Page 8 of Ever After Between the Lines (Montgomery Ink Legacy)

Chapter Seven

STONE

I’d gotten my first tattoo when I was fifteen years old. My father had sat me down, and the Kingdom’s artist had branded me. I wore their ink on my flesh and their scars on my memories. But not my soul anymore.

I wasn’t that man anymore.

It had been a year since the cops had come. Since everything had changed.

The Kingdom hadn’t sent another man. We hadn’t even heard from them. The Knight was still in jail, the Rook having gotten out on a technicality, but he hadn’t come by either. Last I had heard, the King had sent him off, exiled him for failing to get me. For failing to get Sarina.

In the end, it didn’t matter because they wouldn’t be coming for us anymore.

I had gotten a few more tattoos since, mostly all of them thanks to the Kingdom itself. You wore your ink on your body to prove who you were to those in charge, and I wasn’t with them anymore.

The only tattoo I’d ever gotten for myself was a small S hidden among my sleeve.

An S for Sarina, though some had thought it was for me.

I hadn’t begrudged them on that or made them think anything different.

Now this ink was for me.

I let out a deep breath, letting the Montgomery behind me have as much space to work with as possible. We were covering up the brands that were from the Kingdom that had nothing to do with my present or my future.

Doing coverups were a lot more fucking painful than the tattoos to begin with, but I didn’t mind. If this were my penance to pay for the mistakes I had made in the past, I would freely pay them.

Sarina sat in the next booth over, a woman with dark hair with pink streaks bent over and working on her back. Sarina was getting ink for herself, not a coverup, like me. She could focus on her future ink and paths, while I still had a long way to go working my way through my sins.

We were making this work for the two of us. Though I wasn’t sure what would happen next, we would find a way to make all of this work. We were already well on our way to doing so.

We weren’t the people we had been years ago. And for that, I was grateful.

I had been young, rash, and stupid the first time I had been with Sarina.

Now I was making choices for myself, and we were finding our path together.

She wore my ring on her finger and would soon carry my name as well.

She grinned up at me, and I smiled back, ignoring the pain as Austin went over the mark, again and again, doing his best to cover up the sins of my past.

I had fallen in love with Sarina long before I realized what love was.

She had been my salvation, my path, my future.

And now she was the promise I had never meant to make, the promise I had thought a dream.

The Kingdom was long gone. We were never going back.

In the end, however, she was my empress, my queen, my everything.

And I was one lucky son of a bitch.

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