I am more.
My name is Storybook Hale, and I won’t fix what I’ve broken. I’m not hiding anymore.
So, world, if you’ve ever been given one story when someone has been given a thousand.
Or if you’ve given a thousand when you should have given just one…
Please help me.
I don’t want to lose everything when I’m so close to having it all.
My happily ever after is held hostage and I need your help.
Seventy
GRAY
Story.
Story.
Story.
I thought I was dreaming when I heard Story’s name being chanted, thought my nightmares were tormenting me. The sun was setting on the night of the Swan Swell, my grandfather’s favorite holiday, and the moment he’d been planning for decades.
The day we’d been waiting for, my revenge nearly complete.
And hollow.
Because the love of my life was dead.
“Your bastard siblings are here,” my grandfather said, coming into my wing.
I didn’t lift my eyes to meet his. “And? Come to gloat about your dynasty some more?”
I stood, going to my grandfather. A rare moment where he was alone with me—he’s never alone with me, maybe he could feel the murder beneath my fingertips. He’d felt it beneath his own, after all.
My gaze glanced to a letter opener—when two guards rushed in, sweaty. “There’s a crowd outside the gates. They’re trying to break through the gates—we caught her. Story—”
My grandfather made a noise, silencing them. Her name was electricity on my spine.
But I didn’t believe it.
Not even when they dragged a woman in the room, her long, white dress flowing across the hardwood.
Story?
It can’t be her.
My heart didn’t recognize the woman, and suspicion crept. Another one of my grandfather’s tricks.
She lifted her head; beneath her white, feathery mask, I knew those eyes.
It was not my wife.
My grandfather’s eyes narrowed. “Lottie du Lac, your mother has been looking for you.”
She yanked her arm free of Beryl, and spat in his face. That wasn’t the Lottie I remembered. My grandfather wiped the spit from his cheek.