The mask couldn’t muffle the vulnerability in his tone, and she dropped her hands and looked up at him with wet eyes. He was within arms’ length now and she reached out, running her hands up his chest before gripping the bottom of the mask and pulling it up and peeling it back. She laughed when it got stuck on his nose, forcing her to yank it to get him out of it.

Johan’s auburn hair was plastered to his head with sweat and his face was flushed, but his eyes were so bright and hopeful as he looked down at her.

“I know this is a bit presumptuous,” he said, and then that slow grin spread across his face.

“Yes. The story ends in Phokojoe’s favor.” She slipped her arms around his waist and looked up at him. “Imagine his luck, meeting a woman whose greatest desire is . . . him.”

His hands were sliding up her back now, rubbing at the tension beneath her shoulder blades.

“I’ll have you know that I’m a scholar of fairy tales,” he said. “I have a different reading of that ending. He wasn’t her greatest wish. She was his.”

They just stared at each other for a while, Nya enjoying the familiar solid bulk of Johan against her, even if he was sweaty and smelled like rubber.

“Why were we fighting again?” she asked eventually.

“Because we’re human, and have baggage that love doesn’t make disappear into thin air?”

Nya made a shocked face and pretended to pull away from him. “Eh! I thought you were a fox god! What trickery is this?”

Johan held her tight. “No trickery. I love you. And I know love is just the beginning of what it takes to make things work, but maybe we can try that? Making things work?”

His gaze was so earnest and so intense that she had to look away to think clearly. She rested her forehead on his shoulder. “I just came from seeing my father.”

His hold on her tightened. “Are you okay?”

She sighed, leaning into him a bit more. “He wasn’t really sick. And I was so mad that I–I lied to him. I told him I had lost all of his money.”

“That’s not so bad,” Johan said.

“I told him I would go see him again, but I won’t.” She pressed her forehead harder into his shoulder and one of his hands came up to stroke the back of her neck. “I’m cruel, aren’t I?”

“I think on the cruelty scale, using your possible death to make your daughter bend to your will is slightly higher.”

She let him hold her for a long time, let all of her emotions swirl inside her and then begin to settle.

“I’m sorry for making you feel awkward with the game thing,” she said, hugging him tightly. “I would have also been upset if I found out you were playing a game in which you date a bumbling girl from Thesolo.”

He pulled back to look at her, brows raised with interest. “Is there a game like that on the market?”

He was grinning, and she grinned, too. “You’re looking at it. Real-life three-dimensional dating simulation N.Y.A.—naughty young antelope.”

He laughed then, and even though she hadn’t been away from him for long, his laughter seeped into the parts of her that had become cracked under the knowledge that she might never see him again, filling those fractures.

She took a deep breath and met his gaze. “I want to be with you.”

“When?” he asked.

“Now.”

“Where?”

“Do you still have a kingdom?” she asked, remembering the referendum through her haze of happiness.

He glanced up and to the side. “Actually, I’m not sure. They were still tallying the votes when I left. But you are welcome to come back with me, even if it’s no longer a kingdom when we return. I have my own apartment, you know. It has a huge bathtub and several large mirrors.”

Nya’s cheeks warmed.

“I think we have a lot of details to work out, but the basics are you love me and I love you and we want to be together. Is this accurate?”

“Ouay,” Nya drawled.

Johan’s laughter was light, more carefree than she’d ever heard it. “We’ll figure this out. Together.”

“You should kiss me now,” she murmured, pushing up on her toes.

“Comme tu willst.”

His lips pressed against hers as a sudden rain shower drummed along the roof of the gazebo. When their mouths were bruised and their hurts were full, Nya held Johan tightly, like any person would hold on to their wildest dreams. He held her back, like he would never let her go.

Epilogue

Ten months later

Nya stopped into the coffee shop near Castle von Braustein as she had every morning for the last two months, having discovered that she enjoyed their pastries more than those served at the castle, where they spent a good chunk of their time since Lukas was heading off to California and their first year of college soon. The referendum had gone in the von Brausteins’ favor, and Lukas’s panicked attempt to manipulate it had resulted in better communication and new ideas of tradition—and intensive family therapy.

Nya had been going to therapy on her own and with Johan, and though they both sometimes struggled not to fling their baggage at one another, most of their time was spent, well, happily ever after.

Nya hovered in front of the café’s glass refrigerator, struggling over which pastry to choose as the barista made her caffeine-free mocha latte.