Page 20 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Hector

The role of the four Cardinal Witches encompasses these aspects of magic deemed too dangerous or delicate for average licensed witches:

Rules and Regulations, Council of Witches, Role of Cardinal Witches

Hector left the stage in a hurry. His scrying mirror was in the coach along with all his luggage—he didn’t intend on staying in the capital city one hour more than necessary, not after last night.

He’d had Tinbit check out of the hotel and see to the loading of the coach first thing that morning.

Whenever the gnome was deeply upset, the best way to keep him from brooding was to give him something to do.

The nerve of Ida North, having her servant seduce his!

It would be like her to brush a love potion on the letters, a patently illegal thing to do.

He wished Tinbit hadn’t burned all of Hari’s letters last night in the hotel fireplace.

If he could prove she’d done it, he’d haul her up in front of the Council and censure her for the next century over it.

She deserved it. Tinbit was utterly undone.

***

At first Tinbit refused to believe him. “Wait a minute,” he’d said, waving his hand, grin fading from his face. “Hari is Ida North’s manservant?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You do realize Hari is a common name for gnomes. Granted, he’s a lot less hairy than most Hari’s I’ve met, but—”

“Tinbit—”

The gnome began to pace, wringing his hands. “No! It’s not true. I don’t believe you.” He turned to Hector, his face a mask of fury. “I’m telling you, you’ve got the wrong guy. Nobody who gives a blowjob like that works for a good witch!”

His cheeks burned, but Tinbit was truly upset. Best keep it matter-of-fact. He didn’t want Tinbit weeping. “I’m sorry, but there’s no mistake. She said she saw you with me in the garden.”

Tinbit froze. “He came?”

“It seems so.”

Tinbit began to shake. “Oh, Gods, Hector. Tell me it’s not true. I haven’t been like that with a man in forever. Everything was right, it was—” Tinbit stopped, staring at him. “Well, I guess you couldn’t understand that, being a nine-hundred-ninety-year-old virgin.”

Hector flinched. “No, I guess I couldn’t. But it’s true.”

Tinbit wilted. He dropped on the bed and covered his face.

Hector’s professionalism dropped like the facade it was.

This was Tinbit—his Tinbit. He sat down beside him, and wrapped the little gnome in an embrace.

“Tinbit, Tinbit, honey, please don’t cry…

I’m so sorry. If I’d known Ida would do something like this…

she’s supposed to be a good witch, but I suppose when it comes to getting back at me, she doesn’t care who she hurts. This is all my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tinbit said, dry heaving to avoid tears. “You warned me.”

“I didn’t want to be right.”

“And I totally fell for it.” Tinbit slumped. “I really liked him, Hector. We talked together so easily—it was like I’d known him for years. I told him I’d meet him at the Happily-Ever-After tomorrow. I wanted him to meet you.”

Love potion for sure. Oh, he was going to roast that woman!

Tinbit drew himself up, face twitching as he tried not to cry. “Hector, I want to go home. I can’t stay here, not in this hotel, not knowing he probably set this up, used me to disgrace you.”

“We’ll go as soon as I’m done with the Council meeting.

Why don’t you stay with the coach today?

That way you don’t have to see him again.

” He wiped the tears accumulating in the corners of Tinbit’s eyes with his handkerchief before they did any harm.

He had limited experience with broken hearts, but one thing he knew for certain—time and distance helped.

***

In the stables, Hector found Tinbit working on the horse.

He bent over, drilling holes in the horse’s left front cannon bone while the skeleton coachman stood nearby, helpfully torquing a silver plate to fit.

The patient, happily removed many years from the pain of such proceedings, stood three-legged, munching on a feedbag.

It held chaff, which dropped to the floor through the open jawbone, but the horse didn’t care, and Hector preferred them to remain as horse-like as possible after death.

“Almost done with Napoleon Bone-Apart,” Tinbit said with a snort. “Maybe next time you resurrect a horse, give them a little more sense about not jumping at shadows that can’t hurt them anymore.”

“I’ll consider it.” Hector gave the horse’s long frontal sinus a pat. “I need my scrying mirror. Where is it?”

“In the bag with your dirty jersey, I think. Those butterflies shat all over it.” Tinbit wrinkled his brow. “Why do you need a mirror? And why don’t I hear Alistair roaring?”

“That’s why I need it. Our dragon prince hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Oh, shit,” Tinbit said, straightening. “I only brought the medium distance one.”

“If he’s not in range of that one, I couldn’t bring him here in time, anyway.” The dragon had better be in range. His hands shook as he fumbled with the mirror. “Alistair,” he breathed, fogging the glass. It remained passively gray.

The one day he needed a dragon to actually act like a stereotype—one day—and the chosen dragon had chosen to act like himself.

It was one thing for him to know the fire-breathing reptiles were actually sensitive, deeply intellectual men and women, but the people of the kingdom shouldn’t know that about their traditional creatures of fight and fear.

That was part of the magic—there had to be something to test the magical love in order to make it stick.

The black rose had to meet the red. If Alistair didn’t come…

He didn’t want to think about that, but his thoughts strayed back to an abandoned battlefield, the bodies lying there, a cauldron full of magic and hope, and the desperate understanding that if Happily-Ever-After ever fell apart, all he’d given up his life for would fall apart too.

The kingdom would split into factions again with each nobleman trying to seize power.

Within a decade, war, plague, famine, death, and destruction would follow, and none of it meted out carefully by witches who actually cared, and he’d go down in history as the wicked witch whose incompetence destroyed the world.

He slapped the glass angrily. “Alistair! Answer me right now or I’m calling your father!”

A few wisps of darker gray swirled in the atmosphere. He caught a glint of white and blue, clouds and sky, and finally the burning sapphire of a dragon’s eye.

“What do you want?” A low, grumpy growl came from the mirror.

“Where are you? You should be here by now.”

“What if I’ve decided I’m not coming?” Alistair’s sharp teeth snapped in the glass. “What will you do then?”

“Your father—”

The dragon’s voice climbed in pitch. “My father can burn his behind. Let him destroy my sculptures. Let him kick me out. I don’t care!”

Hector shook his finger in the mirror. “You listen to me, young reptile! You’re the prince, and this is bigger than both of us.

You don’t have to believe Happily-Ever-After is the right thing, or want anything to do with ruling the dragons, but I’m asking you on behalf of your people and as a friend, think of somebody other than yourself for once! ”

“You are a friend of my father’s,” Alistair hissed. “Not mine.”

“I am your friend. I’ve known you since you were a hatchling, and I’ve watched you grow from a thin, scrawny dragonet to a fine young dragon. You will be Flamelord one day, and I know you remember our lessons on your duty. Your privilege.”

“I remember,” Alistair growled. “You tweaked my tail when I didn’t answer your questions right.”

“Answer me now,” Hector said. “What is the first duty of the Flamelord?”

“I’m not coming!”

“First duty of the Flamelord!”

“We dragons have been used long enough!”

“Alistair!”

Hector seldom raised his voice, and he’d never done it with Alistair, not even when the young dragon blew insolent smoke rings at him during his school sessions.

He didn’t like to do it now. If Alistair wanted, he could lift up and fly the other direction, and probably take himself out of range.

If Hector wanted, he could put a spell on Alistair to make that impossible.

Probably. There was the question of range.

From what Hector could see of the sky behind Alistair, it looked like he might still be in the mountains.

“The first duty of the Flamelord is to his people,” Alistair recited with a huff of smoke, “to protect their interests, to safeguard their families, to uphold their traditions.”

“That’s correct. This is the oldest and grandest tradition of your people.

For millennia, dragons kidnapped princesses.

Once, they did it for food. Now, it is the key to peace.

You are young—you may know the history of dragons, but I was there for it all.

I was there when Happily-Ever-After was created.

I was there when princes killed dragons to preserve that magic.

I held some of their hands while they died.

And as one voice, they judged it a death worth dying, and do you know why? ”

“Those times are past, Hector—”

“Why?” Hector demanded.

Alistair growled low in his throat. “For their participation, the king and his court promised to kill no dragons except those elected to embody evil during the Happily-Ever-After. Without this protection, we would soon have faced extinction—I know all that Hector, but that’s not going to happen now! ”

“No. It won’t, because I won’t let it happen, Alistair, and neither will you.

You know as well as I do that the monsters aren’t us—the monsters are in all of us.

Only Happily-Ever-After keeps them in check.

We have to do this—we must be the evil that holds the kingdom together.

That’s what it takes to preserve the peace, including the peace of dragons. ”

“When the peace of dragons depends on the abduction of a woman who is no more a willing participant in this charade than I am, it isn’t worth the word, let alone the meaning of it!”

“The princess knows what is expected of her as much as you do—she is a willing participant. It’s the law of the land.”

“No person restrained by magic just because it’s been the law for a thousand years is truly willing. I don’t care if she grabbed the rose out of Ida’s hand like I took mine out of the vase—I didn’t want it, and I’m sure she didn’t either! We were forced into it.”

“Alistair, don’t make me really force you.”

The large blue eyes narrowed to angry slits. “You wouldn’t.”

Hector raised his staff, set the head of it against the mirror.

“Piss off.” Alistair’s voice sounded rough, raspy, angry.

“You promised. And if you don’t keep your word, the weight of it will be with you for the rest of your life, and that will be far worse than if I compelled you to come.”

“Then why don’t you?” Alistair flapped his wings, disturbing the clouds, but his eye didn’t move. He was stationary, wherever he was.

“I don’t want you to hate me for the next hundred years,” Hector said with a sigh. “But I’d rather you hate me than hate yourself. Don’t endanger your people, Alistair.”

“I am not endangering—oh, balls!” Alistair gave an angry, futile hiss, and the blue eye vanished, to be replaced by shining obsidian scales as he launched himself skyward.

Finally . Hector tucked the mirror in his robes.

“Did you get him?” Tinbit asked.

“He’s coming,” Hector said. “He’ll be late, but fashionably so. Not a bad thing. It will allow the princess and prince more initial bonding time.”

“How do you know he’ll be late?” Tinbit asked.

“I saw clouds—he’s in the mountains, most likely, probably a little west of here—”

Tinbit raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure it wasn’t smoke?”

“No. Why?”

Tinbit pointed out the door of the stable. “Because the palace is on fire.”