Page 101 of Not Another Happily Ever After

The glistening blue thread is but an inch from my hand, flicking and pulsing wildly.

A chill sweeps over me as the thread strains to rob me of my will.

“You can’t have her,” Frog growls.

Without releasing my hand, he grabs my arm with his free hand and shoves me through the narrow opening in the crimson wall.

I collapse onto the gravel, my legs and lungs spent. Frog is right behind me, dropping to one knee at the mouth of the hedge.

My gaze lifts to the spot just above his head, where the fading tendril recoils from the crimson wall. It quivers as if straining against an invisible barrier, before slipping back into the air beyond the hedge.

We did it.

We actually did it…

A shaky laugh catches in my throat.

We outran fate.

An exhausted smile finds its way onto my lips.

Then I see the Dark Knight.

He sits on one knee, one hand braced against the gravel. He’s breathing hard, his shoulders shaking.

He’s exhausted.

Because of me.

My lips part. I reach for his hand where it rests in the gravel.

He grabs hold of my wrist, pulling me forward as his wild gaze races over me, searching for any sign of the tether. Relief melts into a look so unbearably tender my breath catches.

He releases me, the tops of his cheeks pinkening.

He looks away, wincing as he climbs to his feet.

“We mustn’t stay long,” he says, offering me his hand.

I stare at it, not because I don’t want to accept it. But because it’s the same hand I longed to hold all those years ago.

My pulse stumbles as a memory brushes the edge of my mind. A boy dangling over the ledge of a castle, his hands trembling as he tightly grips the vine.

“Miss Sunday?”

Miss Sunday.

The words pull me back and my eyes find his, shrouded beneath the hood. And though I never looked into them then, my heart knows exactly what it sees.

My ghost.

My knight.

My Frog.

I slowly slip my hand into his, letting my fingers trace a path across his skin.

How I used to dream of this moment. Of him.