Enchanted

“Sometimes ‘hmm’ is the wisest thing to say.”

“‘Hmm’? I pour my heart out to you, O He of the Unusually Wise Comments, and all you have for me is ‘hmm’?”
Trix’s smile could have outshone the sun, had it dared peek from behind the morning clouds where it hid from the hungry beanstalk monster. “Sometimes ‘hmm’ is the wisest thing to say.”

“What is a heart without love?”

“All of us heal in time. The strongest are born again.” He placed a hand on Rumbold’s upper left arm. “We only keep the scars we choose to keep.”

“There are four things that make a man fight as you just did,” the duke explained to Rumbold. “Love, despair, anger, or insanity.”
Erik counted them off on his fingers. “Everything to lose, nothing to lose, someone’s taken it, or you’ve lost it.”

Trix didn’t have to do anything to attract chaos — it ferreted him out eventually, and with alarming regularity. Over the years the mayhem had become more expected than feared, but there was still an element of surprise left in discovering the new adventure.