The Last Ever After. Soman Chainani

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СКАЧАТЬ it a spindle, before she remembered spindles were for Sleeping Beauty, the lamest princess of all time and surely dead by now since she was old and old people die and Sophie wasn’t old or dead … and well, that finally got her out of bed.

      She had to blink a few times to make sure what she was seeing was indeed there: the Storian itself doing all that scratching and rustling—the pen that had dimmed the Endless Woods by refusing to write, now … writing.

      But how? she thought. The Storian had been stalled over the last page of her and Agatha’s storybook for weeks. It hadn’t moved an inch when she took the School Master’s ring. Which meant it wasn’t her ending the pen had been doubting, but rather—

      Sophie’s heart skittered. Impossible …

      Pulling her blankets around her, she tiptoed forward in her saggy black nightdress, afraid the slightest sound might disrupt it. But as Sophie grew closer, she saw the pen wasn’t writing at all, but chipping at her storybook like a bricklayer removing bricks, scraping off the last line, letter by letter, until “THE END” was fully gone. With a red-hot glow, the Storian twirled into the air, like a butterfly freed from its cocoon, and dove back down to the book, continuing the story right where it left off. The steel nib spilled ink onto brand-new pages, filled by dozens of flurried paintings Sophie could hardly follow: walls of emerald flames … guards in black masks … swan-marked tombs … a cadaverous wolf and giant … until swirls of forest green streaked across a blank sheet.

      Two lean bodies came into view, framed by the high, twisting trees of the Woods. Sophie watched the pen fill in the blankness of their faces … a boy’s slate-blue eyes and juicy lips … a girl’s flat brows and sunken cheeks … It can’t be, she thought, waiting for the Storian to slash an errant line. But every stroke made the scene more and more real, as if birthed from her own memory, until Sophie was sure this was all still a dream, for the pen was drawing two people in the Woods—two people who couldn’t be in the Woods, because they’d found a happy ending somewhere else. She pinched her arm hard, expecting to wake up in bed, but they only grew clearer: Agatha and Tedros, alive on the page, gazing at her with wide eyes, inviting her in.

      They’re … back? Sophie gasped, heart swelling. Jealousy and betrayal and pain broke away like a soft eggshell and a warm wave of hope flooded through her before she could keep it down. She caressed her two best friends, looking out of her storybook, and let herself feel what she’d been ashamed of all this time.

      I miss you, Aggie.

      I miss you, Teddy.

      Tears rising, she imagined herself in the empty space on the page between them—

      Until the Storian drew Agatha and Tedros’ hands intertwined across the gap, the two Evers following a shadow into the darkness of the Woods.

      Sophie studied their clasped fingers, no longer any room for her.

      “They’re coming for you,” said a voice behind her.

      Sophie turned to Rafal, gorgeously posed against the window like a teen rebel, clad in a lace-up black shirt and black leather pants. His ice-blue stare lingered on the storybook, but carried no surprise, as if he’d been waiting for the prince and princess to return.

      “I told you it wasn’t our ending the Storian questioned,” he said. “Turns out your friends aren’t happy without you. They think you need to be rescued from me. That your ending is with them.”

      Sophie looked back at the Storian, writing beneath the painting of Agatha and Tedros in fresh ink:

      “Love wasn’t enough for them anymore. They needed their best friend.”

      Sophie gaped at the storybook. Here she’d been, berating herself for thinking of Aggie and Tedros every spare second … when they’d been thinking of her too? She smiled at the thought, touched. Then her smile evaporated.

      “How can three people have a happy ending?” Sophie asked.

      Rafal watched her carefully. “If one person is happy alone, of course.”

      “While two get each other?” Sophie asked, frowning.

      “Oh you’d get used to it. Watching them kiss by the fireplace … sitting alone during supper while they nuzzle each other … trailing behind them on garden strolls like a puppy on a leash … settling year by year into your role as the third wheel …” Rafal glided towards her, half of his face still in shadow. “Then again, you could always meet a boy in Camelot. Not much of a kingdom anymore, but plenty of peasant boys to choose from. Sunburnt cheeks, yellow teeth, chubby backsides, not a coin in their pockets. But a nice, normal boy and isn’t that what matters?” He drew her into his arms. “A boy who lives with his old, wrinkled mother in her ramshackle house, raising goats and pigs. A boy who will give you an ordinary life, where you fry his meat and bathe old Mummy and raise sunburnt, chubby little sons …”

      Sophie was tensing so much she couldn’t breathe. “That will never happen,” she whispered and her muscles relaxed in his grip.

      “Didn’t think so,” Rafal whispered back. He touched her shoulder, his long, milky fingers tracing up her neck. Sophie’s skin quivered. She’d never had a boy hold her that she hadn’t manipulated. She’d never had a boy touch her that didn’t mind the storms and rages of her heart. She’d never had a boy love her for everything she was, warts and all.

      Sophie looked up and saw him in the light—pearly, angelic skin, powder-blue eyes, luscious pink mouth, like a young Jack Frost—so white-hot and handsome that she suddenly felt the uglier of the two. “You might like me now, but what happens when I get old?” she asked. “Will you still want me then?”

      Rafal smiled. “My brother and I stayed young as long as we loved each other. When I broke our bond, I was destined to age and die like every other villain who proved they couldn’t love. But your kiss restored my youth, Sophie. Your love will let me live forever, just like my brother’s love once did. Just like my love once kept him alive too. Which means as long as you wear my ring, neither you nor I will ever grow old.”

      Sophie turned to him. “I’ll live forever?”

      Rafal pulled her in once more. “We will. Together.”

      Live forever? Sophie thought in a fog. Old but young … young but old … just like the beautiful boy holding her. What would it be like to love someone forever? Could love even last that long? She thought of Agatha on the lakeshore, vowing to be her friend forever … Tedros on a moonlit bridge, promising to be her prince forever … Agatha and Tedros kissing, swearing to each other … “Forever …”

      Only Forever never seemed to last.

      Sophie lay against Rafal’s firm chest, studying the gold ring on his finger, matching the one on hers. All this time she’d been so hurt by her two best friends who deserted her, so sure they’d forgotten her and gone on to perfect happiness. Instead they’d come back to redo their Ever After, wanting her, needing her to be happy. Sophie waited to feel the same feeling, to choose her best friends even it meant she ended up alone …

      But all Sophie could feel were the arms of a boy who’d stayed loyal to her from the beginning, a Forever that finally sounded like the truth.

      She spun and kissed Rafal, his mouth cold against hers, holding it long and slow, waiting for something in her heart to stop her. Nothing did. As their lips parted, she saw the Storian СКАЧАТЬ