He did and it was like losing her again.
There was a strange beauty in Fiona keeping Elle safe for him.
But losing her once was bloody well enough.
“Aye,” he repeated and that one syllable was so rough, Elle pressed even closer and he felt her rest her forehead to his back.
Prentice took in a deep breath, lifted his head, opened his eyes and looked where he last saw Fiona.
I love you too, Fee, he said in his head, hoping his words reached her.
He only knew they did when she came back, he felt an icy touch glide along his jaw, Fiona’s touch, her fingers trailing there like they did time and again when she was alive.
Then they were gone.
And he knew she was too.
This time for good.
He pulled in another breath, long and deep and when he released it, with some effort and not a small amount of pain, he let his wife go.
Then he turned in Elle’s arms.
She tipped her head back to look at him through the darkness.
When her searching eyes caught his, he murmured, “Let’s get you home to the kids, baby.”
He watched her close her eyes and then he watched her head fall forward and hit his chest.
Then he watched as well as felt her nodding but she did it through a sob.
* * * * *
Fiona
“Are they okay?” Fiona asked Colonel Sanders Messenger Man as, her hand wrapped around his elbow, they whooshed through the streaking stars.
“They’re okay,” he answered.
Fiona bit her lip and then noted, “Prentice seemed –”
“He’ll be fine,” Messenger Man told her. “You’ve done your job well, Fiona. You leave them healthy, happy and safe.”
“That was hard on him,” Fiona whispered and she knew this to be true by the look on his face, the line of his body and because it was hard on her too.
Bloody hard.
Nearly unbearable.
“No one tells the handsome prince’s story but sometimes,” Messenger Man stated, patting her hand in the crook of his elbow, his touch warm and welcome, “it also isn’t so fun.”
“Nigel –” Fiona started.
“He’ll work harder not to go to black,” Messenger Man said firmly, giving her the knowledge that Nigel was very dead.
Fiona really should have taken his keys.
And she had no doubt his mission would be more difficult than hers and considering hers was bloody hard and he was a lunatic driven to attempt murder by his cow of a wife (still, he could have chosen a different path that didn’t include mayhem), she felt that was fair.
“Hattie –” she continued.
“The police and Dougal made it to Prentice and Isabella within five minutes of you leaving. Hattie Fennick will shortly know she’s lost her husband due to her fixation. How she copes with that, I’ve no idea. Beings have free will. I have no way of knowing how she’ll react. I do know that if she makes the foolhardy decision to remain in that village, her life will be an even less happy one.”
Fiona had no doubt of that either.
She decided to change the subject. “Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer at first and she turned her gaze from the streaking stars to look at him and see he was grinning.
“You said it, you know it…” he paused and his grin turned into a smile. “We’re going home,” he whispered on another squeeze of her fingers but she felt it, the warmth, and she saw it, the brightness and she looked forward as they whooshed through it and her first instinct was to laugh which she did, loud and long.
Because Messenger Man was right.
She wasn’t home.
She was home.
Finally.
Epilogue
Dance with Me
Elle/Fiona
Twenty-three years later…
Elle moved out of the room heaving with smiling, laughing, drinking people, most of their eyes on the handsome man with the beautiful woman in his arms swaying on the dance floor like they weren’t surrounded by hundreds of people who loved them but instead they were very, very alone, not just in the room but in the universe.
She moved gracefully but quickly down the hall in her high heels, stopping only to test the doors, finding most of them locked.
Near the end, knowing time was of the essence and getting desperate, she turned the knob to an unlocked door, sighed a grateful, relieved sigh and opened it to find a broom closet. Without delay, she located the light switch, flipped it on and slid inside, closing the door behind her.
She put her back to it, peered into the empty room and whispered, “I know you’re there.”
The room had no reply.
“Please,” she kept whispering. “For him. Tonight, especially. Please.”
Her eyes shifted around the closet, the shelves filled with cleaning products, piles of dust rags, the corners having brooms and mops resting upright, mop buckets on the floor but that was it.
Nothing else.
“Please,” she repeated, still in a whisper. “We haven’t much time.”
She waited and counted. One second. Two. Three. Four. She got to seven when the air started shimmering and her heart started beating faster.
Then she was there.
And Elle Cameron looked into Fiona Cameron’s ghostly eyes.
“Hurry,” she urged softly.
Fiona shook her head. “It won’t be pleasant. It might even be painful.”
Elle held Fiona’s eyes and repeated urgently, “Hurry.”
Fiona bit her ghostly lip.
“Fiona,” Elle begged, “hurry.”
With a deep breath she didn’t need to take in, Fiona nodded then she surged forward, her ethereal body penetrating Elle’s corporal one, Elle felt the shafts of ice cold slicing through every inch of her flesh, muscle and bone, the pain excruciating but she clenched her teeth and held on.
Then she closed her eyes.
When she opened them, it was Fiona who could see through Elle’s eyes.
Hurry, Elle said into Fiona’s head. It’s the next song.
“I know,” Fiona replied, turning, her fingers closing on the knob, feeling it in her hand, so solid, so real, so surprising when she was in this world, she hesitated.
Hurry! Elle cried into her head.
“All right, all right, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Fiona muttered, turning the knob, opening the door and sliding out of the room whereupon her ankle instantly twisted in the impossibly high heels Elle had on her feet. “Crikey, I see you never learned. How do you walk on these things?”
Just go, Elle retorted then added, But try not to break my ankle while you do it.
Fiona rolled her eyes but she went.
She was far more keen to get back to the ballroom than Elle was keen for her to do it.
Far, far more.
She made it just in time to hear the DJ announce, “And now it’s time for the father daughter, mother son dance. If the bride and her father and the groom and his mother could please take the dance floor…”
His invitation trailed off and Fiona moved toward the dance floor.
Then her human eyes saw Jason striding toward her, tall, handsome, his shoulders broad, his gait wide and confident, his muscled body looking very good in his tuxedo and her eyes filled with tears.
Not Elle’s tears, hers.
He looks so like Prentice when we were married, Fiona told Elle in her head.
I’ll bet he was beautiful, Elle replied.
You wouldn’t believe, Fiona told her.
Yes, Elle said softly, I would.
At Elle’s soft words, Fiona’s smile hit Elle’s lips.
It broadened when Jason arrived and he smiled down at her as he reached in and took her hand then lifted it and touched his lips to her knuckles before guiding her to the dance floor.
Her son was a gentleman and he was openly affectionate.
This did not su
rprise Fiona.
Then his arm closed around her as his hand brought hers up to press against his chest, his jaw dipped to press against the side of her head and the music started playing.
Held close to Jason, Fiona’s breath in Elle’s body hitched.
Jason heard it, his arm got tighter and his fingers around hers squeezed.
He tipped his head so his mouth was close to her ear.
“You okay, Elle?”
Fiona didn’t reply. She just nodded.
His fingers squeezed hers.
“I remember your wedding to Dad,” he whispered, moving her around the dance floor with strength, confidence and male grace. So like his father. Just like his Dad. “You danced with Dad to ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’.”
Fiona nodded even though she hadn’t been there for Prentice and Elle’s wedding. She hadn’t been back since she’d finally gone home.
Not until this special day.
But it seemed Elle had picked the perfect song.
“And Annie and Sally conspired so Sally could drop so many rose petals in the church that the pastor said they were still finding them a year later. Her flower girl basket was bigger than a breadbox and stuffed so full, she could barely carry it,” Jason went on, pulling her closer, swirling her around. “Do you remember?”
Fiona nodded again though she didn’t remember. Still, she thought it was sweet Sally and Annie did that. A little weird, but sweet.
“Sally had decreed that every heroine at the end of a fairytale deserves to walk on a bed of rose petals to meet her hero,” Jason continued before he chuckled and Fiona didn’t think it was weird anymore. Just sweet.
Oh, her Sally. She was sweeter.
“Annie and Sally definitely gave you yours,” he finished softly.
Fiona pulled in breath through her nose.
Then she turned her head slightly and whispered in her son’s ear, “And every handsome prince deserves a special gift too, when he finds his princess.”
“Still talking fairytales, Elle,” he muttered, his deep voice filled with humor. “I’m thirty-three, I know Sally grew out of them only about a month ago,” he teased. “But I’m also a man and I hate to break this to you, love, but I never grew into them.”
At that, Fiona felt it was time.
So she tilted her head back, Jason’s came up, she saw his devilish grin, her heart skipped and his eyes caught hers.
Then he came to a dead halt and his arm convulsed so tight she couldn’t breathe and his hand tightened in hers so hard she felt pain for the first time in over two decades.
He saw. He remembered.
She knew it.
He never forgot.
Never.
“Mum?” he whispered, his voice abrasive, thick, his beautiful eyes given to him by his father were shocked.
“Hello, love,” Fiona’s voice, not Elle’s, whispered back. “Congratulations, my darling.”
Jason stared into his mother’s eyes. Then he swallowed before his jaw got so tight, a muscle ticked there.
“How –?” he started, his voice still rough but Fiona couldn’t explain and there wasn’t time anyway.
She needed to use the little time she had wisely and make it perfect.
“I like her,” Fiona interrupted him, her eyes shifting to the pretty brunette twirling around the dance floor with her father all the while smiling happily up at him. Fiona looked back at her son. “We get news. She’s perfect for you.”
“Mum,” he whispered again.
Fiona nodded.
“Mum,” he groaned, let her hand go, that arm curved around her and both pulled her deep, holding her tight and unmoving on the dance floor as he buried his face in her neck.
Fiona held her son tight right back.
“She’s like you,” he murmured into her neck.
“I know,” Fiona replied in her own murmur.
And she did. Jason’s bride was a lot like Fiona.
“Just like you,” Jason stated fiercely, his words accompanied by a tight squeeze of his strong arms.
Fiona sighed and it felt really, really good because it was a happy one.
Then she turned her head and whispered in his ear, “I’ve not much time, my beautiful boy.” His head came up and his bright gaze caught hers. She lifted her hand to his strong jaw and prompted gently, “Dance with me.”
Jason Cameron stared into his mother’s eyes a moment then he nodded.
Then he took her hand, held it tight and pressed deep into his chest and he danced with his mother at his wedding, his beautiful, every-colored eyes never leaving hers.
* * * * *
Fairytales come with many different happy endings, for their heroines and their heroes.
And, that night, Jason Cameron got his.
* * * * *
Sally
Three years later, her eyes floating open, her head turning, her vision filled with Elly Belly sitting next to her hospital bed holding Sally’s newborn child.
Elle’s head came up from gazing lovingly at Sally’s beautiful baby’s face and Sally’s breath caught when she stared into her mother’s eyes.
And that was when Sally Cameron Ferguson got hers.
####
About the Author
Kristen Ashley lives in the beautiful West Country of England with her husband and her cat. She came to England by way of Denver, where she lived for twelve years, but she grew up in Brownsburg, Indiana. Her family and friends are loopy (to say the least) but loopy is good when you want to write.
Kristen’s Mom moved her and her brother and sister in with their grandparents when she was six. Her grandparents had a daughter much younger than her Mom so they all lived together on a very small farm in a small farm town in the heartland. She grew up with Glenn Miller, The Everly Brothers, REO Speedwagon and Whitesnake (and the wardrobes that matched). Needless to say, growing up in a house full of music, clothes and love was a good way to grow up.
And as she keeps growing up, it keeps getting better.
Discover other Titles by Kristen Ashley at Smashwords.com
Rock Chick Series:
Rock Chick
Rock Chick Rescue
Rock Chick Redemption
Rock Chick Renegade
Rock Chick Revenge
Rock Chick Reckoning
The ‘Burg Series:
For You
At Peace
Golden Trail
The Colorado Mountain Series:
The Gamble
Sweet Dreams
Lady Luck
Dream Man Series:
Mystery Man
Wild Man
The Fairytale Series:
Wildest Dreams
The Golden Dynasty
Fantastical
Other Titles by Kristen Ashley:
Lacybourne Manor
Mathilda, SuperWitch
Penmort Castle
Sommersgate House
Three Wishes
Connect with Kristen Online:
Official Website: www.kristenashley.net
Kristen’s Blog: www.kristenashley.net/menu/blog.html
Kristen’s Facebook Page
Follow Kristen on Twitter: KristenAshley68
Cover Art and Photograph by DM Ashley
Kristen Ashley, Fairytale Come Alive
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