Epilogue, Rennie Mager [people reading books .txt] 📗

"Princess Bonnie died."
"No! It was supposed to end happily!"
“It's not over yet.
Amy blushed. "Sorry, Marie."
Her Witness Protection name rankled and Lisa really didn't know what to say, so she plowed on. "Magic loved her so much it restored her as much as it could. So Princess Bonnie woke up, Death's only claim a few black streaks in her hair. She escaped from her father's kingdom and started over. With time, Death's marks stopped bothering her and faded.”
“Did she live happily ever after?”
Lisa shrugged and said truthfully, “I haven't gotten there yet.”

***

They had found him again. Jason knew the moment Hannah came into work with a vivid bruise but wouldn't meet his eyes, so he wasn't surprised when he saw them in town, nor when Mrs. Thale turned up dead.
Instead, he escaped to his apartment even as his chest ached and his eyes burned.
At last, Jason gave up the last semblance of self-control and laughed. The laugh bubbled in his chest and scalded his throat. He laughed until his lungs gave out and tears ran down his cheeks, until he fell to the floor.
Then he went to fix it.

***

The morning dawns with the same pink and gold brilliance it always does on the morning following a massacre, as the gods accept the sacrifice and revel in the bloodshed and honor the victor, but this time it's all your fault. You led the monsters right to the last of the Resistance because you wanted to finally be noticed.
So now, you hide in the trees and pray the dryads won't give you away, and you watch from afar as the sorcerors burn the people who sheltered you for fourteen years, while you pretend that this was what you wanted.

Publication Date: 08-07-2010

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