The Princess Protection Program #2: After Ever After by Alex London

Author:Alex London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2024-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Once Upon a Second Time

Uponatimes were the portals between the fairy-tale world and the real world. Each story had its own, and they seemed fearsome and ferocious, until you faced them, the way Rosamund had taught all the princesses to do. After facing them, they still looked fearsome and ferocious, but, it turned out, they were merely Doors of Opportunity. DOs were ways to return to your story when you were ready to do something. Nothing to fear if you were ready to look your story straight in the eye.

Rana did not feel ready to look her story straight in the eye, but the Uponatime had arrived, and the After was out there somewhere, and she had to do something. She had to go back whether she was ready or not.

It’s just for a little while, she told herself. Not forever. Or ever after. I’m just going to find the witch, learn how to stop the After, and return here, to my real life. That’s all. No one is making me. I’m choosing to. This is my decision.

Her little pep talk, however, had failed to make her feet move.

More than any frog-headed monster or shadowy After, Rana feared the world she’d come from, with its high walls, its endless rules, and its crushing loneliness. She feared the kind of person that world had made her, and she feared being trapped in that life again.

“Amazing!” Skyler gasped, peering into the Uponatime’s mouth, which was now an open door. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

Skyler was not at all afraid of what she saw, though the sight chilled Rana to the bone. It was her bedroom in the castle, with its large canopy bed carved in intricate patterns from one giant tree. There were silk tapestries on the walls showing unicorns and butterflies and glorious sunrises. The tall windows around the room were flung open for a view of the floral meadows around the castle, where the sun was setting in brilliant reds and oranges and purples.

“It’s like a scene from a fairy tale,” said Skyler, and Rana gave her a side-eye. “Oh right,” the girl squealed. “It is!”

“What’s wrong, Princess?” Sebastian asked Rana. “You look frightened of your own bedroom.”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she told him. Even though everyone could see that she was, literally, at this exact moment, shaking in her boots.

“I can accompany you, my princess,” Sebastian offered from his perch on Skyler’s palm.

“Me too!” Skyler added enthusiastically.

Rana shook her head. “The witch who turned you into a frog probably won’t be keen on helping you out now, would she?”

The frog looked down, but said no more.

“I can do this,” she told them. “I’ll see you all very soo—” She froze. Her face went white as a new tooth, and her mouth opened without sound. But it wasn’t from magic. It was older and more powerful than any spell.

It was terror.

A shadow had risen behind Skyler and stood faceless and silent, arms outstretched on either side of her head.

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