The Last Ever After. Soman Chainani

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      Sophie looked up at Rafal, her forehead beaded with sweat. He put his hand to it.

      “Look at that. Fever’s broken.”

      Together, they watched the sun slide out from behind a cloud, Sophie expecting its return to brilliant life … only to see the sun still yolky and anemic against a cold blue morning, even weaker than before. Only it wasn’t just weaker, it was leaking small gobs of yellow light into the sky, drip, drip, drip, like an icicle in summer. Sophie stepped closer to the window ledge, eyes wide. There was no question about it.

      The sun was melting.

      She whirled to the School Master. “But you said if the Storian wrote—”

      “A new story. And ours still needs an end,” said Rafal soberly. “Our storybook can’t close now that your friends have come back. Not as long as they have a new ending in mind. An ending where Good wins and Evil dies …”

      He paused, locking into her emerald eyes.

      “They’re coming to kill me, Sophie.”

      Sophie held his stare, stunned, and looked down at Agatha and Tedros, on their way through the Woods to rescue her. In their version of the story, they would save her from an Evil School Master. But to Sophie, her Good friends were about to slay the only boy who’d ever loved her, so she could be a sidekick to someone else’s Ever After.

      Sidekick. That’s the ending they thought she deserved.

      Sophie burned, glaring at her gold ring. She was a queen.

      “I won’t let them hurt you,” she seethed.

      “You’d do that for me?” The School Master’s boyish face contorted with emotion. “You’d fight your own friends?”

      Sophie tensed. “F-f-fight Agatha and Ted—? But I thought—”

      “That they’ll leave us in peace and go on their way if you tell them to?” Rafal asked sweetly.

      “But I can’t fight her. Surely there’s another way—” Sophie pressed.

      His eyes hardened. “War is the only way.”

      Sophie bristled at the change in his tone. But she knew he was right. After the young School Master nearly killed Tedros with Tedros’ own sword, the prince was coming for his blood, and Agatha would be behind him. War was on the horizon and Sophie had to take a side.

      Sophie thought of all the times Agatha had allied with Tedros against her: during the Circus of Talents and Evil Ball, then in her secret plan to kiss Tedros and banish her home during the Boy-Girl War. Sophie’s blood simmered to a boil. Agatha had even believed she was turning into a witch in the Blue Forest, believing Tedros over her, when it was Dean Sader’s magic all along. “I’m not this!” she’d cried, begging her friend to see the truth. But Agatha had stayed firmly by her prince’s side.

      Sophie too had a side to take—even if it meant fighting her best friend. Just like Agatha would protect her prince, she would protect her one true love.

      “This is it, isn’t it?” she whispered, watching the melting sun. “Either they die … or we do. Good versus Evil. That’s the way all fairy tales end.”

      She saw Rafal’s chest rise on a breath, as if at last they were on the same page. “Your friends think they can stop our book from closing, my love,” he said, sweet once again. “They think they can stop the future. But they’re too late.”

      He watched the fading sun, as if studying an hourglass. “The war against Good has already begun.”

      Sophie saw him look back at her with a snakelike grin and she began to sense there was more to his return than kisses and rings. “But Good always wins in the end—” she started, only to see the School Master grinning wider.

      “You’ve forgotten the one thing I have on my side that they no longer do.” Rafal moved towards her, slowly, smoothly …

      “You.”

      Sophie met his gaze, breathless.

      “Come my queen,” he said, fingers slipping into hers. “Your kingdom awaits.”

      Sophie’s heart pumped faster. Kingdom … Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little girl in a pink princess dress, waiting by her window to be kidnapped, convinced that one day she’d be the ruler of a faraway land …

      She looked up at Rafal, the old glint back in her eye. “So much for Camelot.”

      Sophie smiled, her ring brushing his, and she followed her love hand in hand to fight for their happy ending—just like a prince and princess on the page she’d left behind.

      “Shouldn’t I change first? I can’t go gadding about in this,” Sophie huffed, trying to pin down her nightdress, battered by the wind.

      Her glass slippers wobbled on the window ledge, sending silver pebbles cascading into the abyss of green fog. She wrenched back against the tower wall, clutching Rafal’s bicep. They were so high in the sky she couldn’t see the ground. “Surely there are stairs we can take. Only a half-wit would build a tower without stairs or a rope or a suitable fire escape—”

      “Do you trust me?”

      Sophie looked into Rafal’s eyes, hot with adrenaline, not a trace of fear in them.

      “Yes,” Sophie whispered.

      “Then don’t let go.” He seized her by the waist and dove off the tower.

      Green mist gobbled them as they plunged at bullet speed into arctic cold. Any instinct for Sophie to scream vanished because of how tightly Rafal held her, muscles sealing her to his chest. Safe in his arms, she let herself go, gasping as Rafal slip-turned like a hawk with dangerous speed, their entwined limbs spinning towards earth. With a full somersault, he rocketed back up and Sophie howled with abandon, closing her eyes and holding out her arms against him like wings. They soared in and out of shadows, amber sunrays flickering on her eyelids, the taste of clouds in her mouth. If only Agatha could see her now, she thought—happy, in love, and recklessly alive, like a princess riding a dragon instead of fighting it. Rafal shot across the bay like a fireball and she pressed her cheek into his neck, electrified by his skin on hers, his steaming breaths faster and faster, his hands tighter and tighter … until his feet gently touched down without a sound and Sophie felt herself suspended in space like the Storian over her book.

      She nestled into him, scarlet and hot.

      “Do it again,” she whispered.

      Rafal chuckled, touching her face, and slowly Sophie opened her eyes to the world.

      The first thing she noticed is that the Blue Forest was no longer blue.

      She pulled away from Rafal, windswept and dizzy, and staggered forward from the tower, anchored in the middle of the forest.

      The Blue Willows had rotted to black husks. The once-weatherproof blue grass was now urine yellow, cracking and breaking under her feet. Bracing from the wintry breeze, Sophie crawled through diseased, fallen СКАЧАТЬ