Page 11 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Hector

Dear Hector,

I know you aren’t one for visits, and I wouldn’t ask, but I must talk to you about Archie. No need for a formal visit—I’m attending the Rogues and Thieves game on Moonsday. I would be happy if you honored me by accepting these tickets.

Thanks,

King Rupert I

Hector hated travelling. This wasn’t like hopping on a broom for a quick ride to Goblin Town.

A trip to the capital city meant harnessing the undead horses, making sure the coach was properly enchanted with antitheft hexes, asking his banshee neighbor to water the greenhouse while he was gone, arming a few skeletons to ride post, and then sitting in the most uncomfortable seat outside of the Council chamber for two whole miserable days.

The coach rocked hard as it hit the millionth pothole, and his teeth slammed against each other.

King Rupert’s letter almost flew out of his hand.

Tinbit bounced halfway across his seat, cursing. “Dammit, Hector, you said you were going to fix this.”

Hector folded the letter, tucking it away in the pocket of his second-best robe for safekeeping, and adjusted the cushion under his backside. “I didn’t see the sense in pulling ogres off duty for road work. Besides, heroes can use a few more hemorrhoids in their lives.”

Grumbling, Tinbit shoved his pillow into a comfortable position.

The poor gnome had been up until midnight making arrangements for their week away from the castle, and as most places on Hector’s side of the kingdom weren’t equipped with crystal balls, that meant summoning carrier bats for reservations.

At least there’d been no need to do that for the hotel in the capital city, although he remained uneasy about that.

The Golden Dragon was Ida’s favorite hotel. Well, maybe he wouldn’t see her there.

“It’s almost time for afternoon tea. Would you like to stop and stretch?”

Tinbit’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit. I forgot to pack your favorite tea.”

“Don’t worry about it.” His stomach would rot on the swill they made in the village. But the gnome had been so stressed.

“It slipped my mind,” Tinbit said. “I was trying to decide what flowers to send to Hari. A rose? But what if he thinks that means I’m in love with him? What if I’m not? Maybe a poppy. But poppies make people sleep, and he might think I want to go to bed with him. Argh!”

Hector chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll find the flower that says what you want it to say.”

“Yeah, aconite. I can poison myself and make a quick getaway in a healer’s wagon.”

“Are you truly that nervous about meeting this man?”

Tinbit folded his arms over his chest moodily. “Haven’t you ever wanted to make a good first impression on someone?”

“Can’t say that I have.” Maybe Ida. But he’d been younger and considerably more foolish back then.

“Daisies. Yeah. Not too formal. Friendly,” Tinbit muttered to himself.

Hector almost suggested gardenias. If he remembered his language of flowers correctly, gardenias meant ‘go away.’ Or was that sweet peas?

He couldn’t remember anymore. Centuries had passed since he’d read a book on the language of flowers for his examination as a Cardinal Witch. He’d not had cause to use it since.

“What are you going to do when you aren’t at the Happily-Ever-After?” Tinbit asked. “You made me turn down every invitation, even the one to the Gardening Club.”

“I’m a Wicked Witch. I’m supposed to be unsociable.

” It hurt him to turn down the Gardening Club.

They’d wanted him to speak on “Sentient Plants and Their Special Requirements.” He’d planned to bring his sensitive fern.

But Ida would definitely go to the Gardening Club.

If he could get out of the Prince’s Dinner, perhaps he could avoid her altogether except for the Happily-Ever-After.

He fingered the king’s letter. “The Rouge Rogues are playing the Marketown Thieves on Moonsday. I’ll go to that. ”

“That’s one night out of three. You can’t just lie around in the hotel and do nothing.”

That was exactly what he planned to do. It was all he ever did on these trips to the capital city. Entertainment could be found there, but none that entertained him. “You know how boring I’ve gotten in my old age. Turn in every evening at eight, and seven if it’s dark out.”

Tinbit eyed him distrustfully.

“You packed my swim trunks. I can go to the spa.” He wouldn’t be caught dead in those things.

He was a good-looking man for his age, but his knees were knobby and he was somewhat bowlegged, a sequela from riding a broom for most of his younger years.

He’d hate to see anyone turned to stone for staring at his legs.

“I wish you’d get out more,” Tinbit said. “I’d hate knowing you’re lonely.”

“I’m never lonely.” It wasn’t the truth, not exactly, but after nine hundred ninety years, he’d learned not to bother his butler with trivial things like how he sometimes paced his bedroom at night, about the doses of belladonna he was taking for his insomnia now, or bigger things like the pit of despair inside at the thought of losing someone so dear to him as Tinbit to that monster called love.

He grabbed another cushion, shoved it under his head, and closed his eyes.

Darkness had fallen when the coach stopped in the largest town on the border of his evil realm. As he stepped down, he took a long breath of the fog drifting in from the marshes, a pleasant stench—herbal, rotten, with a hint of blood. People who lived here grew up strong and tough on such an aroma.

A thug was busy gutting a man in the shadows beside the inn door.

He looked up with an eye for a new victim, but Hector’s bodyguards, both tall skeletons with heavy jaws and heavier punches, flexed their clavicles and pounded their bony phalanges against their equally bony metacarpals. The man slid back into the dark.

The lawlessness was part of the place too, like the smell.

But it bothered Hector that the townsfolk didn’t stop at terrorizing visitors.

He’d always hoped they would band together instead of murdering each other.

Over the years he’d gotten goblins to unionize and set up pensions for their elderly, the dragons to quit cooking knights à la carte, and the giants, bless them, were well on their way to outlawing the murder of anyone named Jack.

But ordinary humans didn’t seem to understand it wasn’t nice to knife each other for no good reason.

Tinbit stuck close to Hector as they walked the distance from the stable to the inn.

Once inside, Tinbit took Hector’s coat while he waited a respectful distance from the fire.

His burns were still somewhat sensitive.

The décor appeared in good order for an evil tavern—bright fire, greasy tables, a few tired men by the bar, and a maid who looked quite capable of moonlighting as an assassin.

The smoky air irritated his throat, and he coughed into his elbow.

He didn’t want the innkeeper to think he disapproved.

Tinbit came back from the desk with their room key. “I’ve asked them to bring the food upstairs and confirmed we’ll be putting our own hexes on the doors and windows, and I asked for a dehumidifier for the damp. Sorry about this—they didn’t have a non-smoking room.”

“It’s quite all right,” he said, noting with approval the man with a long pipe in the darkest corner. “Give that man a tip,” he said. “He’s the best dark and brooding stranger I’ve seen in a while.”

The upstairs room was only slightly less smoky than downstairs, but a quick spell applied to the large, ornate four-poster immediately stunned the bedbugs.

“I hope you don’t mind sharing,” Tinbit said apologetically as the assassin laid out their evening repast on the table. “I didn’t feel comfortable taking a separate room.”

“I don’t kick too hard,” Hector said, adding a few more gold coins to the oak tray for the maid’s trouble.

Over the centuries, he’d learned a healthy tip was key to staying healthy in a place like this.

He noted how she removed the wine carafe immediately and promised to bring a fresh one—there was a fly.

Yes, and a lovely quantity of poison hemlock.

He’d make sure he mentioned that in his review.

“I’ve been thinking about our reservations in the capital,” he said. “I wish you would let me upgrade them to two rooms. I feel I might be a distraction.”

“No—don’t,” Tinbit said, blushing. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, but I’m counting on you to keep me honest. You know what I’m like.

I don’t want to get into a situation where he asks me if I have a room and I’d need to lie.

I don’t know how this is going to go.” He hopped up on the bed and sat, legs dangling.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said yes to this meeting, but if there’s a chance…

well.” He sighed. “You’re lucky, Hector.

You don’t have a heart to lose anymore.”

“That is one of the perks of being a witch,” he said, smiling.

He didn’t tell Tinbit the rest of it, the part about how much it hurt, cutting his own heart out, locking it in a stone box, and hiding it away from the world.

He’d buried it under a magnificent apple tree in his garden long ago, the first time he lost someone dear to him.

He ought to have destroyed it then. It was clearly a liability, but something about stabbing it, burning it, or simply blasting it out of existence seemed so…

final. And if it had hurt so much to take it out, how much worse would it be to destroy it?

He pushed the memories away. “Now, how about dinner?”

After the dinner, which Tinbit refused to eat—too many mushrooms, any one of them might be an amanita—Hector lay down next to Tinbit, listening to the gnome’s squeaky little snores.

He watched the fire burn on the hearth, sending out a strong, smoky aroma of pine, and thought about the ashes of the letter he’d written to Ida, still sitting in the grate at home.

A moment’s weakness, that’s all it had been. A moment’s weakness, not a feeling that for the second time he’d cut something out of his life that hurt as bad as his heart.