I love him. I love him and he loves me; at least he says he does. Is it enough for Malvolia?
It must be. It is not like the world is absolutely crawling with eligible bachelors, dying to marry a three-hundred-sixteen-year-old princess. And besides, Jack is the one I want, the one I love.
“I love you, too,” I say, and mean it.
It will have to be enough, for in the moments before Jack revived me for the second time with his kiss, I saw what Malvolia meant when she said, “Come with me.”
“Come with me, Princess.” Her voice was so soothing, lulling me like the ocean’s waves outside the castle in Euphrasia. I almost wanted to go. “Come with me.”
And simultaneously, I felt my body falling and part of me—some other part, dare I say my soul?—floating ahead of it, into the center of the water lily, then through the water and down, down, until finally I was back in Euphrasia. Malvolia was with me, towering over me, a spindle in her hand.
“Will you kill me?” I asked, not as if this was a terrible idea—for my body felt light and floating, as if I had taken opium—but merely as a point of fact.
“No, Princess.” Her voice was the same, but I could see that her smile was false, as though her lips were trying to express one emotion while her eyes showed quite another. The eyes were true, and they were cruel. “Not yet.”
That was when Jack kissed me, and I woke to his declaration of love. He was my savior once again.
And yet, even as Jack declared his love for me, I thought I heard Malvolia’s voice in the distance, calling me back.