“God, you’re smart.”
“If I were smart, I wouldn’t have eaten those bloody berries. And I wouldn’t have lied about it. I would have fessed up straight away so you could have mixed up some magic elixir or something.”
I’m about to tell her I’m in love with her, but before I can, she looks down at my ankle and gags. “We should go. You need a hospital.”
With that, she gets up and sets back along the road, dragging the useless lump of man behind her.
* * *
Dark clouds move in as evening draws near. The sky grows dark and it starts to pour, making the ground slippery and Arabella’s task much more difficult as mud cakes itself to the stretcher, adding extra weight. We’re both drenched by the time the sound of cars and voices can be heard above the pounding rain. Arabella uses what I’m certain is the last of her strength to drag me up one final, muddy hill. She stops when we get to the top and I hear her breathing hard. “We made it, Will.”
“It’s them!” a man shouts.
Suddenly the sound of camera shutters clicking, feet running, and people yelling takes over the quiet of the forest.
“We need an ambulance!” Arabella yells.
“Princess Arabella!” Dylan’s voice overtakes everyone else’s, and I turn my body so I can see what’s happening. Dylan is hurrying next to her while Tosh aims a camera at her face and Mac holds the boom mic over her head.
“Ambulance, now!” Arabella barks.
“Sure, sure,” Dylan says. “But first, can you tell us how you feel now that you lost?”
Arabella reaches out with her left arm, grabs Dylan’s face and shoves her hard. My mouth drops as I watch Dylan fall back and land in the mud. Arabella waits until she stops skidding, then says, “That’s how.”
Mac and Tosh burst out laughing and Arabella keeps going.
“Yes! Love that passion!” Dylan yells from the ground. “Great television!”
“That was great, all right,” Tosh says.
“She totally had that coming,” Mac adds.
A siren sounds nearby, and soon, an ambulance pulls up next to us. Arabella stops and drops the reins, then I hear her telling the paramedics what happened.
Tosh comes up to me with the camera. “Saved by a princess, hey?”
“Yup.”
Mac walks up and glances at my ankle. “Wow, that is disgusting.”
“What, this?” I ask. “It’s nothing.”
“Enough chitchat,” Arabella says, walking over to us. She smiles down at me while the paramedics get to work. “Told you I’d be carrying you out of here.”
Chuckling, I say, “So, you did.” I reach up and take her hand, squeezing it. “You’re amazing, Belle.”
“Step aside, please, miss,” one of the paramedics says.
I look up at him. “She should be taken to the hospital too, for exhaustion.”
He glances at me, then points to a small group of people who are coming toward us on foot. I recognize the man at the front of the pack from his picture on Avonia’s money. King Winston.
The paramedic looks down at me. “I think they’ve got her covered.”
A moment later, I’m lifted onto a gurney and the medical crew rushes me into the back of the ambulance. The last thing I see before the doors close is Arabella waving at me as a crowd of reporters surround her.
31
