Chapter 31
Chapter
I have never questioned whether I would give my life for her.
Only whether my life would be enough.
Inearly collide with a juggler keeping a cluster of fire-lit balls aloft. I breathe an apology over my shoulder, barely meeting the man’s gaze when a flicker of blue catches my eye, guiding his trembling hands.
I blink, and it’s gone.
“Princess!” Myrrdin calls.
I don’t stop.
Music crashes over me from every corner of the town’s main road—soft and slow, loud and quick—until it all blurs into a single deafening roar.
Do I know his name?
Yes.
One word. One impossible word. It rips through reality as though it were only parchment.
“Miss!”
An artist cuts into my path, a paintbrush clenched in her fist.
“I would love to bring your beauty to paper—”
“No. I’m sorry,” I pant, ducking past her before she can finish.
I run between houses, their balconies turned to stages.
“A dance for the lady?” a drummer calls from above, his eyes half-closed though his arms never stop playing.
I don’t answer.
I push deeper into the crowd.
And then I see him. Just ahead, Frog is arguing with someone.
Wolfe.
I take a steadying breath as I decide my next move.
Do I confront him outright? Do I trick him into telling me the truth? I could mention the spool of red ribbon…what if he denies it?
My pulse pounds against my throat, but I’m determined to get an answer one way or another.
Until the soft cry of a child brings my feet to a halt.
Reluctantly, I turn away from the knight heading in the opposite direction and search the shifting crowd for the small voice.
Then I see her—the little girl from earlier. She’s tucked against a wall, watching the same two people dance before her. The couple’s faces are still stretched in laughter even as tears stream down their cheeks.
I look back to where Frog has all but disappeared around a small diner. I’m going to lose him if I stop.
“Momma!” the young girl calls, but no one comes to comfort her.
I hesitate, torn between the truth I’ve been chasing and the child who needs me. With a heavy exhale, I turn away from Frog—just for a while—and walk toward her.
“Hello, there…” I say softly.
The little girl shrinks against the wall.
“No deal. No deal. No deal,” she repeats, her voice breaking.
“Alright, no deals.” I drop to my knees beside her. “My name is Sunday. May I ask yours?”
She shakes her head, burying her red cherub cheeks between her arms and knees.
“That’s okay.” I look around. Surely someone is missing her.
I spot the couple she was watching. Their smiling faces are turned toward us, their eyes are fraught with worry.
“Are those your parents?” I ask, gesturing toward the man and woman dressed in blue and red.
She lifts her head from her lap and nods, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks as she watches them dancing without slowing.
“Hey! Get away from her!” A stout man with a potbelly shuffles toward us, abandoning his drums. “That one belongs to me.”
The little girl trembles, her eyes blown wide.
Something isn’t right.
I stand, placing myself between them.
“Do you know this man?” I ask, blocking her view of him.
She nods. “He owns Momma and Papa,” she cries.
Owns? The word twists my stomach.
I turn toward the couple, my gaze falling to their wrists, where I’d seen the blue flicker on the artist. As they step into the light, I see it—the faintest trace of a blue thread.
The realization strikes like lightning.
“You trapped this poor girl’s parents somehow, didn’t you?” I snap, rounding on the stout man.
He recoils, feigning offense. “They made a deal. Their child needed food, and I needed souls to pay my debt.”
I shake my head. “How could you possibly think that is a fair trade?”
“Life ain’t fair,” he barks grabbing the little girl. “Now move along!”
She cries out.
“You will not touch her,” I snap.
The man seethes, waving his thick finger in my face. “A deal is a deal.”
“Undo it,” I demand.
The man lets out a loud, boisterous laugh. “You cannot undo a deal. It lives as long as you do.”
My face falls.
For as long as they live?
I look to the couple, trapped by the maddening melody as it carries them farther away from the child they sacrificed everything to feed. Their little girl will grow up carrying the unbearable weight of knowing what her life cost.
The man grabs the little girl. She reaches for her parents, sobbing as the music pulls them away.
No.
No!
“Stop! Please!” I surge forward. “I’ll take their place!”
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
Ice floods my veins as the man whirls toward me far faster than I thought him able.
“Deal.” He claps, and the thin blue thread binding the girl’s parents snaps.
The couple collapse to the ground, wrapping their daughter in their exhausted arms.
The knot in my chest loosens as I take in their smiling faces—an irony that isn’t lost on me.
I may not have saved the realm, but I saved theirs. And if this should be the price, so be it.
Glistening blue threads descend toward me. I wait to feel the strings pull on my wrists—
Warm hands seize my wrists instead. My head snaps to a tall, cloaked figure as he pulls me through the crowd.
“Only the dead can escape the deal!” The stout man shouts, filling the street with his laughter.
Frog doesn’t slow. He pulls me faster and faster through the crowd.
I glance upward to find the tethers following us. They vibrate and hum as if laughing at our attempt to escape.
“Frog!” I cry.
Frog’s eyes snap up. We veer left, racing against the steady thrum of the music until it’s little more than a distant purr—until the yellow brick stones run out beneath us.
I chance another look back. The tethers are hot on our heels. I can already feel the pulse of their power.
“I’m not going to make it!” I cry, but my voice is weak. Tired, like every other part of me.
“Stay with me, Princess,” Frog calls over his shoulder. “We’re almost there.”
“Where—pant—is here?”
My knees ache, ready to give out…when the largest hedge imaginable comes into view.
Frog pulls us toward it and I realize it’s a wall. Made up entirely of woven vines and crimson roses, it towers high above the trees.
I lean back, my eyes tracing the impossible height of the hedges.
“Don’t slow down,” the Dark Knight urges, pulling me faster until we’re but a few feet away from the crimson wall. “Don’t look back.”
I look back.
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.
Frog’s chest rises unevenly as I climb to my feet, bringing with me all the questions he’s stirred in my chest. My fingers don’t stop at his hands, they know exactly how to see them answered.
His heartbeat drums beneath my palms as I reach for his mask.
He catches my wrist, but he doesn’t push it away.
“I shouldn’t,” I breathe, acknowledging the impossible wall between us.
He swallows hard. “No,” he agrees.
I step closer, gently pushing against his grip until the palm of my hand is flush with his mask.
“But you want to?” I ask, heart raging against my ribs, aching to reach him, aching for the truth.
His eyes shudder as he leans into my touch.
“Desperately.”
Air abandons my lungs, leaving only him.
“Frog,” I whisper, my mouth hovering just below his mask, where I can feel his every shaky breath. “Kiss me.”
“Miss Sunday,” he breathes my name like a prayer. Pleading. Surrendering.
“Please.”
He closes the distance between us with a trembling hand on my waist, and just like he’d learned with our dance, he leads me back. One slow step at a time.
He places his hand on the crimson wall behind me, and eases me back until I feel his knuckles on my spine.
“Close your eyes,” he whispers.
I stare up at him for one more heartbeat, devouring the heat in his gaze.
Then I drift my eyes shut.
His hand falls from my waist, lifting to loosen the iron hiding his face.
I keep my eyes closed.
A ragged breath is all that slips between us—when something warm brushes the corner of my mouth.
My breath catches.
His trembling thumb traces my lower lip with impossible tenderness, as though committing it to memory. The touch is so achingly tender that my heart forgets how to beat.
“Mine.”
The word slips as his mouth brushes against mine. Softly at first, as if I might rescind them. As if I’d want to break this spell between us.
Not this time.
“My knight.” I rise onto my toes, meeting him halfway.
I kiss him without abandon, without thought for tomorrow, and he melts against me. He tastes like wild orange, and cinnamon, and hope.
I cling to him.
“Miss Sunday,” he whispers, his hand at my back no longer trembling. “You need only tell me to stop.”
“And if I want more?”
His heart skips beneath my palms, his warm breath on my cheeks quivering as he brings his forehead to mine. “You need only ask.”
I wrap my arms around him, drawing him closer.
“Please.”
His lips collide against mine like I’m the only air he needs, like he’ll disappear into nothing if he doesn’t. My hands slide from his neck, venturing toward his face—when I feel it.
The scar.
Recognition lurches through me, catching on the memory of a scarred smile.
The dark knight shudders beneath my touch as my fingertips trace the jagged ridge beside his mouth. My lips follow. Every uneven edge exactly as I remembered.
He pulls away to catch his breath and my eyes slip open.
For the first time, I see him. Not the mask. Not the knight. Just him.
He’s devastatingly beautiful.
His autumn-green eyes remain closed, unaware that I’m committing him to memory. The freckles scattered across his nose. The gentle slope of his nose. The burn scar beside his mouth.
“My ghost.” I fall into him.
Frog goes still. Impossibly still. His eyes fly open. For one impossible heartbeat, hope flashes across his features. It dies just as quickly, and horror rushes into its place.
“Miss Sunday?” He pulls back just enough to search my face, his hands once again trembling.
I try to smile, but my lips are too tired to move.
“No. Take it back,” he pleads, his voice more urgent than before. “Please, god. Please.”
He cradles me in his arms. But I can’t remember how I came to be in them. Something wet falls on my cheeks.
My lashes flutter, too heavy to stay open for long. But I see them, the glistening of tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he cries. “Please take it back.”
The sting of his regret pales in comparison to the fullness in my chest. My heart has never felt so whole.
“Never,” I whisper. “It will always belong to you.”
Riven.