Amy shook his head and smiled a toothless smile. “This is the true trial. The Evil One is on the rise. It’s up to you.”
“Can we count on your sword?” I asked, trying to imitate the inspiring speeches from my books, reaching past Bryce to squeeze Amy’s knobby shoulder.
“This isn’t my fight,” Amy said mysteriously, backing away. “I must leave this place. But remember…” He spread his hands in front of his face. “The strength of a maple leaf.”
And then he ran away in a flurry of flappy robes and flailing appendages, all frailty apparently healed.
Bryce and I stood alone on the beach as the dry clack of bone on bone grew louder, signaling the army’s approach. He lifted his hands, now empty of magic. “I need you to go back to thinking nice thoughts about me, or we are going to die.”
I did want to think nice thoughts about him. It wasallI wanted to do. But I didn’t trust myself not to hurt him. I was avillain, and he was… he was my world. Villains did nothing but destroy worlds. As much as I tried, I couldn’t free my feelings.
Bones clattered. Rusty blades glinted. Sightless eye sockets and toothy smiles provided a backdrop to Bryce’s face like the most deeply upsetting school picture background ever.
Desperate to reawaken his magic, I drew Bryce’s hands out of his pockets to entwine our fingers, but he held something in his hand. Turning his wrist, I opened his fingers. There in his palm was a smooth, oblong pebble. I looked from the stone to his face.
He’d kept a rock I’d given him. Ridiculous man. It made my heart ache.
To awaken his magic again, all I had to do was tell him how much I truly, truly liked him, and how I was so fucking grateful he was not a slug because he was the best man I knew, and I would make sure he never hurt again—but something held me back.
Because I knew I’d inevitablybethe one to hurt him again.
Someone like me would have to be a complete asshole to entertain the idea of being with someone like him. He had abandonment issues, and my literal one goal in life was to have no commitments. I couldn’t let him know I cared for him, only to break his heart one day—not after what he’d told me about his mother.
Before I could decide what to do, one skeleton detached fromthe mob and jogged toward us, gangly bones swinging and clanking. We were out of time.
“Move. Go, go, go.” Frantically, I pushed Bryce, trying to get him to run.
Instead, he tripped and went down. I stumbled over him and fell hard. My foot got caught under his leg. I yanked on it, twisting around to see behind me. The skeleton slowed as it came up to us. Sunlight streamed through its rib cage, half of which was exposed by deteriorating rags that might have once been a magnificent gown. A tarnished tiara rested crookedly on the skeleton’s brow. The skeleton queen.
“I’m your leader, remember?” I tried, raising my hands, palms out, in the universal sign for surrender.
The universal sign for surrender must have only been universal in our universe, because the last thing I saw was the blunt end of a battle-ax swinging for my head.
CHAPTER 29INWHICHWEDANCEAROUNDOURFEELINGS
BRYCE
I squinted an eye open.
Amy’s face snapped into focus, inches from my own. Too tired to even flinch away, I simply cursed under my breath and shut my eye again.
“My lord,” Amy said, his foul breath washing over my face, “you and Lady Courtney defeated the undead horde!”
Reopening my eyes, I pushed myself upright, forcing Amy to take a step back. “We did what?” All I could remember was Courtney spouting some nonsense about how she was the Evil One and trying and failing to control the army, and then—
“Indeed,” Amy said. “When you didn’t return, we sent out a search party, which found you and Courtney, injured, but the army was gone!”
“Courtney.” Panic squeezed around my heart. I shot out of the bed I was in, turning in circles, searching for her. I must’ve been in the infirmary; rows of cots separated by white sheets stretched along the walls. I began running from bed to bed, pushing aside curtains as I searched.
The last image seared into my brain was of a skeletonsmashing a battle-ax against Courtney’s temple… and then I’d passed out. Not because the skeleton came for me next, but just because I passed out. Not that anyone would ever have to know that.
“Lady Courtney woke long before you and is preparing for the ball,” Amy called.
I stalked up to him. “Is she okay? Take me to her.”
Amy blinked. “She’s quite all right. She regaled us with the tale of how the two of you single-handedly destroyed the army by using your magic to banish them back to their graves.”
What was going on?
