Running after the princess was a decision that my body strongly opposed. It had to carry sixty pounds of armor, climb a tower, fight a cult, ride a dragon, and deal with Idir.
The breastplate came off first. I unclipped it mid-stride and let it fall somewhere behind me in the trees. It hit the ground with a clang. The pauldrons went next, one, then the other, tossed sideways into the bushes. Then the gauntlets. Then the arm guards. I was shedding metal like a snake sheds its skin, leaving a trail of borrowed prince armor scattered through the forest like the world's worst breadcrumb path.
Underneath the armor I was soaked, not just damp. The shirt was plastered to my skin and my chest was stuck to the fabric in ways that were deeply uncomfortable. The binding had shifted, causing everything underneath it to perform actions that hindered the activity of running. Sweat ran down my back and ribs, pooling in places where it should not.
Every step was a new sensory nightmare.
And Cruit was FAST.
She ran over roots and rocks and the forest floor as if she had been doing it her whole life. Her hair was streaming behind her. She was cutting through the trees without slowing. I was far behind her, dying in my sweaty clothing with my armor scattered across half a mile of forest, thinking about how this woman could have gone to the Olympics. She could have been a track star. A full scholarship. Nationals. Gold medal. And she was doing it barefoot on the forest floor in a dress.
I would never underestimate her again.
The trees were thinning, the air was salty and windy. The forest gave way to a cliff. Cut off, like someone had taken a knife to the earth and carved the edge clean. Beyond that point, there was nothing. Sky and ocean and a drop that went straight down into white water and black rocks.
The wind came off the water hard and cold, whipping my hair and my clothes, pushing against my chest. The sound of it filled the air: the crashing of waves below, the whistling through the rocks, and the immense, indifferent roar of the sea.
Cruit was at the edge.
She knelt on the floor, her hands tangled in her hair, her chest heaving and her whole body trembling. Her rapid, shallow breaths betrayed her. Her body had decided to panic before her brain could catch up. Her shoulders rose and fell too quickly. Her fingers gripped her hair and pulled.
She screamed.
Into the ocean, into the wind, into nothingness. No name, no word. Just a sound raw, torn from her gut and swallowed by the waves before it could land anywhere.
Then another.
She screamed until her voice cracked.
I stood at the edge of the forest. I was panting heavily and my clothing was clinging to my skin. My hair stuck to my forehead. I watched her without moving because I didn't know what to do. I never knew what to do with this: with the big feelings, the real ones, the kind that don't come with a joke attached.
She was talking. To herself. To the ocean. I couldn't hear most of it over the wind but I caught pieces.
I approached her slowly, afraid that my movements would startle her.
"Cricket." I sat down on the ground. A few feet away. Close enough to touch but not close enough to crowd. I pulled my knees up and took a breath and looked out to sea and waited.
"You know," I said, after a minute. "For what it's worth, you're really fast."
She didn't say anything.
"You okay?"
She laughed incredulously.
"That raving lunatic has just told me that my life is a story. That everything I have ever known: my father, my kingdom, the throne, the walls I grew up inside... exists because it was... what? Written?" She pressed her hands to her face. "What does that mean? If it is written... then I didn't choose any of it. When I refused the suitors... was that me? Was that my will? Or was it the story? When my mother died, did she die because it was written that she would die?"
Her voice faltered on the last word.
"Does my father love me or does the story require him to love me? If I chose to walk left instead of right tomorrow, would the story simply correct me? Am I making choices or am I following a path that was laid before I drew my first breath?" She looked at her hands, flipping them over. "Am I real? If I am a story... if I am words on a page?"
"So you're taking it well."
She turned, giving me a look that could have curdled milk.
"Sorry. Bad joke. But, honestly? You're doing better than I did. When I first got here I convinced myself the whole thing was a dream for like two weeks. Just walked around going 'this is a dream, this is a dream, I'm gonna wake up any second.' Spoiler alert: I didn't. So the fact that you skipped denial and went straight to acceptance is impressive. Good for you."
"You think this is amusing. You sit there and you make your jokes and you treat everything as though it is a game. I am telling you that I do not know if my life is real and you say good for you?"
"Okay, yeah, that came out wrong."
She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She stared at the ocean. The wind played in her hair.
"She is mad," Cruit said, quieter now. Controlled. Rebuilding the wall, brick by brick. "That witch. She is a lunatic. She speaks in riddles. None of what she said is real. None of it. My life is not a story."
"Ah." I leaned back on my hands. "Denial. Darn. Never mind."
"It is the rational conclusion that a woman like that is perhaps not a reliable source of —"
"Cricket. She's right. I know she sounds insane... but she's right. All of it. The story. The splitting. I've been living it. I know."
"How can you be certain?" Cruit stared at me.
"They tried for years, right? Your father and your mother. They prayed. They visited healers. They made offerings. Nothing worked. And then one winter, the coldest one in a century... your mother fell ill. And everyone thought she was dying. But she wasn't dying. She was pregnant. With you. They kept the pregnancy hidden because your evil uncle would have killed you if he knew they had an heir, because he wanted the throne to himself."
Cruit's face had gone white.
"How do you —"
"The night of the ball, the bard mouths off at the princess, makes a scene, but nobody was supposed to step in. Nobody was supposed to take his place. He was supposed to stay. In the castle. With you." I swallowed. "You were supposed to fall in love with him."
The wind whipped between us; she stared at me.
"Somewhere between the fighting and the hating, you fall in love." I pointed at myself. "I wasn't supposed to be there. I opened my stupid mouth and took his place and the whole thing went sideways."
"You are just repeating what—"
"It's a story! A fairy tale. A book." As I spoke, I waved my arms around wildly. "A children's book. The Princess and the Pauper. That's your story." I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder.
She pushed me away.
"Look," I said. "I know this is a lot. But we're gonna figure it out. Okay? It's gonna be fine."
She avoided looking at me.
"I mean it. We'll figure it out. I don't know how yet. I don't have a plan. But we'll figure it out." The wind picked up, and the waves crashed. "I promise, Cricket."
"Leave me."
"Can we just —"
"You lied to me," she said. "You lied. Every day. Every moment. You sat beside me and you lied about what you are and who you are and I —." Her voice caught. "I allowed you closer than I have allowed anyone. And you were a lie. Why should I trust anything you say?"
"I wasn't lying about everything."
"Which parts were true? Tell me. Which parts of the person I knew were real and which were costume?"
"The parts that mattered."
"You do not get to decide what mattered to me."
"I know that!"
She had no answer for that. Or she had one and wouldn't give it to me.
"Sooooo," I said, unable to stop myself. "You've got a crush on me? I mean, I get it. I'm very charming. Makes sense now. The chains, the dog collar, really romantic stuff. I see the appeal. Did the boar hunting do it for you? Was it when I caught the rabbit? Because I gotta be honest, Cricket, that rabbit thing was pretty smooth —"
"Stop it."
"You loooove me. You want to kiiiiss me. You think I'm cuuuute —" I was grinning. I couldn't help myself.
"STOP." Her voice broke, literally, and the redness on her neck spread to her cheeks. "You stand before me, having deceived me in the most fundamental way a person can be deceived, and your answer is to mock me?"
"I'm just trying to lighten the mood."
"You are making sport of me —." She stopped. "You are cruel. Crueler than I thought you were capable of."
"Cricket —"
"I am not in love with you. You are a commoner. A liar. A deceiver of the lowest order who wormed your way into my court and me —" Cruit stopped herself. "You are beneath me in every conceivable measure. My bloodline stretches back nine generations. Yours stretches back to a farm. And even if I were capable of such a lapse in judgment, which I am not —." Her chin was up. Her voice remained calm. "You are a woman."
There it was.
The smile faded away abruptly, as if someone had flipped a switch in my chest, causing it to disappear.
"Whatever I may have felt... whatever confusion that witch spoke of... it was born of a lie. I believed you to be a man. Whatever existed between us was built on that belief. And now that belief is —"
"Wrong," I replied flatly. "Because I'm a chick. Got it."
I knew this script; I could have performed it in my sleep. I had performed it in my sleep, waking up with it still playing behind my teeth, all the variations but none of the endings.
Amber Cassidy, eighth grade. "Cas, you're literally so cool. If you were a boy, I'd totally date you."
Jordan Wells, sophomore year. "I'm not like, into girls, but if I was? It'd be you." She said it drunkenly at a party, with her hand on my knee, and I sat there, thinking that maybe this time it meant something. On Monday, she ignored me in the hallway, as if our previous conversation had never happened. It was as if I didn't exist.
Reese. Junior year. We kissed behind the gym after practice. She cried, not because it was bad, but because it was good and she didn't want it to be. "I'm not gay, Cas. I'm not. You make it confusing."
Lyra, who kissed me first. Who touched my face and pulled me close, causing me, for just one foolish, impulsive, destructive instant, to entertain the thought that this time it might be real. That maybe someone had chosen me without any conditions. The next morning, I sat on the edge of the bed. She couldn't look at me. "I don't think this changes anything, Cas. I don't think this is what you think it is." The same old story, the same old knife. It just hurt more because I let myself believe it wouldn't come.
I was the confusion. I was always the confusion. The exception that had to be explained, the almost that never became enough. And now here, even in a fairy tale. Standing on a cliff edge, looking at Lyra's face on someone else's body, hearing the same rejection again.
"Let me guess," I said. My voice sounded wrong. "If I were a guy, this wouldn't be a problem."
Cruit blinked. "That is not what I—"
"No, go ahead. I've heard it before. I've heard it so many times I could set it to music. 'If you were a boy. If you were different. If you were anything other than exactly what you are.' Right?"
"You are twisting my words," she furrowed her eyebrows. "I said your deception is the issue. Not your—not what you—." Her lips were pressed tight.
"I understand fine. Trust me. I've been the girl that girls like you have almost loved my entire life. I'm an expert."
"You speak as though I owe you something," she retorted, her voice now icy. "As though your suffering entitles you to my affection. I owe you nothing. You came into my court under pretenses. You let me trust you. You let me believe—." Her tone caught. She suppressed it. "I extended to you something I have extended to no one, and you repaid me with deception."
"I didn't have a choice!"
"Everyone has a choice."
"Yeah? What was mine? Tell you the truth and get myself killed? That's the law here, right? You think I should've just waltzed up to you and been like hey, fun fact, I'm actually a girl, please don't kill me?"
"I would not have—" she seemed on the verge of tears, but I couldn't help myself.
"You don't know what you would have done. You don't even know what you're doing right now."
"I know exactly what I am doing."
"You're punishing me because you're scared of what you're feeling. For. A. Woman."
The silence that followed was heavy and still. We remained unmoving, and neither of us spoke.
"You know nothing," she whispered, "of what I fear."
"I know you've got Lyra's face and the same goddamn playbook."
Her eyes bored into me. "What are you talking about?"
"Forget it," I replied, my throat tightening. I stood up from the ground, brushing off the dust from my pants.
"You are impossible." Her voice was rising now, composure cracking, the ice melting into something hotter. "You are crude and you speak to me as though I am some village girl you can bully into—"
"I'm just telling you the truth and you can't handle it," I countered.
"I can handle anything you are capable of delivering, I assure you. I have handled assassins and rebels and a court full of men. I can certainly handle a foul-mouthed farmer's daughter with no title and no manners."
"LEAVE ME!"
"I'll stay and go where I please," I scoffed. "Your title means nothing here, princess."
"Then I will go." Her hands trembled visibly. She clenched them into tight fists. "I will go and you will stay and you will not follow me and—." She didn't finish. She turned and walked away. Fast. Not running but close. Her shoulders were rigid, her fists at her sides, and she didn't look back.
I stood there on the cliff for what seemed like an eternity. I pressed my hands against my eyes until I saw stars, trying to stop the tears. The same story. A different world. The same ending.