“You shouldn’t give her so much screen time,” Bryce said from my right. “She’ll get addicted to it.”
“She’s been good all day, soexcuse meif I wantfive minutesof peace.”
We exchanged a look.
“This is such a weird epilogue,” I whispered.
“Epilogue?”
“You know, the culmination of everything that happened in our story that creates our Happily Ever After. They usually involve dream jobs, marriage, kids. Sometimes opening a small business and/or saving a town. Rarely adopting a member of the undead.”
The Uber driver gave me a weird look in the rearview mirror.
“What does an epilogue look like to you?” Bryce asked, and I knew what he was asking.Where do we go from here?
“I don’t want to epilogue,” I said, likeepiloguewas a verb. “I don’t want to do the picturesque Happily Ever After thing. I want to take it one day at a time.”
“Whatever epilogue you want, as long as it’s not likeThe Lord of the Rings, where we have to say goodbye six different ways,” he said.
We rounded the corner onto our street and caught a glimpse of the duplex, which was still half-lit with furiously blinking Christmas lights.
“We’re lucky the house didn’t burn down.” Bryce humphed as he opened his door. The blues and pinks flickered across his face, revealing the fact he was smiling.
The dome light spilled out onto the driveway, and the car dinged. Following Kelly, I clambered out and stretched. As the Uber drove away, Bryce joined me, holding my hand as we stared at the duplex. Bony fingers pressed around my shoulder as Kelly leaned between us, smiling her unnerving grin.
Bryce cleared his throat. “So.”
“Yup,” I said.
“Now what?” I asked.
“We’ll figure it out,” Bryce murmured as he dipped his head and brushed his lips to mine.
Being with him felt like messy private moments when no one’s watching, and you’re free to take off the mask, when you fill your house with off-pitch singing and dance around in your underwear. It felt like freedom. It felt natural and right and easy. Affection filled my heart, prompting magic to flare from Bryce’s skin.
My eyes flew open. My own magic curled off my fingertips. Magic didn’t exist here naturally, but we must have carried a bit home inside of us…
It was at that point that the last of the magic slipped from our bodies, conjoined, formed a portal—and the dragon burst through with a roar.
“It’s fine,” I squeaked. “The dragon isn’t inherently evil, right?”
“It’s also not inherently good,” Bryce said.
And the furiously flashing Christmas lights were clearly pissing it off. Without the mouse around to communicate with it, the dragon defaulted to doing dragon shit—namely, burning our house down.
EPILOGUE
COURTNEY
Maybe our epilogue was actually a prologue,” I whisper.
Bryce’s fingers lace with mine. “No. It’s an epilogue. We’re epilogue-ing, damn it.”
Desperately, I look around, searching for a rope or anything I can use to try to capture the beast. Of course, there’s nothing… aside from a new portal, which is still glowing in the yard.
Suddenly, I feel as though I’ve caught a glimpse of a new future where things could be different, the same way I did at Thanksgiving. But this time, there’s an actual portal, lighting up a path I hadn’t seen before, unexpected but full of things I long ago dismissed as impossible. Unicorns and trolls. Unconditional friendship. True love. The simpler way of life I’ve been craving. My Happily Ever After won’t be perfect like I used to imagine, but I’ve grown fond of imperfect things.
I turn to Bryce. “I always wanted to be a hero so I could get my Happily Ever After. We’re not heroes, but maybe we could have a Mediocre Ever After. We won’t have a castle, but we could have a very quiet, safe hut. We wouldn’t have to stock shelves or crunch numbers. We could have real friends.” Like the villagegirls. “Sure, there won’t be running water, but there also won’t be Corporate America or motor vehicle accidents.”
