She saw Rafal’s chest rise on a breath, as if at last they were on the same page. “Your friends think they can stop our book from closing, my love,” he said, sweet once again. “They think they can stop the future. But they’re too late.”

He watched the fading sun, as if studying an hourglass. “The war against Good has already begun.”

Sophie saw him look back at her with a snakelike grin and she began to sense there was more to his return than kisses and rings. “But Good always wins in the end—” she started, only to see the School Master grinning wider.

“You’ve forgotten the one thing I have on my side that they no longer do.” Rafal moved towards her, slowly, smoothly . . .

“You.”

Sophie met his gaze, breathless.

“Come my queen,” he said, fingers slipping into hers. “Your kingdom awaits.”

Sophie’s heart pumped faster. Kingdom. . . . Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little girl in a pink princess dress, waiting by her window to be kidnapped, convinced that one day she’d be the ruler of a faraway land . . .

She looked up at Rafal, the old glint back in her eye. “So much for Camelot.”

Sophie smiled, her ring brushing his, and she followed her love hand in hand to fight for their happy ending—just like a prince and princess on the page she’d left behind.

“Shouldn’t I change first? I can’t go gadding about in this,” Sophie huffed, trying to pin down her nightdress, battered by the wind.

Her glass slippers wobbled on the window ledge, sending silver pebbles cascading into the abyss of green fog. She wrenched back against the tower wall, clutching Rafal’s bicep. They were so high in the sky she couldn’t see the ground. “Surely there are stairs we can take. Only a half-wit would build a tower without stairs or a rope or a suitable fire escape—”

“Do you trust me?”

Sophie looked into Rafal’s eyes, hot with adrenaline, not a trace of fear in them.

“Yes,” Sophie whispered.

“Then don’t let go.” He seized her by the waist and dove off the tower.

Green mist gobbled them as they plunged at bullet speed into arctic cold. Any instinct for Sophie to scream vanished because of how tightly Rafal held her, muscles sealing her to his chest. Safe in his arms, she let herself go, gasping as Rafal slip-turned like a hawk with dangerous speed, their entwined limbs spinning towards earth. With a full somersault, he rocketed back up and Sophie howled with abandon, closing her eyes and holding out her arms against him like wings. They soared in and out of shadows, amber sunrays flickering on her eyelids, the taste of clouds in her mouth. If only Agatha could see her now, she thought—happy, in love, and recklessly alive, like a princess riding a dragon instead of fighting it. Rafal shot across the bay like a fireball and she pressed her cheek into his neck, electrified by his skin on hers, his steaming breaths faster and faster, his hands tighter and tighter . . . until his feet gently touched down without a sound and Sophie felt herself suspended in space like the Storian over her book.