You know that phrase, "and they lived happily ever after"? Yeah. That one. Straight out of those glittery, overdramatic storybooks your parents read to you before bed, where some sparkly prince with perfect teeth swoops in, kisses the damsel, slays the dragon, and boom — fireworks, marriage, eternal love.

Hal hated that phrase.

Mostly because it felt like the universe was mocking him with it.

He should’ve been the hero of one of those stories. Royal blood, good hair, charming smile — he had the package. But no. He wasn’t out there rescuing anyone. He wasn’t slaying anything. He was the one locked away in a tower, waiting to be saved like some tragic storybook cliché. Talk about a plot twist.

It all started when his parents got on the bad side of a particularly petty witch. And instead of cursing them, she went after their only kid. Classy move.

She crept into his room while he was fast asleep — probably dreaming about pie or something innocent like that — and hissed her curse into the night: "By night one way, by day another. This shall be norm. Until you find true love's first kiss. And then take love's true form."

Right. Because that’s how you treat a child.

So now, every night, like clockwork, Hal turned into something… grotesque. Huge. Green. Smelled a bit like burnt onions. Basically, an ogre. The kind that makes villagers run and goats faint. His parents? Yeah, they couldn’t deal. So they threw him in a lava-surrounded tower guarded by a dragon and left him there. “For your own safety,” they said.

More like for their reputation.

So here he was. Royal prisoner. Part-time monster. Full-time sarcastic nightmare.

"This is so stupid," Hal muttered, flopping dramatically onto his bed and staring at the ceiling like it owed him answers. The stone walls echoed his sigh back at him. “What am I even doing with my life?”

Suddenly, there was a loud roar from outside — that was Dragon. And that meant…

Someone was coming.

His heart lurched. Feet hit the floor, panic mode activated. He scrambled under the covers, yanking them up to his chin like some damsel out of a ballad, heart pounding.

This is it. This could be it. The moment. The kiss. The one. Please let them be cool. Please let them not scream when I turn into a giant swamp creature. Please let them be—

“A boy can dream,” Hal whispered into the dark, eyes squeezed shut.

And he waited. Like an idiot.