Willow's Point of View

  Cinder nibbled at a pile of fresh green hay I'd picked up from town, shuffling the strands around and creating a mess in the Demon Lord's new library. Dain narrowed his eyes from where he stood guard silently across the room, but it was just hay, and I could clean it up if she didn't finish it all. I scratched behind the demon bunny's ears as she tilted her head into my palm.

  Since I had so much work to get done, I'd decided to outline the last book in the castle instead of the cafe, but Cinder deserved to play with other bunnies soon. Once I knew what I was going to write, I'd bring her there for sure.

  If only that was going better. Something about this story just wasn't clicking and I couldn't get myself to write a single word until it did. Sure, I had piles and piles of random ideas, but nothing that sounded good enough to win this competition. Nothing the fans would go crazy over and talk about for years to come.

  At this rate, I wouldn't even have a solid idea by the deadline, let alone an actual book. Gran would never feel comfortable retiring then. I could just see her patting my hand, telling me I needed to give my “real dream” more effort. I had to finish this book, make it amazing, and then still choose to be an apothecary. That was the only way she'd see where my heart really was.

  Both my grandparents and my parents had been apothecaries. It was in my blood and I had to make her believe that somehow. Being an apothecary wasn't an obligation: it was a legacy. One I was proud to continue.

  I flipped another book from the Demon Lord's series open, skimming through it for clues. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find anything that would explain the kind demon villagers I'd met or the Demon Lord himself. They were always described as monsters who would rather burn your town to the ground than talk to you. Every time a demon appeared in the books, they were doing something evil like attacking villagers or kidnapping people.

  It really felt like the hero was doing a good thing. That his actions were right and just, fulfilling his divine mission wonderfully. He was the light that cast out the darkness. He was the chosen one.

  I just couldn't wrap my mind around how that worked with everything else I'd seen since entering the book series, and I was getting more and more frustrated staring at this blank page trying to figure it out.

  "Ugh." I flopped back onto the couch, hand over my eyes. "If the hero is so amazing, then why is he fighting the Demon Lord? And why does the Demon Lord seem just as nice as the hero when he's supposed to be the evilest creature in the whole series?"

  Dain snorted. I tilted my head to peek over at him, but he was pretending like he didn't notice me at all, just sitting in front of the open doorway with his spear in hand like he was ready to fight.

  But that snort meant he had opinions. Opinions I could very much use right about now, even if it was just to bounce ideas off somebody.

  "Something you want to add?" I sat up, turning on the couch to face him. "Maybe an opinion on the hero? Or the Demon Lord?" My bodyguard just sat there, statue still. I sighed. "Come on, help me out here. The Demon Lord is the one who wants me to write this book, so you should at least brainstorm with me. And didn't he tell you to give me whatever I needed or something?"

  "That's true." Dain set his spear to the side, pulling his chair closer to my couch. "Well, if you really want to know, then I think you're looking at this all wrong. I've heard you mumbling for hours about this great hero of yours, but he's obviously the villain. Why else would he slaughter innocent demons? He steals our land and pushes us to the brink, forcing us to hide in this one protected city. That doesn't sound very hero-y to me, and yet, you humans wrote thousands of pages about him!"

  He shook his head, obviously disgusted with my entire race. I picked a pillow up, twirling it in my hands as I considered that. If the demons weren't the enemy like the books led me to believe, then why was the hero fighting them? What was the point of the war? And what role did the Demon Lord really play?

  "Okay, so in your version, who's the Demon Lord then?"

  Dain rolled his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. "You've visited our town, talked to our people. You know who the Demon Lord is to us. He's the hero of this terrible story of yours."

  I dropped the pillow, eyes wide. The Demon Lord...was the hero?

  "No way." I shook my head, holding my hand up. "I mean, I know he's nice and he's been good to you, but he's not the hero. He can't be."

  "Who says?" Dain tilted his head. "Your human priests? Your government? Your Kings? Who cares about any of that, they're probably just as evil as the hero."

  My mouth dropped open. If the Demon Lord was the hero, that flipped this entire story on its head. He was obviously the hero to the demons, but that didn't mean he was the hero to everyone. There were two sides to this story, but somehow, neither side was making much sense. Which kept leading me back to a plot twist...and what bigger plot twist would there be than the Demon Lord being the good guy?

  The soft crunching of Cinder chewing a giant mouthful of hay mixed with the crackling of the fireplace as my brain kind of broke over that whole idea. Nothing else had gotten me anywhere though, so I might as well let it play out and see where it led. Maybe it would spark something.

  "Okay, so let's pretend you're right." I pulled a pile of blank paper over, nudging Inkheart to wake up. The poor pen had given up on me after hours of debating without actually letting it write anything. "Let's make a list of suspects."

  The pen hopped up, scritch scratching across the paper.

  Suspects? Now we're talking. Where do you want to start?

  I glanced over at Dain who was reading the synopsis on the back of each book before dropping them on the table in disgust. "Let's start with Dain's ideas about the priest and the royal family. If the Demon Lord isn't the villain, then somebody else must be. I don't think it's the hero since he's actually a pretty good guy, but maybe somebody’s manipulating him."

  Ohhh, I called it! Poor himbo hero.

  "Really?" Dain's eyes widened as he pulled his chair even closer. "Okay, I'll help however I can."

  Seeing him eager to join in felt so nice compared to how stand-offish he'd been ever since the Demon Lord assigned him as my bodyguard. If we were going to be stuck together for a while, then it would be nice if we could find some common ground.

  "Inkheart, are you any good at drawing? Let's make posters for each suspect and pin them up." I laid out a few pieces of paper for the magical pen after it nodded. "Okay, first up is the holy priest who first gave the hero his divine mission. That seems like a classic secret villain based on other stories, but it's almost so overdone that I feel like it would be disappointing."

  Dain frowned. "We worship the same gods as the humans, so I doubt a priest would be sending a hero after us. I'm not sure what it would get them."

  "That's a good point." I reached over to add the word motive to the papers as Inkheart drew a fairly accurate depiction of what I thought a priest would look like with billowy robes and a holy staff. "Okay, so if the priest doesn't have a motive, then who else?"

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "The King." Dain curled his lips. "That family wants our resources for themselves, using our magic to fuel their technology."

  The racoon demon at the stationery shop had mentioned something about that too. I nodded, adding the name and motive to the next paper for Inkheart to draw on. Something about it didn't feel quite right though.

  "From what I've read, the King is kind of a father-figure to the hero and has actually tried to stop him from finishing the mission a few times." I flipped through a few of the books, trying to find the parts I was looking for. "Ah, yes, right here. The hero has some kind of illness that the King's healers worked day and night to make a remedy for, but even that didn't fully heal him. That's why the King doesn't want him putting himself at risk."

  Inkheart's feather swayed as it drifted over the pages of the book, apparently reading the passage I pointed out. I hadn't realized pens could read, but hey, they were magical I guess.

  Hmmm.....either this King is ultra sus and using some intense reverse psychology or he actually does love the little himbo. I'm rooting for them.

  "Well I'm not." Dain scoffed. "Even if he's a nice guy, he's still the one stealing our land."

  "True, but if we're adding the King, then we should definitely add the Princess too." I wrote Princess on a new sheet of paper for Inkheart. "She's the hero's love interest, but nobody wants them to marry since he's just a commoner. If he defeated the Demon Lord though, that would really raise his station."

  Ah yes, the lover. Excellent, excellent.

  Inkheart was moving faster than ever as it drew all our suspects out, barely having time for silly commentary. Dain scratched his chin.

  "Something wrong?" I asked.

  He shook his head, leaning forward to examine the books. "Wasn't there another so-called hero before this one? What happened to him?"

  Now that was a very good question. He'd trained the hero in the first book, shaping his entire view of how to be a hero. He'd injured himself before defeating the Demon Lord, so his only claim to fame now was helping the current hero. Must be frustrating and I could see him bending the narrative a bit to get the hero to make him seem more impressive than he was.

  I jotted that down too, but paused as Inkheart scurried over a few book pages, waiting to see what the pen was so excited about. Eventually, it hopped back onto a sheet of paper and drew the most extravagant sword I'd ever seen. I stared at it, trying not to laugh.

  "Ummm, are you implying that the sword is the villain?" I asked with only a hint of a smile in my voice.

  The pen fluffed up its feathers.

  It's a talking sword! It's obviously possessing the hero, slowly taking control until the sword is the one in charge. Yup, that's what I'd do if I were that sword.

  Dain raised an eyebrow. "So you're saying that talking objects tend to take control of their humans and make them do evil things, huh?"

  Before the pen could explain that crazy statement away, Dain lifted it into the air, pinched between his thumb and index finger. He stared at it, moving it this way and that, with such intensity that the pen shivered. Then it started jumping and scribbling in the air like it was shouting. It was all so ridiculous that I couldn't help but laugh.

  "I think we're safe, so hand the pen over." I held my hand out until Dain reluctantly gave me Inkheart back. I patted its feather softly before setting it back on its book. "Maybe don't say villainous things with this over-eager bodyguard looming over you."

  The pen huffed, sputtering ink all over the page.

  Well never in my life has somebody manhandled me like that. At least buy me some tasty ink first.

  Dain shrugged. "Don't make such evil-sounding statements then."

  His tough demeanor cracked a bit as the side of his mouth quirked up. Okay, so he did have a sense of humor. I was starting to wonder about that. I shook my head, chuckling as I gathered up all the pages we had so far and stuck them onto the edges of the bookshelves. I turned back to Inkheart, but the pen was already drawing a picture of the loveable himbo hero for the middle, apparently knowing exactly what I was trying to do here. I grinned and added the hero to the middle of this little murder-board of ours, feeling like a real detective now.

  The silence stretched as the three of us stared at our masterpiece. It was missing something though. I grabbed a sheet of paper and drew a big question mark on it, sticking it right above the hero's portrait.

  "There." I nodded proudly at the sprawled-out suspects. "Now we just need to link their motives up and see who gains the most from sending the hero after the Demon Lord." I bent down to grab a few long pieces of hay from Cinder to use in place of string. "Now, the Princess and the King have strong motives that are linked together, but the priest angle still feels pretty good too, especially since he would have had a hand in the last hero's goals as well."

  I strung the hay between all the characters, making a web of motives, none of which really stood out that much stronger than the others. The more time we spent brainstorming, the more suspects we unearthed, all with good reasons to manipulate the hero.

  At this point, I was honestly starting to feel like the hero was even more clueless than I'd originally thought. Even if there wasn't some secret bad guy, the hero himself was still way too easily influenced. He cared so much about helping people that he’d been led astray more than once throughout the series.

  His integrity wasn't in question though, no matter how much Dain tried to convince me otherwise. The hero was brave and honorable through and through, usually to his own detriment. The more we looked into it, the more I felt like somebody really was using him. All the groundwork was laid out in the previous books, from farmers conning him into harvesting their entire crop alone to other members of his party using him for their own personal gains, he was obviously too gullible for his own good.

  I flopped back onto the couch again, rubbing my tired eyes. "Ugh. Every time I think we're onto something, another plot thread pops up. I just can't tell what's important and what's not."

  "Your hero is hopeless." Dain fell back into his chair with a sigh. "Honestly, how you think these stories are entertaining is beyond me. I hope you write this last book better."

  "Hey, that's not fair. The books are amazing." I tried to sit up and debate more, but I was too exhausted, especially since Cinder hopped up on my stomach and I didn't have the heart to move her. "Nevermind. I wish we could talk to the hero. If I could just go there and talk to him, I'm sure we could figure it out."

  Yes! Chase after the mighty hero! Steal him away from the self-obsessed Princess!

  Dain shook his head. "No way. He's got an entire army behind him at this point, haven't you heard? They're camped right outside the whispering woods, ready to invade."

  "That's fair." I sighed, snuggling deeper into the plush couch, petting Cinder. The bunny closed her eyes, as if she was tired after her meal and this long discussion too. "Okay, fine, I won't go look for the hero. But I really do need to talk to him. This book won't ever get written otherwise."

  "Is he really that important?" Dain asked softly. "Can't the Demon Lord help you?"

  I shook my head. "No. The hero is the main character. He's who the story's about, so he's the one I need."

  Plus, it would be kind of cool to meet the main character of this series I'd been reading since I was a kid. Even if he was a little too gullible, he still had the heart of a hero. Everything he did was from a place of kindness. Being too kind did seem to get him taken advantage of a lot more than I'd remembered though. Where should you draw the line between being kind and being overly kind?

  Dain stood up, gripping his spear tight. "Stay here. I'll get you your hero."

  I jerked up, almost throwing Cinder off my lap. "Wait, hold on, what about the army and all that?"

  "You said you need him, so I must." Dain took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. "It's the duty the Demon Lord bestowed upon me: give you anything you need."

  Oh this is going to be fantastic. You get 'im big guy!

  "Not helping, Inkheart." I reached out to stop Dain, but he was already walking out the door. "Seriously, you're going to get yourself killed. Or start the invasion!"

  Dain turned back, a small smile on his lips. "Trust me. I'm more capable than you think."

  Was he though? I hadn't seen anything to support that so far, but he was committed to his duty that was for sure. I squeezed my eyes shut. "Fine, but come back the moment it gets dangerous."

  "Yes, my Lady." Dain bowed low before taking his leave.

  Inkheart's feather danced as it wrote.

  What an over-eager puppy. I bet he really does start an invasion. All to give you everything you desire. Love triangle time?

  I rolled my eyes. "No, if anything, he loves the Demon Lord."

  You're so right. How did I not call that from day one?

  Speaking of the Demon Lord, I pulled over the writing board he'd given me to communicate. He'd want to know what just happened, but how did I even go about explaining it? Sorry your demon buddy just did a crazy thing and might start a war because of a silly comment I made?

  So...something sort of happened with Dain. Everyone's fine, but, well, you should probably come back when you can.