Page 88 of Five

“What?” I laugh, breathless. “We’re hiding in my room at Palladium House, Five,”

“I don’t care. I need this, Rory. I need this right now. I need you to say yes and make promises, and never forget them. Because you are the only woman I will ever love. You are the only woman I will ever marry. So even if it’s not legal, I need it.” He sits up, holds my face in his hands as his serious gaze bores down into my soul. “Give it to me.”

“I do,” I say, kissing him on the mouth. “I do, I do, I do.”

He grins down at me. And this might be the happiest I’ve ever seen him in like… well, ever. “Mrs. Aston.”

I nod yes. “I am your Mrs. And I always have been.”

He hugs me tight and rolls off to the side, still holding me to his chest. He whispers things in my ear as we drift off.

“We’ll live the perfect fairy tale, my queen. We’ll get the castle, and the carriage, and we’ll have the most beautiful little princes and princesses. And they will never have to know what it took to get it. They will never have to grow up and fix our mistakes. We will never let this world touch them. We’ll live in our little fairy tale land, and we’ll never leave.”

I fall asleep believing that we’re starting our once upon a time.

But it’s never gonna end with, And they lived happily ever after.

Because this new day—the day to end all days—is here with a vengeance. I wake up to pounding on the door of my Palladium House room knowing that’s all it is.

“Rory!” Mia’s frantic voice penetrates my sleepy dreams and jolts Five awake beside me.

“Shit,” he whispers, already out of bed, pulling his clothes on.

“Rory!” Mia’s screams are frantic. “Open up!” She pounds her fists harder to punctuate each syllable.

“I’m coming!” I yell back. Five disappears into my closet clutching his shirt, just as I yank the belt of my robe tight around my waist.

I run over to the door, throw one last glance over my shoulder to make sure Five is hidden, and open the door just as Mia is about to pound again.

But she stops. Her eyes are red and tears are streaming down her face.

“What’s going on?”

And that’s when I notice there are people coming up the stairs. Dozens of people.

“Tera!” Mia manages through her sob.

My eyes dart to Tera’s door, which is standing wide open down the hall.

And there’s that feeling I feel like I’ve been waiting for my whole life. The sick, twisted stomach in knots so tight, it’s choking on them. The feeling that something is very, very wrong here.

“What’s going on?” I ask again. But this time my question is drowned out by Kallie’s scream as she makes it to the door and sees what I can’t.

I push past Mia, who screams, “Don’t look, Rory!” and yanks on my arm to try to keep me from seeing what I must see.

Kallie is still screaming when Edward puts his hand around her mouth to make her stop. And there’s a part of me—even as I turn away to look inside Tera’s room—that automatically thinks, He did this. Whatever it is, he did this.

Tera is hanging from a beam up in her perfect vaulted ceiling. Her neck broken. Her body slack and limp.

Dead.

I back out of the room—or try to, because everyone is there in that same moment, preventing me from leaving.

Someone grabs my shoulders and I turn, thinking I need Five to hold me. But it’s not Five. It’s Frank.

“Shhh,” he says, petting my hair. “Come with me.”

But I snap out of it before he gets me more than a few inches past the threshold of Tera’s door and break away as I run towards my room. Because I know if I go with him right now, he’s gonna say something like, This is what happens when you try to run, Rory. So don’t run. Don’t put up a fight. Don’t ever think you’ll get away. Or you’ll end up like Tera Middleton, hanging by her neck from a two-hundred-year-old beam in the most perfect eating house mansion on the Street of Princeton University.