they had been introducing her to their kingdom through society balls and public charity events…

Come to think of it, why wasn't she asking questions yet? …Unless she kind of already knew and was waiting to see how she felt about it before announcing her assessment to everyone at the oddest of moments in that unnerving occasionally insightful way that she tended to go about big decisions like this.

Tiffany had always been (and always will) be an odd one in his opinion, but over the months that he had gotten to know her he had grown to appreciate her individuality more and more as his growing feelings towards her grew stronger. Until he just couldn't see his life without the petite blonde girl in it.

"Edward?" A voice croaked in tired confusion bringing the boy back to the real world. "When did you get here?"

"A while ago." Edward spoke lightly. "You were sleeping in so I decided to read over some stuff until you woke up."

"You lookin' at universities and stuff like that right?" Tiffany seemed to perk up at the thought.

"Maybe…" Edward hesitated, staring cautiously at the unopened packets and unsigned applications on the desk in front of him. "Not sure what I'd do there though."

"University is all about finding what path interests you the most." Tiffany tried. "You're sure to find something you enjoy doing, aside from trying to scare little girls with just your presence of course."

"Well considering that I was never successful in making you run away I don't really think that I can say that I've ever found something for me to occupy my time on the fairytale front." Edward smirked at the girl a little. "I don't think that university is for me anyway, there's plenty for me to do around here anyways, and besides that somebody needs to keep you from getting too bored being held up in bed most of the day."

"I'm not going anywhere you know." The girl reminded. "If that's one of the reasons why you're just staring blankly at those things instead of filling them out. The poison is gone from my body and I'm on the mend… I care too much about you to forget you or flake out on you just because of a little distance…" The girl blushed looking away. "I'm not going anywhere if you aren't. As long as you don't get bored of me because of distance and my age and… me being broken."

Edward's brain seemed to stall for a moment, this was the closest the two of them had gotten around to discussing the fact that they had proclaimed their love for one another just before Tiffany went out to fight the Evil Queen, it was the closest that the two of them had come to acknowledging the fact that they were… something. Some form of exclusive beyond-friendship relationship at the moment.

"…Tiffany." Edward swallowed. "I'm not the type of man who would leave someone so precious to me or string them along just because of a little distance. I-… gods I had thought that I'd lost you, seeing you so ill was like the worst torture in the world for me… a-and if I was so far away I'd never stop worrying. It's useless to try for a higher education if I'd just miss classes in order to show up here to make sure that you hadn't slipped away while I was gone…"

"You can't be afraid for me forever." Tiffany huffed through her nose. "I won't allow it."

"Then don't fight me when I apply for a university close by." The boy pled. "The schools around here are more than sufficient for me to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life, and I can come and visit whenever I want."

The girl's face morphed into an annoyed pout. "You should be thinking about yourself-"

"I am, I am." Edward assured quickly. "This isn't one of those dumb movie plots that you're always making fun of where the couple decides to go to the same school and take the same classes only to have everything fall apart in a particularly spectacular fashion… We'll proceed with caution, I understand that we both don't want to rush into anything like two blind idiots in the hope that we'll turn into a perfect storybook romance and be all sickly sweet to each other all the time and the like."

"Yek." Tiffany stuck out her tongue in disgust at the very idea of her being so sickly sweet in love and calling anybody sweetie buns or honey poo in any tone other than degrading sarcasm, if at all.

"You aren't holding me back." Edward assured with vehemence. "If anything you are forcing me to think about my future outside of fairytales."

Tiffany eyed him suspiciously.

"Honest to gosh, cross my soul and all that jazz." Edward swore holding up his hands.

"You do realize that this thing we've got going on, it's not going to be normal right?" Tiffany asked just to be sure. "There's usually a formula that goes with all this but… I'm not… built for most of that kind of gooey love-mush stuff and acting like a lovesick dame. …Well I suppose you'd know better than anybody, since I've been tying you up and dragging you around for most of the time that I have known you."

"The fact that you work outside of the norm is part of the reason why I think that we have a good shot at this." Edward chuckled with a warm smile.

Edward knew that he was in too deep with this girl, who was too young and too different for the type of relationship most guys his age were looking for, and yet he couldn't find a single thing inside him that made him want to care, she was alive now and that was all that mattered.

XXX

"Do you think that Hunter's always going to cry every time he visits me?" Tiffany murmured as quietly as she could so that only Dexter and Edward could hear her. "Or are people as a whole all going to act like I'm dying again just because I'm confined to a chair until I learn how to walk on my own again? I love seeing all my old friends and classmates don't get me wrong but…" She trailed off not sure exactly how to voice her discomfort.

Hunter, Ashlynn, and many of their former schoolmates had been around to visit Tiffany periodically ever since the girl had her first two major surgeries and everyone could relax because she wasn't going to die of a cursed magical poisoning. A universal constant with many of the girl's visitors had been people either bursting into tears at the sight of her or the solemn attitudes of pity that always made them appear to be more like mourners than visitors to a living person.

"You were the worst injured out of everybody." Dexter explained eyeing Hunter who was some distance away by now, leaning heavily on his girlfriend as he and Ashlynn were being led by Darling and Daring out towards the front gates, the swiping motions he made to his face indicating that he was crying again. "…I guess that the best way to explain why everybody is treating you like a fragile doll is because of that whole; one casualty is a tragedy a hundred is a statistic thing that we've been learning from the tutors."

"They see me as something that could have happened to lots of other people if things went wrong." Tiffany sighed. "I'm a reminder to how much danger we were all in and how badly everyone could have ended up."

"That and they know you, they went to school with you, and saw you everyday." Dexter reminded. "And then everything went crazy really fast and now there's no school anymore, we've all been… displaced."

"…This doesn't make me like one of those holy mother statues does it? Something that people visit to remember what had been, right?" Tiffany pulls a face that is between horrified and nauseated.

"Oh no, no." Dexter assured.

"Well that's a relief-"

"They see you as the baby in the family that got a really big booboo." Dexter continued without apology.

"Godsdangit!" Tiffany hissed in protest. "Just wait until I start walking again, I'll show them who's the baby. I'm not even that short!"

Mood lightened (just as Dexter intended) Edward couldn't help but laugh because Tiffany was already beginning to get her usual pep back and he'd missed that in the past few months.

XXX

Whether she was conscious of it or not Tiffany was sliding into the life of royalty almost naturally Daring had observed to Edward one day. She still kept her quirky nature and her morbid humor but it was more precise now, more like that of one of those more rebellious Honorable Ladies who had taken a good look at life, gotten the joke, and was politely merry about the entire thing.

Edward had confessed that he had thought something similar but had almost felt that he had gone crazy because… well this was Tiffany they were talking about. The same girl who used to tie him up and drag him around, and liked to play with wild garden spiders on her lunch hour. Not exactly a person one could see willingly turning into a princess.

That was when both boys came to the startling conclusion that Tiffany had always had the potential to thrive fantastically as a princess if given the right coaching, perhaps it was even a latent part of her personality because it wasn't normally that easy for people to adapt to the lifestyle and the politics without Ever After High being there to safely school future leaders properly on the subjects, more often than not fledgling royalty without a safe place to figure out how to balance being themselves along with being royalty often had them skirting around the edges of self-destruction and more often than not many people were known to jump gleefully over that edge.

But Tiffany knew exactly who she was; never found a reason to hide it, even now that she was being pampered and groomed to be a Charming Princess, but Tiffany knew how to appear adorable and charmingly innocent (granted it was a morbid charming innocence) and she knew how to play it to her favor so that she could get away with pretty much everything if she really set her mind to it. And she knew the boundaries of her comfort zone and what she could and could not do and she was smart enough to work within that knowledge like it was a base platform so that she could build up upon her life, dreams, and expectations instead of building unsteady supports outwards where she could not control her life as easily (or at all), this was partially why she was able to adapt to the princess lifestyle so well.

Edward, who knew Tiffany really well was highly disturbed by this revelation and suddenly had this overwhelming foreboding feeling that this particular Charming family's sense of what was charming was slowly but surely going to change until Tiffany's particular brand of charm was going to be taught to future Charming princes and princesses the same way people teach different styles of martial arts.

Daring didn't have the same revelation (and Edward did not have the heart to warn the boy); he just found the whole thing adorable and further proof that Tiffany was destined to become a true Princess Charming when she grew up (Edward suspected that most of that enthusiasm came from the feeling of Daring getting to be a big brother all over again now that his other siblings had grown out of being constantly dotted on by the prince).

After that Edward never worried about Tiffany's personal charm clashing with her new family's… as odd as the whole concept was…

No he wasn't worried for Tiffany or the Charming's or anybody who had ever gone to school with Tiffany, they'd all adapt just fine to this new impending change.

The Non-Ever After High, high society on the other hand…

"Honorable Miss Muffet." A noblewoman of some sort (to be honest Edward had difficulties remembering all of the different titles and family lines) came up to Tiffany with an almost small mob of people trailing behind her at one of the Charming's seasonal fairytale balls where most fairytale families were in attendance along with a few influential non-fairytale families as a covert way to make contacts and unofficial deals with one another. "My friends and I are in such a pickle! You see here we are, surrounded by all these lovely maidens, and handsome heroes and we have no idea as to how to introduce ourselves for a… simply harmless dance, would you be a dear and please chose a dancing partner for us?"

There must have been something more to the request, something underline that Edward wasn't picking up on because Apple and Raven halted their conversation with him in favor of turning their alarmed gazes towards the wheelchair bound blonde, he could hear Lizzie growl something about bumping off a few well dressed pests, Both Hunter and Ashlynn grab each other's waists territorially, and the rest of the Charming siblings were trying their best not to drop into a run as they hurried over towards their new sister.

But Tiffany was eyeing the noblewoman with the same unimpressed look that she usually gave to people she was about to do something unexpected and would most likely reduce those same people to tears if she played them right (he knew this because once upon a time he used to get that look almost on a daily basis).

"Let's leave it up to chance then." Tiffany decided with a sweet little smile that held a razor edge to it as she produced from her clutch purse a stack of go fish cards she always carried around on her for entertainment purposes since she still wasn't able to walk well enough to find entertainment on her own. "Since this is an innocent little dance why not decide dance partners the same way we used to in Nursery Rhyme school? We were all very innocent back then, I can guarantee it."

That seemed to throw the noblewoman off. "Oh dearie that's a very nice suggestion but I was thinking that perhaps you could call your acquaintances over and perhaps-"

"Introduce you? Banter a while and choose which fairytale dancing partner would be best for you fine Ladies and Lords based on the polite introductions?" Tiffany finished for the woman, her tiny smile slowly stretching wider in a way that almost reminded Edward of his mama once she caught sight of her favorite food. She began to shuffle her deck of cards, a little clumsily since her fingers were still in the process of learning how to work right again but nobody seemed to notice. "Yeah I could do that, but this way is much more fun! And besides, fairytale characters come in all sorts of personalities and backgrounds, you could learn quite a lot by having a surprise dancing partner."

The noblewoman very subtly flinched back (which was better concealed than the people behind her who were beginning to whisper worriedly amongst themselves), her eyes widened with a vague sense of horror, and Edward wondered if she had seen the almost predatory glint in Tiffany's eyes too.

"A perfect random distribution, those who have matching pairs of cards dance together, of course since this is just an "innocent" dance, if somebody already has a dance partner and does not want to give them up they are allowed to decline any and all dance requests if the so desire." Tiffany listed out the rules as she rolled back to give herself some room.

Edward looked around, the Charming siblings had halted their path and were simply watching the situation unfold with baited breath, Apple and Lizzie were trying not to cackle outright beside a bewildered Raven, and Hunter and Ashlynn had apparently already deemed themselves safe, or had just simply lost interest, and were already dancing to the current tune that the live band was playing.

The noblewoman cleared her throat and visibly gathered herself up for damage control. "Honorable Miss Muffet-" She tried but Tiffany didn't give her a moment's chance.

"Get ready everybody!" Tiffany cheered with near maniac glee. "Throwing in one! Two!"

She didn't even have the decency to shout out three before she tossed the cards into the air, the noblewoman and her posse were too busy staring at the airborne cards in horror to see Tiffany's lips move, Edward could feel the air above them, where the cards were, charge with magic for a brief moment before the small pieces of cardboard began zipping around the room, landing on the front chests of partygoers like name tags with symbols on them.

Just like what they used to do with the fairytale characters in Nursery Rhyme school.

At this point neither, Apple, Lizzie, or a quite a few other people, were able to keep their laughter completely in check. It blended in with the cheerful melody of the band but it was still there.

Without another word Tiffany turned her chair around and began humming to herself as she searched for the person matching the card displayed on her own chest, leaving behind a silently fuming and red faced noblewoman who was now at the mercy of the annoyed glares of her former mob being directed her way.

"I was worried there for a moment." Darling, Edward's dance partner (since there were more fairytale families than non-fairytale lots of people from Ever After got paired up together), confessed to him as they turned and spun across the floor. "We hadn't covered the different meanings behind introducing people to dance at certain balls or social events yet in her etiquette studies. Ooh the nerve of that Lady Champanelle! Her and her cousin Duke Danton are the worst at stirring up trouble for those who have yet to be introduced formerly into high society! That was a nice save Tiffany played, hopefully the likes of the Lady and Duke won't be attempting to show her up anytime soon after this, though I've gotta wonder whether or not Lizzie was the one who had taught her how to manipulate cards using academic magic, seeing as who the Lady's dancing partner is and by the way Lizzie keeps snickering to herself."

"Please forgive me if I seem highly in the dark about what just happened." Edward said as he glanced over to a sour looking Lady Champanelle dancing with an overjoyed Bog King. "Because, you know, I know nothing about this stuff."

"They were trying to trap her into making a social fopaux and thus hindering her reputation amongst the Lords and Ladies." Darling sighed. "You see now that the Book of Legends is gone it's practically open season for suitors to try their luck marrying into fairytale houses to boost their prestige while also trying to control this sense of being able to marry who you want that had come about with the Rebellion at Ever After. To be introduced and have a dance with someone at one of these seasonal balls gives the potential suitor ample excuse to attempt to squirm their way into their dance partner's life in the hopes of wooing them, on top of that it is very presumptuous for a young Lady such as Tiffany, who has not yet been introduced into society, to be formally introducing anybody to dance at this particular event. Potentially earning her a rather embarrassing reputation to people like this."

Edward scrunched his face up, looking almost pained. "My head hurts just trying to imagine how complicated these things can be, why did you people design it this way?"

"To keep us from getting bored." Darling shrugged. "But I wonder if Tiffany actually knew what was going on… or if she was just being mischievous. She has said that she'd like to see how people would react to having to dance or interact with those outside their social standing…"

"Tiffany, back when her ex-parents held high hopes for her marrying some rich dude, used to read advanced maiden etiquette textbooks for both a good laugh and to be able to say that she had studied the philosophy first before deciding to turn her back on it." Edward revealed, the memory of the conversation he had with Daring a few days prior about Tiffany's surprising progress coming to the forefront of his mind. "She wanted to prove that there was nothing in being a maiden for her and that she had no business with being a maiden in the first place."

Darling raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"I don't think that she had a concrete long-term plan for escaping her parents grip." Edward mused not feeling surprised in the least that Tiffany was able to navigate this so easily. "But she's good at sensing that something's up and throwing obstacles down to impede them from using her as a money ticket, which was one of the reasons that they didn't communicate much while she was in high school, she's been a deliberate pain in their side since she was old enough to realize that the family staff weren't her parents but the stinky mean people that lived upstairs were. What she did to that Lady just now, that was practically child's play compared to the war she raged against her own parents as a little kid."

Darling glanced sharply over towards to where Tiffany was laughing with Apple and Lizzie about something or another, Raven and Daring were close by openly driving the point that this dance was indeed just as innocent as Tiffany had claimed by dancing with each other and making faces at some of the more scandalized royalty, fueling their mentioned date's and Tiffany's amusement even further.

"Those sonsofbitches." Darling breathed her eyes going as hard as diamonds as the full realization struck her.

"That's what mama used to say whenever she used to rescue little Tiffany and bring her home when her uncle wasn't able to pick her up." Edward paused. "It's what she still keeps saying come to think of it." He amended.

"I'm glad she had you and your parents around to help her." Darling murmured lowly in relief, her troubled gaze off to the side speaking of dark thoughts of what could've happened if the younger girl had been left to live without even a temporary escape from that horrible place. "I've read through the staff's testimonies and heard your mothers rant about it, but gods to actually see her when she's in action and to put it all into context…"

"It'll take a long time before she'll be able to see herself as a princess, perhaps even longer to fully realize that can be a positive thing and not a negative." Edward warned. "But you're her family now, a good, real family. She'll come around eventually so long as she's happy."

"That is if she'll ever forgive us for driving her birth parents away." Darling frowned, voicing the very thing that the entire Charming clan was holding it's breath about, waiting for the perceived inevitable fight up ahead to convince Tiffany to not hate them for everything that had gone down with the girl's parents.

Edward glanced over to Tiffany, offering her a smile when she caught his eye and smirked at him.

Tiffany was an inquisitive creature by nature; she would have asked if she had wanted to know… if she didn't know already.

"Tiffany's a natural at surprising people, who knows, it might all turn out better than you expect." Edward mused cryptically.

"Come on, lets go ask Raven and Apple about how their kid is doing, it's a shame that little Amelia is still too young to come to these things, that little girl's always a hoot to be around." Edward chuckled to Darling's questioning face, changing the subject completely before pulling her off the dance floor and towards the others.

XXX

Amelia Elenore King-Queen-White was the most adorable thing ever as far as her numerous uncles and aunties were concerned, the fact that she was sort of a living talisman for the victory won at the battle of Ever After High emphasized that sense of community adoration towards the little girl even further.

The kid was never going to have a normal childhood, that had been an option long taken away from her even when she had been a second old, and Edward wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of fairytale descendants would have equally odd childhoods.

"Your uncle Edward apologizes in advance for all the insanity you are going to have to endure in the upcoming future." Edward tells the baby sitting in Tiffany's lap sincerely.

"Her parents will make sure she gets cut some slack." Tiffany rolled her eyes and guides one of Edward's fingers for Amelia to gum. "And soon enough she will have to share the spotlight with all the siblings she's going to get if mommy-Apple has anything to say about it, and she'll have all of us hovering in the background like helpful sprites or something."

"That's what I'm worried about." Edward sighed; almost melting on the spot when the baby took his hand out of her mouth and hugged it with all her little might, chirping at him all the while. "Well that is until our classmates start producing their own little bundles of joy. I suppose a lot of the attention will be directed more towards the children of the "generation that lived "or some title equally as noble."

Tiffany looked down at the baby in her lap for a long moment; at nearly one-years-old Amelia had grown out her hair a fair bit, to the point where she had a healthy crop of thick blonde neck-length hair that sort of stuck up in all directions if it had been somehow left without Apple or the nursemaid's studious efforts to control the unruly mop. Apple often fondly bemoaned the fact that while Amelia had inherited Apple-mommy's blonde hair and her great-grandmother's lovely red-streaked coloring, the only thing in regards to hair that she had inherited from Raven-mama was the nearly unmanageable thickness of it. Both mothers prayed that their girl kept her fascinated interest with water because it took a long time to wash that hair now, and it would just keep getting more difficult as the hair grew (and the horror stories of how Raven used to screech and thrash when she had to have a bath at that age was enough to make both women pale considerably).

Amelia tilted her head back to meet the gaze of her aunt, a string of little bird-like cooing sounds came out as she baby stared her big violet eyes up at the larger blonde.

"Gods, maybe we should start hinting to Ashlynn and Hunter to start thinking about getting busy, it's not fair to leave this little one to have to bear the label; "Child of the Generation That Lived" along with "The Fairytale Miracle Baby" it's just not right."

"I shall leave that conversation with them in your capable hands." Edward told the other sagely before turning his attention back to the baby. "I wonder how well she's walking, Raven told me a little while before the meeting that she and Apple are worried that she's not getting enough practice because the grandparents and all her aunts and uncles just pick her up and pack her around at every given opportunity."

"Roll her around in my case." Tiffany grinned cheekily.

Before either could comment further Dexter came jogging towards them from down the marble hallway that led out to the west wing's smaller courtyard where Tiffany and Edward were.

"Hey there sweetie." Dexter cooed to the baby, putting a towel over his shoulder before accepting the drooly child from Tiffany.

"Aw Dexie, I didn't know that you saw me in that light." Edward teased.

"Hello to you too Eddie." Dexter snorted.

"How did it go?" Tiffany asked.

"Raven and Apple are seriously contemplating that maybe we should celebrate Amelia's half-birthday as her regular birthday instead of putting her through having to share a birthday with the anniversary of the Battle of Ever After High." Dexter informed. "That and we've decided on a place in Wonderland to hold the public event with all the parades and people cheering in the streets as speeches are handed out, but we've also decided to hold a private reunion for all our old classmates on a different day."

"Hard to believe that it's been almost a year already." Edward huffed out standing up and looking at the sky.

"Feels like it all went down yesterday sometimes." Tiffany admitted with a tired face that had stretched into a grimace. "Just two months away huh. It's going to get crazy in Wonderland once the party starts."

"They're super excited about it over there apparently." Dexter cooed to a baby Amelia. "It's going to be even more interesting next year because we've got all the formerly poisoned worlds already vying for the next celebration to happen in their domain. The arguments for it are predicted to get rather ugly…"

"Put a bunch of names in a basket and have Amelia pick it out, can't get much more unbiased than that, I'm sure that the general public will just eat that video clip up no problem." Tiffany suggested with a dismissive wave of a hand. As if the solution to any potential political backlash should have been obvious.

Edward broke out laughing because, damn, that would be cute as hell.

Dexter's eyes seemed to light up at the idea. "We can probably combine Amelia's scheduled appearance with her picking out where to have the next main anniversary celebration…" he continued to mumble on to himself making Amelia giggle at his antics.

"Hey Dexter! Stop hogging my niece! Some of us want to play with her too!" Daring boomed as he, the girl's parents, Darling and Briar stepped out into the courtyard.

Edward shared a soft smile with Tiffany. Time was moving on and things were looking up.