Page 114 of This Princess Kills Monsters

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“All right, yes, I hate traveling,” I admitted. “But I do likereaching a destination. Want to show me around Ecossia? I’ve never been there.”

Sam smiled. “I’d love to. And where after that?”

“Who knows?”

“East of the sun and west of the moon?”

“It’s not that great,” I said. “The trolls aren’t good company, and the food is terrible.”

I would come back to Skalla someday, I had no doubt. My family lived there. Perhaps it would just be for a visit, if I fell in love with Ecossia’s windswept moors as strongly as I’d fallen for Sam. Or perhaps we’d return to Skalla after years away and clean out the little cottage where my father and mother had lived. I could offer my skills as an apothecary. Or a sorceress.

“Once upon a time,” I murmured, “when the world was younger and the horizon was a little wider, a princess ran off with a huntsman into the great and boundless unknown….”

“Sounds like an intriguing story,” Sam said.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

I linked my arm through his and clutched the four-leaf clover in my hand. Sam and I stepped into the garden, where the rest of my family waited to hear my tale.

It didn’t feel like I was walking into happily ever after. Not exactly. Those are reserved for the ends of stories, and this was the beginning.