Page 51 of Not Another Happily Ever After

The question slips from my lips before I can stop it, and Frog’s chest stills.

He doesn’t answer.

“We have, haven’t we?”I suck in a steadying breath, careful not to let my excitement tip into my tone. “Were you always a knight?” I ask, wondering if he was a guard at the castle. Or perhaps he was a stable boy I’d seen in passing.

His eyes shudder closed, and with a heavy sigh he reclaims his hand.

“No,” he answers, pushing himself upright.

My heart rages against my chest, desperate to understand these misplaced feelings of mine.

What is wrong with me?

I shouldn’t feel this comfortable with a stranger, especially with one whose life I just put at risk.

When did I become so selfish?

I sit up, pulling my knees to my chest.

“I’m so sorry, Frog.” I whisper, letting the loose ends of my damp curls catch between my fingers.

Perhaps if I pull hard enough I can rip free all the silly nonsensical thoughts that flutter from the depths of my belly into my head.

Frog stands, fetching my floating slippers as a gentle wave pushes them ashore.

I straighten, determined to know him better—to prove that I care about someone other than myself.

“May I ask another, more personal question?”

The Dark Knight stops, but doesn’t turn around.

“Who were you before?”

Seconds tick by and I start to believe he’s not going to answer. Finally, he faces me. And once again my heart gallops, eager to escape its fate.

His autumn green gaze tears right through the fragile veil I thought I could hold between us as he whispers, “Lost, Miss Sunday. I was lost.”

Chapter

20

Merrek, stop reading my journal.

“Bloody hell!” Rhidland jumps from where he’s seated on a fallen tree as Frog and I traipse out of the thicket toward the dwindling fire, both of us soaked to the bone. “What happened?”

The other knights, all startled from where they’d been resting, scramble for their blades. Their sleepy eyes sharpen with alarm.

Heat floods my cheeks as I shrink beneath my cloak. “Well…” I stutter, searching for the least embarrassing way to explain how I’d momentarily lost my mind, when Frog steps in front of me.

“Miss Sunday touched a rose by mistake and became disoriented. She was standing close to the falls when she fell. I pulled her out before any harm could come to her,” he lies perfectly.

Too perfectly.

My gaze narrows, but if he feels the heat from my stare on the back of his head, he doesn’t show it. Nor does he dare to meet it.

Rhidland, however, challenges me with one of his own. “Disoriented? By the roses?”

Crap.I shoot another scathing glare at Frog’s head. Had he let me in on this little lie, I would have been able to tell him that Rhidland knows about my immunity to the poisonous petals.