The Urban Fantasy Anthology (Peter S. Beagle) (Kitty Norville 1.50)

He sighs. “Why did you have to follow me?” he asks.

I have to laugh. “I thought you were having an affair.”

“If you’d trusted me—”

“What? We could have happily lived a lie for a while longer?”

“It wasn’t like that for me.”

I shake my head. “You knew everything about me, but it turns out I didn’t know the first thing about you. Was everything you told me a lie?”

“No, I just didn’t give you all the specific details.”

“Like what?”

He shrugs. “We don’t have a cottage—we have a lakeside palace. I didn’t go to a one-room country school, but we did have a small class with a private tutor.”

“Kind of a big difference.”

“I truly do love you.”

“Yeah, well, I saw The Little Mermaid. You could have given up all the magic and stuff to be with me.”

“I would have—but that isn’t an option for royalty.”

“Right. Prince Edric.”

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” he says.

I shake my head. “No, I have the right to make this as hard on you as I want.”

He nods. “I suppose you do.”

I don’t want it to be like this. Moments ago I was so angry—I’m still angry—but we had so much love between us. We gave each other seven years of our lives. You don’t just walk away from something like that without trying to fix it.

I take a breath to steady myself.

“There’s got to be a way around this,” I say.

“There isn’t. If there was any way I could fix it, I would.”

“So you’re just going to walk away from me—from what we have. Had.”

“If I don’t, they’ll hurt you. I won’t let that happen.”

“We’ll go to the police…” I start to say, then realize how stupid that has to sound.

“And tell them what?” he asks. “They could hide us away, but the Court would find us. There’s no place we could go that they wouldn’t find us.”

“And they would really hurt us—like kill us or something?”

He studies me for a long moment, then nods.

“I should go,” he says.

I feel empty. And the only thing I can find to fill that emptiness is anger.

“Yeah,” I tell him, my voice sharp. “They’ll all be waiting on you.”