He was quite fond of the young man, surprisingly so. But he was equally conscious of the fact that Ethan stood in way of the players. It wasn’t just Ethan’s unspoken attraction to Henry, but also his growing interest in an alliance between Henry and Helen. Love wouldn’t break the rule against interfering with the players’ hearts directly. But with one close to them? Especially one so full of charm? It would be his pleasure.

To be written into story. That was how even the lost lived on.

There’s no time to waste on regrets, Love said. There is only time to live the way you would have, had you known the stakes from the start.

If life didn’t end... there would be no need for me to choose love in the face of death is the ultimate act of courage. I am the joy, but you are the meaning. Together, we make humanity more than it otherwise might have been.

But don’t you remember being a child?” he said. “How much simpler and clearer everything was? Sometimes I think they’re smarter than any of us when it comes to love. They don’t doubt it. Not for a second. And they don’t doubt that they’re loved in return. Something happens to us when we grow up. Misfortune tramples us. We forget how it feels to simply love without throwing the whole mess of life into the stew. We trade love for fear. I’m not willing to do that anymore.

We do not choose whom we love... We can only choose how well.

She’d known it her whole life. It was the one thing she was certain of. That someday, everyone she loved would die. Everything she loved would crumble to ruin. It was the price of life. It was the price of love. It was the only ending for every true story.

She sent Death a thought, one she hoped would be her final gift. The Game means something only because we lose. That is your gift to humans. So thank you.

Game or no, she would someday die, as all living beings did. But that wasn’t the tragedy. Nor was there tragedy in being a pawn. All souls are, if not of eternal beings, then as pawns of their own bodies. The game, whatever shape it takes, lasts only as long as the body holds out. The tragedy, every time, is choosing something other than love.

People were funny about things they couldn’t see. If they couldn’t see it, it wasn’t there. Or at the least, it didn’t affect them. But the world didn’t work that way, did it? There were things all around that you couldn’t see, and these things had power.