Happily

It didn’t last.

They married at midnight; then he left the fairy tale for affairs of state. She wasted away in the palace; his servants saw a scullery maid, not a princess.

He died in a hunting accident the morning she found herself pregnant. Fever took the baby.

She was married off to an aging baronet who enjoyed the cachet of a pretty former princess. His adult children hated her, calling her “the wicked stepmother.”

The magic faded and never returned.

As she slipped from the story into long, grey life, she wondered how “happily ever after” could end so soon.