Page 13 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)
Hector
It’s that time again! Happily-Ever-After, the most magical time of the year, when wedding bells ring for the king- and queen-to-be.
But don’t be too sure! This just in, Prince Archie in love with the Captain of the Guard!
Exclusive to The Star, Prince plans to jilt the Common Princess and propose marriage to his lover over the dragon’s corpse! Full article on page eleven!
Rumors continue to circulate of a snafu in the selection process.
Heartbroken “real” princess Mildred Cheapstreet reveals all to The Star!
Good Witch Ida North, formerly Ida Moonshadow, implicated in the mix-up!
This paper wonders if a thousand years of magic has led to senility.
Should witches over the age of five hundred be compelled to retire?
—The Sorcerer’s Star
The Golden Dragon was the nicest hotel in Kingsmanor. Towers crowned with silver shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, bright as stars. A thousand crystal windows glittered like a goblin’s fever dream. The doors were gold-plated. Hector had seen it too many times to be awed.
But Tinbit shrank in his seat. “It’s like a mountain—a shiny, bright mountain.”
“It wasn’t always this high-rise,” Hector said. “This used to be farmland once upon a time.”
“Sometimes I forget how old you really are,” Tinbit said.
Sometimes Hector forgot too. Remembering made him feel old in a way his bones and joints didn’t quite feel, not yet, even on the coldest of winter mornings.
Once upon a time, farms came right up to the bailey.
Back then, the castle itself was a wooden building with fine buttressed ceilings made of rough-hewn fir with a thatched roof.
The Hall of Witches was the only stone building in Kingsmanor.
He’d been appointed Wicked Witch of the West there, an honor he still felt he didn’t deserve.
All he’d done was enchant dragons to make them harder for knights to kill.
He’d long felt that the knights had too much of an advantage over people who could only breathe fire to protect themselves.
He’d turned their scales into proper armor to give them a fighting chance.
Of course, that didn’t last long. Ida Moonshadow became the Good Witch of the North on the strength of her magic that gave an ordinary sword magical powers against dragon armor, a feat of metallurgy he could have appreciated if it hadn’t left him gnashing his teeth and scrambling for a new solution.
A hundred years later, they’d knocked down the old hall and paved the lot with cobblestones so a new, improved building could be raised.
A hundred years after that, they tore it down and built the new hall adjacent to the castle—largely because the king at the time wanted to make sure the enchanted sword went to his son, the crown prince.
No more sticking it in a stone to see which of the noblest knights were the worthiest of a Happily-Ever-After.
Despite Hector’s best efforts, he’d never managed to beat Ida’s enchantment on that damned sword.
He agreed; the sword stayed in the royal treasury in exchange for the promise that no more dragons would die.
The Hall of Witches had remained next to the castle ever since.
So much for the separation of magic and state.
He shrugged off the irritating memories like an old coat. “Are you meeting your young man tonight?”
Tinbit, still goggling at the building, shook his head. “No, tomorrow. He said his witch needed him tonight—something about a dinner she had to go to.”
Hector winced. “That will be Tara’s shindig. I hope she likes butter.”
Tinbit grunted. “Hector, do you think he’ll make me choose the wine? Shit, I don’t know anything about that.”
“A good pinot noir is never a bad choice,” Hector said. “Unless he orders fish.”
“He won’t. He’s allergic to fish.”
“Well then.”
“I didn’t realize it would be so grand,” Tinbit said in an awed whisper as the skeletal horses pulled up under the golden fabric canopy with a loud clatter of coffin bones.
“Wait until you see the inside.”
The skeleton coachman opened the door, and Hector stepped out onto the slick cobblestones. He eyed the liveried doormen with the kind of scorn he usually reserved for overdressed royalty.
“Is that unicorn horn?” Tinbit asked as they walked through the doors inlaid with a shimmering material giving off the faint glow of moonlight.
“No, it’s narwhal,” he said. The last of the unicorns had been rounded up centuries ago and put in a magical preserve to prevent their extinction.
The last mare still lived there. Her horn had been removed to save her life.
All the wild ones had been killed by the royal family on their magical game hunts.
The ones in captivity committed suicide.
It kept him awake some nights, thinking dragons might have gone the same way had he not protected them.
Unicorn Jubilee indeed. A thousand years and nothing had ever really changed when it came to the upper class.
Maybe princes no longer killed dragons, but the royal family was still the royal family—grabbing swords, power, and constantly making sure they kept witches and monsters in their places.
A footman with rough hands, dressed as splendidly as a duke that belied a farm boy come to town to make his fortune, carried their bags into the glass elevator.
“Where’s the dining room?” Tinbit asked, voice quavering.
The farm boy gave him a dismissive look. “Which one?”
“There’s more than one?”
“Yes. Where are you from, Westfale or something?”
Hector stepped in. “I’m Hector, the Wicked Witch of the West. My butler was inquiring about the Golden Dragon’s Claw. I have a hankering for frog legs tonight,” he added with a menacing glare.
The farm boy turned the color of buttermilk. “Third floor, down the hall, first door on your left. Would you like me to reserve you a table by the balcony or the fish tank?”
“Neither,” Hector said. “I’ll send for you when I’m ready to eat.”
The footman unlocked their door and bolted.
Tinbit chuckled. “Could you really turn him into a frog?”
Hector smiled. “I don’t do much transformation anymore, but I suspect I could still manage a bullfrog.
The trouble with frogs, though, they whine about wanting to be human right until they see water, and plop, off they go, and they never look back.
The ponds in this valley used to be swimming with half-human tadpoles. ”
He opened the room door.
“Wow.” Tinbit stood paralyzed.
Personally, Hector thought the place had come down a notch since the last time he’d stayed there.
The golden carpets looked cat-picked, and they rolled themselves up at the edges protectively.
Customers hunting for cheap souvenirs liked to take threads.
Do that often enough to sentient rugs and they started thinking about smothering you in bed.
He reached down and patted each one respectfully while Tinbit unpacked his own trunk and put his clothes in Hector’s wardrobe. He was still clearly overwhelmed.
“Who pays for all this?” Tinbit asked, eyeing the stained-glass wash basin and the silk sheets.
“The king,” Hector said. “Which means we pay for it. Taxes.”
“But they pay for our castle in the mountains too. Why isn’t it this nice?”
“Two reasons,” he said, unpacking his trunk and setting aside his best robe to air out for the Happily-Ever-After.
“First, I’m a man of simple tastes. Secondly, when one gets the pleasure of presenting one’s expenditures to a new king every half-century or so, a man soon finds that a king’s grandson doesn’t care quite so much about updating the plumbing his great-great-great-grandfather installed.
Ah, the mail.” A pile of it appeared on a fine cherrywood table that trotted over like an obedient dog when he beckoned.
“That reminds me, I need to leave a letter at the front desk for Hari, let him know I’ve arrived.”
“You do that. Then what about a late lunch? I’ll let you order for me.”
“Frog legs?” Tinbit grinned.
“I believe so.”
With a chuckle, Tinbit left Hector to finish sorting out his clothes and the mail.
Hector glanced at the headline on the complimentary paper, but it was the Sorcerer’s Star . He tossed it in the trash where it belonged.
The first letter came from Queen Annabeth—a command invitation for the Unicorn Jubilee dinner and reminding him about the Thieves/Rogues match on Moonsday and insisting that he wear his best robe.
Hector read it glumly. King Rupert he could usually handle, but Annabeth was a whole level of irritating he’d hoped to avoid.
He’d had the distinct displeasure of her company the entire time he’d had her dear husband in his dungeons educating him on what happens to heroes who break the rules.
On the whole, he thought she might have him beat when it came to torture—so much whining about everything from the bugs to the blood on the walls.
The rest of the letters contained requests for curses on ex-husbands, neighbor’s farms, wives, and ten concerning meddlesome mothers-in-law.
He burned these rather than feed them to the wastebasket.
He didn’t want to deal with a nauseated trashcan burping up paper scraps on the floor all night.
He’d eat his frog legs, turn in early, and tomorrow he would go to the game, Annabeth or not.
He didn’t want to mess up Tinbit’s date.
And he was wearing his Thieves jersey, damn it.