STAINED GLASS ✓

I. GOLD AND DUST

MORGANA HAD NEVER BEEN ONE FOR RULES. She simply didn't care enough to bother with them. They're boundaries, my dear, she'd laugh, and you know I hardly take suggestions. Morgana spoke with roar of the foolish, yelling of matters she knew nothing about and laughing at things she didn't understand all because she could. Morgana was another teenager who'd been placed on a transparent throne of deception and arrogance, baring a crown too heavy for her head.

His crown threatened to engulf him completely, but he wore it with a tilted chin and a vicious smile. He was stained glass at midnight and enticing smiles between glimpses of shadow and light. He was the epitome of gold and dusk, of sunsets and sunrises. A masterpiece, Morgana called him, a masterpiece whose master only saw ripped edges.

Eyes like his, gold and light and everything pure, could look away. But they didn't. He'd award her smiles that left his lips all too soon and praise her with glances of indifferent eyes. Morgana wanted nothing more to corrupt him and his eyes, because they were of gold and light and everything pure and everything Morgana loved.

But the boy, with his eyes of gold and light and everything pure, was dusk and silver and shadows, and Morgana couldn't think of anything more intoxicating.

They'd warn her about boys like him. Boys with bruised lips and ink coated arms. Boys with a wicked smile and a glint in their eye. She'd been told to stay away from boys like him, or she'd be left with nothing but a broken heart.

But Morgana had never been one for rules.

They told her boys like Ansel Griffin were beautiful fools or charming devils, and to know the difference would take you to the edges of hell, and the toll for entrance was too steep for anyone to pay.

But Morgana was entranced by him, the boy who was wove of gold and dust, of shadows and light. She'd sold her heart to the devil, they would say, but Morgana didn't care. All she saw anymore was gold and dust, and she didn't think the sun's radiance could compare.

Ansel Griffin, of gold and dust, of shadow and light, of silver and everything beautiful and ugly. A masterpiece left unfinished. Ansel Griffin was a devil dressed as a fool, and Morgana could see nothing past gold and dust.