Mel didn’t know how long she’d been in the tub when she awoke, though her prune-like fingertips and the waterlogged pages of her book suggested it had been a while. The water had remained warm though – some trick of the hotel’s plumbing, she assumed, and stood in the claw foot tub, feeling a chill in the air on her wet skin. She wrapped a heated towel around her and sat on the window seat to rub apple-scented lotion into her skin, humming a tune, occasionally singing.

There was a sound down the hallway, a click, and then a soft knock on the bathroom door. A nervous voice called through the wood, “Hello?”

“Sorry!” Melanie replied, “Be out in a minute!”

She stood, and bent over, towel drying her hair quickly, rubbing the excess water from it, then slipping back into the red silk robe, gathering her belongings, and opening the door. A man was standing in the hallway, shower kit in his hand, his skin and hair speckled with paint. “Sorry, I, ah… I didn’t mean to rush you. Only, I needed to shower before dinner, and the studio? doesn’t have any facilities, and I thought the hall was empty tonight—”

Mel cut him off with a smile, “It’s alright. I think I’d turn into a mermaid if I stayed in there any longer. It’s all yours.”

She smiled again, reflexively, liking the way her face curved around the grin. Too many years with Matthew, not enough smiles. The artist grinned back, eyes darting to her chest briefly, then back up to her eyes. She would have laughed, but it seemed cruel, and it was nice to feel wanted. There was an extra sway in her step as she walked back down the hall to the Amelia room, feeling his eyes upon her. As she pushed her key into the lock, she turned back to him, and wiggled her fingers in a wave. He held up a hand, and gestured briefly, a wave or a shooing of something that buzzed gently around his face, then stepped into the bathroom. Mel pushed open her door, dropped her toiletries on the table, and pressed gently on the wood to close the door with the palm of her hand, hearing the click of the lock.

Click.

Click. Harsher, and not from the door.

She whirled around, her hand pulling her robe closed around her throat as she searched the room with frantic eyes.

“Hell, Mel.”

In the corner, seated in a wingback chair still draped with the clothes she’d flung off before her bath, sat Matthew. His left hand cradled a crystal snifter of an amber liquid – scotch, she assumed, and wondered why she had the sense to wonder – while his right hand leveled a gun at her, an old six-shooter, the click she’d heard the hammer pulling back.

Oh, god, she thought, Not now. Not here. She didn’t know to whom she was praying, or for what, exactly.

“You thought you could run?” he asked.

She shook her head, then cringed as he screamed back at her, “Answer me!”

“No,” she whispered, “I just needed… to get away.”

“From me?” His tone was incredulous, even as he waved the gun at her. “I saved you,” he reminded her. “Don’t you remember?”

And the truth was – no, she didn’t. There were flashes, sometimes, in the right light. A combination of smells that reminded her of before, images that flashed before her eyes – like the painting in the hallway, the butterfly on the side of the tub. The smell of apples, and summer lemonade.

“I brought you out,” Matthew continued, “and you have the gall to think you can leave me?”

“I just… I thought…”

“You thought, you thought! Mel, don’t think. It isn’t fitting. No one expects you to think.”

And for a moment, that was right too. She had never been expected to think for herself, just to go along with the others, the crowd, the court. The court? Matthew had saved her from something, but what was it? And did she still need saving?

Mel shivered against the heavy wood door, her hand still clutching the doorknob. What would the heroine of her book do?

When Matthew bent his head to sip again at the golden liquid in the heavy glass in his hand, she quickly turned and tried to pull the door open, but the glass shattered on the wood next to her head when he threw it, and he leapt across the room, his breath hot in her ear as she felt the cold barrel of the revolver against her bare neck.

“I don’t think so, Mel. Not going to fly away. Not anymore.”

With his other hand, he pulled at the neck of her robe and revealed her bare back, the curve of her spine, the two thin scars that marked her shoulder blades. “No more flying.”

A sob escaped her throat. It wasn’t fair. To have come this far – made it to the End, and now to have him find her, remind her of all she’d lost – it wasn’t right. It wasn’t… she couldn’t…

With a strength that surprised her, Mel jammed her elbow in Matthew’s gut as he laid a lecherous kiss on her shoulder, and pulled again at the door as he backed away in surprise and pain. The portal flew open, and she ran down the hall, away from the dead end bathroom, back towards the other rooms, other hallways, the painting, the library, the bar, the lobby.

The red silk robe was still tied around her waist, but her upper body was naked, and she tried to cover herself with her arms, not daring to slow down to pull the silk back into place. Her feet scrambled for purchase as she heard Matthew bellowing behind her, and as she turned to look behind, just for a second, she ran straight into someone else.

His hands held her still, and the world stopped as she raised her eyes to his face, and immediately remembering it all, lowered them. “My Lord.”

“Amelia? Mel?”

She hid her face in his broad, regal chest. Her king. His fingers tightened on her arms as Matthew turned the corner and raced down the hall to them.

“Get your hands off my wife!” he screamed, and for a moment, Mel felt sorry for him. And then it was gone.

His voice rumbled in his chest as he whispered to her, “Shush,” and gently moved her to the side of the hallway, where she watched through her hair as he transformed – the horns on his head growing, combining, becoming one sharp point –

Which Matthew ran onto, unable to stop. His face showed surprise, and then all expression, all light was gone. The King withdrew, and wiped the blood from his horns with a gesture that was regal, and as commonplace as brushing back a stray strand of hair.

“Amelia,” he crooned, and she went back to him, curling up in his arms, crying, the words spilling out of her, as his bloodstained hands ran across the scars on her back, tracing symbols.

Orange and black wings slowly unfurled, wet and growing. “Shush, now, my Amelia. It isn’t done yet. I still need to speak to The Management. Don’t be a trouble.”

Melanie – Amelia – Mel shook her head. No, she wouldn’t be any sort of trouble. Not anymore. Her wings fluttered. It was almost the End.

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