“‘Um, yes—The blood’s not great…but I was referring to the fact that you look like you were carved out of marble, and I just think that as a rule of thumb, inherently evil people should be grotesque-looking.’

The fury winked out as if never there in the first place, his only response to blink.

‘You just can’t kill people and be pretty. It’s confusing.’”

This excerpt occurs when Evie first meets Trystan and realizes that he is the Villain. Evie’s dialogue is an example of the story’s humor and of her tendency to blurt out things as they occur to her, and Trystan’s reaction represents his frequent bemusement at such behavior, for her unexpected responses often derail his initial emotional reactions. The entire passage also challenges the unspoken rule of the fantasy genre that the villain must be somehow ugly or deformed. Prior to this moment, Evie has noted that posters of the Villain always show him to possess a hideous aspect and demon-like qualities. Thus, she and the others of her village have come to associate villainy with ugliness. However, Trystan himself contradicts these expectations, being quite attractive by Evie’s standards. This scene therefore represents Maehrer’s talent for subverting well-worn tropes, and it establishes the fact that other aspects of her world will not match the patterns of traditional fantasy stories or fairy tales.

“Her need for normalcy had whittled away, bit by bit, since her employment began, but she didn’t mind. ‘Normal’ was for those who didn’t have the ability to stretch their minds past the unreachable end. It was something her mother had said throughout her childhood, and for some reason, it was the one piece of advice Evie could not ignore.”

Evie makes this observation as she arrives at work to behold three severed heads hanging in the entryway. As she climbs the stairs, she reflects that she has shrugged off the random appearance of severed heads as part of the job, and this makes her realize how much her outlook on normality has changed.