Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Again?
What the fuck?
Wasn’t this supposed to be Sidney’s story?
Sasha looked around her cottage and shook her head. This had to have been the fourth chapter in a row. Maybe Virtue was just a terrible writer, or…something. Shaking her head, she slumped down onto the stool at the table with all of her potions and charms and let out a long, heavy sigh.
She appreciated the quiet time to sit and think, however.
There was plenty enough to unpack from the past…whatever that was. She had no idea of knowing how much time had passed since the so-called “Dark King” had left, but in her mind, it’d been only a split second. A cut to black and here she was.
Alone.
Pulling her cloak tighter around herself, she rested her arms on the table and put her head down.
A quiet, almost curious “ssskhhk?” from beside her had her lifting her head back up. Something small, dry, and scratchy nudged her cheek.
With a small chuckle, she reached over and gently petted the taxidermy lizard amalgam. “I’m all right Dundle, thank you.” She wasn’t alone. Not really. Well, okay, she was. But she had…herself, for company, she supposed.
Ugh. There was a lot to unpack there.
Like the world’s ugliest cat, Dundle crawled underneath her chin, using the opportunity to weasel into the small space created by her arms, and curled up into a ball.
He looked up at her with his hideous, twisted features and black button eyes and opened his glass-toothed maw in what she knew was a smile. And rolled over.
He was trying to cheer her up.
And ask for a belly rub. But two things could be true at the same time, she supposed.
“Yeah, okay, you’re gross but you’re cute.” She scratched his stomach, careful to avoid using her nails too much. She didn’t want to rip a hole in him. Another hole. Frowning, she tilted her head to the side and noticed a fresh rip in his side. “Where’d you get that?”
The lizard monster was too content being snuggled. He didn’t care. Nor did he probably notice.
“Were you being stupid in the woods again? I keep telling you not to get into fights with the neighbors.” No, she didn’t. This was her first time talking to Dundle. But that’s just how stories went, so here she was. It was almost becoming reflexive, filling in the blanks.
Reaching across her table, being careful not to upend the little monster, she grabbed her sewing needle and thread. Dundle seemed content just to be fawned over, and when she put the needle through his dried skin, he didn’t even flinch. He didn’t feel it.
In fact, judging by the way his other foot kicked up and tried to scratch at the back of his neck as she started to stitch him together, it might have felt good. Like scratching an itch he couldn’t reach.
“Stop squirming you little jerk.” She laughed and poked him in the snout. “You’ll make me miss.” But still he wriggled, either like it tickled or just for fun.
Lundle had come over to watch and was now perched like a demented parrot on the low wood rafter above her. Yeah, they really were the ugliest things she’d ever seen in her life.
And she loved them.
“I wonder if I can take you guys with me when we leave.” She smiled as she snipped the end of the thread with a pair of tiny scissors on her desk. “Vile said props can leave, right? Maybe you two can live in the library. Once I’m…”
Dead. Dead and gone.
Wincing, she pushed that thought away.
She didn’t want to die.
And it wasn’t just that—she didn’t want to leave these two little monstrosities alone. Was that why Vile…? Did he not want to be left alone when she died?
No. That was stupid. He’d just go abduct another set of twins when he got bored.
Shoving those thoughts aside, she focused on the problem at hand.
It was inevitable that Sidney was going to win.
He’d said it himself—the villains always lost in stories like this.
There was always a happy ending. And a happy ending meant Sidney and Virtue would fall in love and get to live their lives together forever.
“All right, let’s play that out,” she said to Dundle as he stayed happily on his back on her desk, all four feet sticking in the air. He looked every bit the roadkill he resembled. “If I were writing the story of Sidney and Sasha, how would it end, if I wanted to give it a happy ending?”
Maybe that was how she had to go about it. She’d been trying to win the small stories. The fictions that Vile had put her in had always been her goal—Peter Pan. Sherlock. Wonderland. Now “Generic High Fantasy” or wherever the fuck they were.
But what if that wasn’t the way to get out of this in one piece…?
What if she had to take a step back and try to win their story instead?
“First thing’s first. What genre are we in, then I can figure out the rules.
Right?” This might be a pointless and stupid mental exercise, but it was the only glimmer of hope she’d had in…
a long time. Since Sherlock. “It’s clearly a dark story, there’s too much gore and murder for there not to be.
” She began idly playing with Dundle’s feet, looking at the sharp claws that looked to be carved out of onyx.
They were razor-sharp. She had to be careful not to cut herself.
“Case in point, even the cute things are disgusting nightmares who will kill you.”
Lundle let out a maligned “skrittch” as if to say “why I never.”
“Yeah, I mean you, too.” She smiled up at him. “I love you, but you’re the ugliest things I’ve seen in a long time.” Laughing, she looked back down at Dundle. “But I made you that way, so. My bad, I guess.”
Dundle didn’t seem to give a flying-lizard fuck.
“So. Dark fiction. But…clearly there’s a romance plot.
Sidney and Virtue are probably off having their High Fantasy time of their lives right now.
” She took the opportunity to check Dundle for any other rips or tears.
He looked in pretty good condition otherwise—for a thing that looked like a crocodile skin handbag that had been kicked down the stairs for the better part of a century.
“Dark romance?” She hummed. It was a decent guess, but it didn’t feel quite right.
Dark romance was usually mobsters and gangsters and the violence in the stories she’d experienced had all been couched in an air of the surreal and supernatural.
Dark romance usually felt grounded in harsh reality.
“Dark fantasy romance?” Stupid sub-genres.
There were so many of them and they were always multiplying and changing names.
It was as good of a guess as any that she had. She could tack on things like paranormal or meta-fiction or whatever, but then she’d be here all day trying to sub-divide what genre her damn book went into. Whatever. Dark fantasy romance. That was a decent place to start.
“So. Dark fantasy gives us a set of rules. Which means that there has to be consistent world-building, but also that people have to die and the stakes have weight to them. But the romance aspect declares it has to have a happy ending. But…maybe only for one of us.” Looking around, she wished she could find a pen and a piece of paper.
But it seemed bog witches kept all their magic in their heads, and didn’t write anything down. That was the realm of wizards.
Stupid fantasy tropes.
“Okay. So.” She needed to pace. Picking up Dundle, she put him on her shoulder as she got off the stool and started to walk back and forth in front of her fire.
Dundle seemed quite content to nuzzle into the thick black wiry fur of her cloak’s hood, making a little nest for himself.
His long, bony tail draped over her shoulder.
What was the way this would go, if she had to predict it? If she had to write the safe, schlocky, made-for-TV-version of her story, what would it be?
“Two twins, abducted by the demigods of fiction. The Villain, and the Hero. The twin abducted by the Villain is slowly corrupted and turned into the Evil Twin, right? And the Good Twin is forced to kill the Evil Twin, and feels so very bad about doing it, but had to do it. The Good Twin escapes, but every time she reads a story she gets to visit her one true love, the Hero.” She wrinkled her nose.
It was bittersweet, but it was also beautiful in the love of the Good Twin for her sad, corrupted Evil Twin and her star-crossed love of the Hero.
It was also so cliché it made her teeth ache like she’d just bitten into something that had way too much sugar in it. But that was the point.
Vile and Virtue only existed in clichés.
That meant the story she’d just predicted had probably played out a thousand times. How many sets of twins had come before them? How many other “Evil Twins” had been corrupted and seduced by Vile and then killed by their “Good Twin” in a tragic turn of events?
It felt like a knife stuck in her gut.
She knew she wasn’t special to Vile. She knew she wasn’t unique to him. How could someone—something—like that, come to care about another person? He couldn’t. He literally couldn’t. He wasn’t capable of it on a cosmic level. Virtue got all of that side of the coin by design.
“If I survive this, I’m going to go out and write and publish a bunch of romances where the villain has to have feelings and deal with them. Just to put my thumb on the scale. Really fuck with him.” She snickered at the idea.
Who was she kidding?
No one would want to publish that kind of bullshit.
“All right. Well? Now I know how the story is supposed to go. The question is, how do I rewrite it?” Picking up a log by the fire, she put it on the coals before using the poker to shove it into the right position. “What do I have to work with?”
Lundle let out a “sskkhhttch.” Somehow, she knew exactly what he meant.
“You’re right, not much. But—” She paused. Turning, she stared at the table of potions and charms and bits and pieces. “Holy fuck. I have props.”
Tossing the fire-poker aside, she ran up to the desk and stared down at it. “I have props and I have magic, and if—and it’s a big if—there’s a chance that if I make a spell here and I smuggle it back to the library, that the magic will work there.” She laughed, a grin splitting her face wide.
Hope.
Hope filled her.
“I don’t know what the fuck spell I’m going to make, but I don’t care!” She laughed again, taking a step back from the table. Combing her hands into her hair, she remembered it was all braided into a mess. “This might work. This might actually fucking wor—”
There was a pounding knock at the door.
“Witch of the bog! Witch of the bog, we seek your aid!” Someone shouted from the other side. And she knew that voice in an instant.
Virtue.
Ah, fuck.
The heroes had finally shown up.
Sidney hated high fantasy.
Sidney really, really fucking hated fantasy in general.
Okay, she didn’t hate all fantasy. She hated the kinds where people got hurt and actually died. She liked the fluffy kind with happy sweet fae and jars and magic shops and where people had cozy cupcake stores. The ones where people solved harmless mysteries and then just happened to fall in love.
Not ones where she was attacked by six-headed snake monsters and motherfucking poisoned!
Couldn’t she just read her cozy romances and read about orcs who want to bake muffins and be left alone in peace?
Apparently not. Because now, she couldn’t feel her fucking legs. Or her arms. Everything was going numb, more and more, as the substance ran through her body. Virtue was carrying her in his arms, like the beautiful, perfect hero that he was.
The scar that ran across his cheek didn’t do anything to mar how handsome he was. If anything, it added to it.
They had been through so much in this story already. They’d escaped the prisons of the insane mayor of the town who had betrayed them. They had fought the cyclops of the mountains where she had learned she could call down the power of the moons to heal.
She had met the gryphons of the pass who had knelt at her feet and called her their Queen.
She had been told of the prophecy that she was the one who would defeat the Dark King with the power of the silvered light of the moon by a talking birch tree.
She had even met a spirit of a waterfall who had gifted Virtue his gleaming, golden sword.
Months. Months of walking. Fighting. Hiking. Being sucked into one war after another.
And she was taken out by a single bite from a serpent. Taken out by poison.
It didn’t feel fair.
Virtue pounded on the door again. “Witch of the bog, open your door!”
The door flew open. And through her blurry vision, Sidney saw someone who she had begun to think wouldn’t ever appear in the story. Or who was only going to be waiting for them in the Dark King’s castle.
But there she was.
Looking like she’d just rolled out of bed and wearing some homeless person’s clothing. And maybe a dead dog, she wasn’t sure. Sidney blinked, blearily, trying to see straight. She lifted her head from Virtue’s shoulder just enough to croak out the word.
“Sasha…?”