Page 66 of Not Another Happily Ever After

The moment our eyes meet, he looks away so quickly it almost hurts.I truly thought he was beginning to like me. Or was that in my head too?

“Uh-huh…”

I blink, tearing my gaze away from the dark knight. “What?”

“Oh, nothing.” Merrek buries his lie beneath a smoldering grin.

I frown, but before I can press him for an answer, he sweeps me into another turn—and then another.

I fall into step as gracefully as one can whilst being dipped and twirled until the field itself is spinning. But there is no outmaneuvering the disappointment settling in my chest when, once more, I am spun toward the fire’s edge and Frog is no longer there.

Chapter

25

For years I have trained my hands not to tremble.

No one warned me about my heart.

Iwatch from my carriage window as the last remaining embers flicker to their end. The camp went quiet hours ago. The men all hunkered down in the tall grass for the night, having long surrendered to the exhaustion of the day.

Every man except Frog, who’s yet to return from wherever he disappeared to.

Did I hurt him by dancing with Merrek?

“No.” I shake my head. “What a ridiculous thought. He’s here to deliver my heart to the prince. Not to keep it,” I remind myself.

Then I pop my head out the carriage window and continue to search the moonlit field for him anyway.

“What?” I whisper when Buttons’ big round eyes blink up at me. “I’m not sneaking away to find him. I’m just going for an unsupervised walk about the tree line to stretch my legs.”

Buttons’ expression remains unimpressed.

Ugh.“Fine. I am sneaking out to find him,” I concede, forcing my legs and skirt through the small window. “Do you mean to follow, or shall I go alone?”

Buttons leaps from the velvet bench onto my shoulder and together we land in the tall grass with little more than athud.

When I retreat from the carriage minutes later, its curtains are drawn and no one is the wiser. Buttons purrs in my ear, seemingly satisfied with my great escape.If only he knew.I scratch the pink fuzz between his ears as he curls his long, tiny body around my neck.

“I used to do this all the time, you know.” I smile as we slip into the night. “Sneak out after midnight.”

I think back to the very first time I crawled out of my tower’s window as we push through the last of the tall grass and enter the forest tree line.

“I’d visit my friend.” My chest warms at Riven’s memory. “He’d tell me stories about the realm outside my castle’s walls. Some made me laugh. Others made me cry. But I always left feeling so…alive.”

My smile falters. “A bit ironic given he was a ghost.”

God I miss him.

Buttons flicks his forked tongue just beneath my chin, lapping up the single salty tear that has fallen there. I slap a hand over my mouth to stifle my giggle.

“I’m alright! I’m alright,” I promise, my voice low. And though my life is not headed in the direction I had hoped, thesepast few days with the knights,with Frog, truly have made me feel so.

And how do I thank him? By spying on him.Smooth, Sunday.

I turn, fully decided on heading back to the carriage when a branch breaks somewhere nearby, followed by the rustling of leaves.

“Did you hear that?” I whisper.