Page 17 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)
Hector
Once upon a time, the royalty insisted on having their sons and daughters cursed for their sixteenth birthdays.
I always refused. I saw no good reason to give a perfectly healthy prince an obsession with golden apples or a princess an unreasonable shoe size that would mean she’d always need custom orthotics.
Plenty of hedge witches deal in that kind of chicanery.
A Wicked Witch charged with maintaining the magic of Happily-Ever-After has far more important matters to think about.
A Thousand Years of Wickedness: A Memoir
Hector West
Ida didn’t look a day over five hundred.
Her hair floated ethereally around her shoulders, still colored the strange shade of mutable red Hector called rose-gold, red in some light, almost golden in others.
The faint silver traces didn’t make her look like the mangy old badger he’d become.
They made her look wise, sophisticated—every inch the Good Witch.
Some people had all the luck when it came to aging.
“Archie! Come over here, son,” Rupert boomed.
He had grown. Hector wasn’t a small man, but the crown prince moved out of the crowd of the swooning ladies-in-waiting like some graceful stag emerging from the mists of swirling evening gowns.
He had Annabeth’s blond hair and blue eyes, but he’d inherited his father’s muscular upper body and thighs—extra apparent since he was wearing the most confining set of trousers Hector had ever seen outside of a torture chamber.
But above them he wore the matching vest to go with his father’s dragon coat.
Not “that” changed then. Hector fixed a false smile on his face.
“Father. Wickedness.” Archie’s voice was melodic, clearly trained—or borrowed. Hector thought he remembered something about his mother bamboozling a mermaid.
“I was just telling Hector how much you were looking forward to tomorrow,” Rupert said. “Got your armor all picked out for the big day?”
“Caedan picked it out for me,” Archie said in a bored tone. “But I’d rather it had come a month later. I’m missing the golden bird hunt for this.”
“There will be other seasons to hunt birds,” Rupert said with a hint of irritation. “This is your destiny, son. Tell him, Hector.” He turned to Hector with a bright grin on his face.
“Tell him what?” Hector asked, equally irritated. What was Rupert playing at?
“What you told me, of course! When I was in the dungeon!” Rupert grabbed Hector around the shoulders and shook him. “About how this was destiny, me and Annabeth, how the whole country depended on our Happily-Ever-After, how I couldn’t flinch from my duty because it was destiny. It. Was. Destiny.”
Oh, yes. That little talk. Well, spiders in one’s armor tended to make a man regret all his life choices, including marriage. Rupert had been rather a mess by that point in his punishment. But in Hector’s opinion, Rupert had deserved every last bite.
“I know that,” Archie said in that bland, emotionless tone. “You’ve told me that story a thousand times, Dad. What I want to know is why I have go through this charade—a quest, killing a dragon, rescuing a princess—when you just plan to marry me off to this girl anyway. It’s stupid.”
“Marry you off—son, this is Happily-Ever-After! Look at me and your mother, and how happy we are!” Rupert smiled at Annabeth, chattering away at a rate to make an auctioneer jealous. “You’re a very lucky young man.”
Archie stared at his own father with something akin to flabbergasted annoyance.
Hector smiled grimly. Rupert and Annabeth, wed until death did them part, would never see the other as anything but their perfect match.
Wonderful stuff, Happily-Ever-After, he supposed.
For himself personally, he preferred to see people as basically flawed but worth his affection, like Tinbit.
And Tinbit certainly felt the same way about him—never wasted an opportunity to let Hector know when he was being unreasonable.
Hector reached into his pocket and touched the glass marble he’d brought with him.
Still cold. Tinbit, wherever he was right now, didn’t need to talk to him.
***
He’d insisted on taking the pocket glass before he left. “What if—and this is simply hypothetical—this gnome doesn’t show? What will you do?”
“I told you,” Tinbit said, in a morose tone. “I’ll watch the game on the crystal.”
“All the same, I’d feel better if you had a way to contact me.
” He reached into the folds of his best robe and found the magical travelling pocket connected to his desk drawer at home.
Groping around, he pricked himself on the nib of his writing pen and upset a bottle of ink before he found them, a silken bag filled with two marbles of astonishing moonlit brilliance.
He took one and put it in his pants’ pocket.
The other, he gave to Tinbit. “You call me if anything—and I mean anything—comes up. Let me know what’s going on so I can come back if I need to. ”
Tinbit took the marble grumpily.
“And, of course, if I need to take my time coming back, well…uh…”
Tinbit turned crimson. “That won’t be happening.”
“Of course not,” Hector said, trying to smile. But he knew Tinbit. If things went well, that might happen, and he didn’t want to walk in on his gnome having sex again. Once was enough.
***
Hector stuffed the cold marble back in his pocket and tried to concentrate on what Archie was saying.
“Look, I don’t mean to buck a thousand years of tradition, but I don’t see why we’re still doing this.
I mean, why does it have to be a commoner?
There are a lot prettier people in this world.
” The prince glanced back at the serving table where Ida stood, the only normally dressed person in the disturbingly elaborate swirl of ladies in long gowns and noblemen dressed in their very best. The tall guard who had saved Hector from the Pixarati was there too, nibbling politely at a slice of cake whiter than the plate it was sitting on.
Hector resisted the urge to call out a warning.
The stuff should come with a skull and crossbones label.
Rupert’s voice became stern. “It’s for the good of the kingdom!
Marrying a commoner is an excellent antidote to magical birth defects and whatnot—no lingering curses by fairies, wicked witches, and so forth.
Plus, you don’t have to watch them around sharp objects like spinning wheels because of Hector’s narcolepsy spells.
It’s a good deal, son. Plus, it makes the people happy. ”
“I’ve never cursed a princess like that,” Hector protested.
“Come off it, Dad. We both know my enchanted marriage isn’t going to make anyone happy—it’s tax breaks, it’s keeping the miners in the Mystic Mountains from unionizing, it’s making sure nobody knows the hurling games are rigged—not Happily-Ever-After!
It’s an archaic custom that’s had its day like the witches who came up with the damned magic in the first place. ”
Rupert gasped and glanced furtively at Hector. “Archie—”
“Excuse me.” Archie turned his back on them and glided back to the table. The ladies swarmed him like moths to a candle.
Rupert sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with him, Hector. I really don’t.”
Hector’s face was burning. Had its day like the witches who came up with the damned magic…what were royal princes learning these days? Clearly, not history. At least Alistair knew why he had to participate. Archie didn’t seem to have a clue. He cleared his throat. “It’s normal for a man to have—”
“Cold feet, yes. I had them. I had no idea what Annabeth would be like or if that nasty stuff I had to drink would make me love her as much as I do. But this is different.” Rupert flopped into a chair and patted the seat next to him. “Game’s starting.”
Hector sank into the plush seat. The hurling game was now not remotely interesting.
Rupert’s eyes never left his son, eating cake with the tall guard. “Tell me you’ve got a pep talk for this, Hector. I’m at my wit’s end. I kept hoping he’d come around, but he says he isn’t going to go through with it.”
“Not go through with it?” Hector gaped. “But…but it’s his duty!”
“I know, right? It started last year—this foolishness of his. I blame his friends, filling his head with all this progressive nonsense, especially that one.” Rupert jerked his head irritably in the direction of the tall guard, now hovering behind the prince like a buff bodyguard.
“Ever since he arrived, Archie’s been moody.
He spends hours hanging out with the guards, or in the library reading.
” He shuddered. “Not normal at all. At least he’s still into hunting and hawking, or I’d think he’d been enchanted or something.
I tried to get him interested in the dragon fight—I told him to go for the wings, that’s where I cut the one that had Annabeth.
Even made a big deal out of giving him Excalibur 350 for the battle.
Maybe that will put the fervor for being king in his veins—something had better. ”
Gods. Hector’s face had to be on fire, it burned so much. “I hope you also told him that it’s illegal to wound the dragon.”
Rupert waved his hand carelessly. “Rules are only rules if people catch you breaking them. Frankly, between you and me, I wish he could kill the monster like in the good old days. Boy needs to grow up—get off his horse and back in the castle where a king belongs. He spends all his time with that Caedan. He put this foolish notion of what the people want in Archie’s head—taxing the rich, free education for the masses, even a parliament.
A parliament of commoners! Can you imagine that? ”
A niggling doubt crept into Hector’s mind like an unwelcome spider. “I thought I saw something in the paper—”