I snapped to attention. “What do you mean? Did she say anything? Where did she go?”
“She were looking so sad, you see,” the blacksmith began, and my gut sank. “So I told ’er what you told me earlier today. ’Bout how smitten you were with her while she was battling the dragon.”
A wash of relief mixed with dread swept through me.
No wonder she’d left. She’d thought I couldn’t love her without the potion, and I’d accidentally confirmed her fears. She thought I found her amazingbecauseshe was battling a dragon, not that I simply realized itwhileshe was fighting a dragon.
We’d miscommunicated.
CHAPTER 42INWHICHI AMHUNGHANGEDHUNGED?
COURTNEY
If my younger self had read this story featuring me, she would have thrown the book across the room.
When the first rays of dawn lit the sky, I stopped running and looked up to find myself outside the city, the army of skeletons separating me from the gates.
I settled onto a grassy knoll and watched the sunrise. The run dulled my panicked feelings so I could view the situation with more rationality.
Being in an adventure like the ones I used to read about brought things out of me I wouldn’t have thought possible. Terrible things. Things that would make my younger self cringe mightily because suddenly, I’d become the annoying character who I used to shake my head at from the comfort of my couch and go,What an idiot.
I’d turned into the person who made rash and obviously incorrect life choices, the one often found runningupstairs trying to get away from horror villains. I was the one who was too emotional, a cold bitch, and a wet noodle all at once. The one who feltthe urge to blurt out anI love youafter knowing someone for only a few days.
I needed to get my shit together and get us home, where there was no more magic and, hopefully, no more potion.
It wasn’t the fear of failure that made me want to crawl back to my old life. It was the fear of my life being perfect. Because a perfect life didn’t include bare feet in grass, Christmas lights in May, and ice cream without cookie dough. A perfect life didn’t include the most ridiculously sexy accountant I’d ever seen.
Bryce liked me before I ever tried to be a hero. He even admitted he’d tried to push me away that morning with the Christmas lights because he was scared of the fact he was growing to care about me.
Drowning in insecurities made me latch on to the first sign of evidence my fears were real, but I knew Bryce, the real Bryce. I’d never needed the potion because I wouldn’t have left him. He wouldn’t have given me a reason to. The Bryce of two days ago took my carefully constructed ideas of the world and demolished them. He saw the real me, and he only wanted one thing.
No, notthat.
He only wanted me to stay.
Making ourselves into heroes ruined everything and made us do ridiculous things like—
Miscommunicate.
Miscommunication was easy to do in this world, where no one was free to be themselves, tied down by the duties pertaining to their positions in the world—
Something clicked.
What was it I thought about Bryce? That the potion had made him just like everyone else in this world? Yet his mind was still there, and he could still sneak sarcasm under the potion… the way I could see thatsomethingin the flower stand girl’s eyes when she said,We can never not be peasants. And Mama—shetalked as though the less fortunatecouldn’taccept help. I’d thought it was some rule of etiquette preventing them from bettering their lives, but what if theyphysically couldn’t? The way I physically couldn’t be anything less than perfect.
In that potion book, there had been potions to make perfect heroes, perfect soldiers, and perfect peasants.
What if everyone in this whole world were trapped in their roles the way we were?
A shiver ran down my spine. On our first day here, Amy told us not to get close to the peasants. Then he’d passed Bryce and me a flask. “A toast,” he’d said, “to the good we will accomplish together.”
What if it was hero potion? We hadn’t drunk it, but he must have thought we had. Must have thought we’d be his perfect pawns. Just like the entire world was.
Oh. My. God.
Amy’s perfect peace was a lie, as much of a lie as my old life had been, everyone hiding behind masks, doing what was expected of them while they quietly died inside.
My first instinct was to run back to Bryce and tell him the truth, but I doubted the potion would allow me to plot against it. If it were so easy, Mama or any of the other peasants would have screamed the truth at us and begged for help. I was on my own. I’d have to find a loophole so I could get to Amy and demand he tell me how to undo the horrible effects of the potion.
