“Will we be as happy as Tedros and Agatha?” she pressed, voice cracking.
“You must trust your story, Sophie. It has come to The End for a reason.” He turned to her. “But now it’s time for you to believe it.”
Sophie looked down at the gold circle in his hand, breaths growing faster, faster. . . . With a shudder, she pushed him away. He reached for her and Sophie shoved him against the wall, pinning her own palm flat against his frigid chest. He didn’t resist as Sophie moved her hand over his sternum, eyes wild, panting hard. She didn’t know what she was looking for until she found it beneath her fingers and froze. Her hand rose and fell on his chest, rose and fell, his heart throbbing between them. Slowly Sophie looked up at him, drinking in his strong, hopeful beat, no different than her own.
“Rafal,” she whispered, wishing a boy to life.
His fingertips caressed her face and for the first time, Sophie didn’t flinch from the cold. As he drew her in, Sophie felt the doubts melt out of her, fear giving way to faith. Black cloak pressed to his white body, like two swans in balance, Sophie raised her left hand into the sunlight, steady and sure. Then Rafal slipped his ring onto her finger, the warm gold sliding up her skin inch by inch, until it fit tight. Sophie let out a gasp and the snow-white boy smiled, never breaking his gaze.
In each other’s arms, Master and Queen turned to the enchanted pen over their fairy tale, ready for it to bless their love . . . ready for it to close their book at last . . .
The pen didn’t move.
The book stayed open.
Sophie’s heart stalled. “What happened?”
She followed Rafal’s eyes to the red-amber sun, which had darkened another shade. His face steeled to a deadly mask. “It seems our happy ending isn’t the one the pen doubts.”
2
After Ever After
“You don’t know the first thing about me,” Tedros spat, and clubbed his princess in the face with a musty pillow.
Agatha coughed and bashed him with a pillow right back, knocking him against her black bed frame, as feathers burst all over him. Reaper leapt onto Tedros’ face, trying to eat them. “I know too much about you is the problem,” Agatha snarled and grabbed at the poorly set bandage under her prince’s blue collar. Tedros shoved her away—Agatha tackled him back, before Tedros snatched Reaper and threw the cat at her head. Agatha ducked and Reaper sailed into the bathroom, flailing bald, wrinkled paws, before landing headfirst in the toilet. “If you knew me, you’d know I do things myself,” Tedros huffed, tightening his shirt laces.
“You threw my cat at me?” Agatha yelled, launching to her feet. “Because I’m trying to save you from gangrene?”
“That cat is Satan,” Tedros hissed, watching Reaper try to climb out of the toilet bowl and slide back down. “And if you knew me, you’d know I hate cats.”
“No doubt you like dogs—wet-mouthed, simple, and now that I think about it, a lot like you.”
Tedros glowered at her. “Getting personal over a bandage, are we?”
“Three weeks and the wound isn’t healing, Tedros,” Agatha pressed, scooping Reaper up and toweling him off with her sleeve. “It’ll fester if I don’t treat it—”
“Maybe they do it differently in graveyards, but where I come from, a bandage does the trick.”
“A bandage that looks like it was made by a two-year-old?” Agatha mocked.
“You try getting stabbed with your own sword as you’re vanishing,” said Tedros. “You’re lucky I’m even alive—one more second and he’d have run me through—”
“One more second and I’d have remembered what an ape you are and left you behind.”
“As if you could find a boy in this rat trap town better than me.”
“At this point, I’d trade you for a little space and quiet—”
“I’d trade you for a decent meal and a warm bath!” Tedros boomed.
Agatha glared at him, Reaper shivering in her arms. Finally Tedros exhaled, looking ashamed. He stripped off his shirt, spread out his arms, and sat on the bed. “Have at it, princess.”
For the next ten minutes, neither spoke as Agatha rinsed the four-inch gash across her prince’s chest with rose oil, witch hazel, and a dash of white peony from her mother’s cart of herbal potions. Thinking about how Tedros earned the wound, a hairbreadth from his heart, made Agatha’s stomach chill, and she forced her focus back to her task. She didn’t need to think about it—not when the screaming nightmares did the job of reminding her well enough. The School Master turning young . . . grinning at Tedros, bound to a tree . . . eyes flashing red as he stabbed . . . How Tedros didn’t have nightmares about their last moments at school, Agatha couldn’t grasp, but maybe that was the difference between a prince and a Reader. To a boy from the Woods, every day that didn’t end in death was a good one.
Agatha sprinkled boiled turmeric on his wound and Tedros clenched with low moans. “Told you it wasn’t healing,” she murmured.
Tedros gave her a lion’s growl and turned away. “Your mother hates me. That’s why she’s never home.”
“She’s busy looking for patients,” said Agatha, rubbing the yellow powder in. “Have to eat, don’t we?”
“Then why does she leave her medicine cart here?”
Agatha’s hand paused on Tedros’ chest. She’d been asking herself the same question about her mother’s long disappearances. Agatha rubbed harder and her prince winced. “Look, for the last time, she doesn’t hate you.”