Page 23 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

Dragon Kidnaps Princess: Prince To Attend Royal Ball With Captain of the Guard

The long-awaited Happily-Ever-After for Prince Archie and the Common Princess got off to a flaming start when the dragon arrived late to the ceremony and set the palace on fire.

Damage is estimated at several hundred thousand gold pieces, including damage to an enchanted spinning wheel and three hundred bales of straw waiting to be spun into gold.

No word yet on whether the royal treasurer escaped.

Is the straw standard doomed? Details on page eight!

Witnesses say the dragon assumed a human shape and the princess herself seemed captivated by the tall, incredibly sexy man who appeared naked in the field to the astonishment of all.

Could we be looking at the first lover’s triangle in Happily-Ever-After history?

Or is this more evidence of a snafu caused by the missteps of Witches Hector West and Ida North, who may be going senile in their great age?

Are heads about to roll? This paper says yes!

—The Sorcerer’s Star

Ida collected herself alone in the tent while buckets of water sluiced down from what had been crystal clear skies.

She shouldn’t have interfered. Only the complete desperation of knowing the princess might hurt the dragon— really, Hector, could you at least pick a dragon without a sensitive side as long as his tail —had made her step in.

What had Hector used on the girl? It looked like a compulsion of some kind, no doubt designed to make the dragon carry out his side of the magic without hesitation.

It must have been a powerful one to make the princess decide to take on a whole group of charging knights to save a dragon.

She rubbed her temples in agitation. Hector’s words jangled in her ears. Just how badly had she messed this up? Could it be related to how she’d picked the princess? Her head was spinning with questions, and none of them had answers. At least no answers she wanted to believe.

“Ida?”

She flinched, then relaxed as Hari slid in through the tent flap, wringing out his sleeves. “Yes?”

“The coach is waiting. Hector and Tinbit have left. So have the other witches. The stadium looks like a complete loss, but the fire’s out at the castle, thanks to the rain—no serious damage there, the steward says.

The dragon lit the north tower on fire, the one with all the spinning wheels, but they say the royal treasurer got out in time. ”

She rose, trying to pull herself together. “Good. Where is Prince Archibald? Has he left in pursuit of the dragon yet?”

Hari hesitated. “Uh…no.”

“He hasn’t?” Ida yelped.

“He said he’d start out tomorrow,” Hari said. “He had an issue with his armor he wanted to get hammered out. He went off with the captain of the guard to fix it.”

Not good. A prince under the influence of Happily-Ever-After should be horsed and on his way before the dragon was a distant dot in the sky.

He might not go far, horseback riding being out of favor with many modern men of leisure, and he’d find himself a comfortable inn where he’d spend the night instead of camping under the stars in this rain, but he would go. The potion would ensure he did.

Amber might be in great danger. So might the dragon. The kingdom certainly was. Something had gone dreadfully wrong with Happily-Ever-After.

“Very well. I’m ready to go.” She conjured an umbrella and walked out into the rain. She had to get this fixed before more than the weather went wrong.

***

The Hall of Witches had changed a great deal over the centuries, but entering always made Ida think back to the first time she’d seen it, when she’d been apprenticed to the old, and very good, Good Witch of the North.

Filling those shoes had been the hardest task of her life.

She felt like she was tripping over them now as she walked through the ancient wooden pillars, relics of the oldest days, and into the inner sanctum.

Hari waited in the coach. No non-witches were allowed inside, with the exception of the elementals, the guardians of magic.

They had no gender, and indeed seldom took physical form of any kind, only wearing a shape when necessary to service the Hall and attend to the Cardinal Witches.

Ida passed an undine dripping water on the floor, mopping as they went.

They bowed deeply to her, and went on cleaning the dark slate floor and silver grout.

The undine’s skin shifted colors as they mopped—blue, green, and yellow—mirroring the ocean perhaps, or a clear pool in a mountain grotto.

When Ida entered the Council’s chamber, the room was still largely dark and rain drummed heavily on the roof.

The royal blue curtains were tightly drawn, and the lamps had not been lit, but a salamander, bright orange eyes aglow, was lighting a fire to burn until the meeting concluded, and no longer.

“Your Goodness.” This elemental also bowed and went on with their work.

Ida took her seat at the table, the northern end, and watched the salamander feeding the flames with a few flakes of birch and cedar, coaxing the fire like a nervous animal from the hearth.

“Can I get you anything, Your Goodness?” the salamander asked, flame flickering around their mouth and nose. “A hot drink? A pastry?”

Ida’s stomach rolled. “Tea,” she decided. “Hot herb tea with a lavender tea cake, and this morning’s copy of the Kingdom Wall . No, the Sorcerer’s Star .”

The salamander, to their credit, didn’t ask why she’d asked for the city’s most infamous rag. In a quick puff of brimstone and smoke, they vanished.

For all their heat, salamanders were the calmest of the elementals, the least emotional.

Perhaps that was why the Wicked Witch of the West was represented by them.

If so, what did a sylph say about her? Was she flighty, prone to temper, to changing her mind, to adapting to each situation as mutably as the wind?

She wouldn’t have said so a day ago, but thinking over things now…

A sudden guttering announced the salamander’s return. They set the tea and cake at her elbow and the paper in front of her.

Ida split the ribbon with her finger and unrolled the paper on the table.

She skimmed the article. The only good news: the true nature of the dragons remained a secret.

The tabloid made mention of a snafu. At least they hadn’t gone further.

The paper had a reputation of jumping to conclusions faster than a pair of seven-league boots.

She’d half expected to see the headline:

Top Cardinal Witches Botch Princess Abduction! Happily-Ever-After Is Dead! World Ending Soon! See your Doomsday Horoscope on page seven!

The terrifying thing was that for once in its long history of wildly inaccurate reporting, the Star actually might have stumbled on the truth. If Happily-Ever-After had gone wrong, the world really might end.

It would be like shattering a magic mirror, although this would bring far more than seven years of bad luck.

More like seven centuries. Happily-Ever-After was potent stuff.

If it escaped from the confines of the spell, her vivomancy would spread through the land unregulated.

Crops would ripen at the wrong time. Children would be born, but there would be nothing to feed them.

Whole families might go to war over love matches that should never have happened.

And what about Hector’s side of things? She shuddered. That didn’t bear thinking about.

A sudden gust of wind, and a slender sylph in blue opened the door and held it open. “Your Wickedness.”

Hector stepped into the room. He looked even more tired than he had that morning and also soaked.

She noted the deep, black circles under his eyes, the stringy, greasy cast to his long salt-and-pepper hair, and the way his mouth tightened when he saw her.

If he weren’t such a complete asshole, she’d almost have thought he looked as scared as she felt.

“Anything I can get for Your Wickedness? A drink? Something to eat?” the sylph asked.

“Just tea,” Hector said in a heavy, gravelly voice. “Nothing to eat. Later, perhaps.” He carried his staff, the first time she’d seen him take it into a meeting, like he expected trouble. He sat in the chair nearest the fire, lowering himself like every muscle hurt.

“We need to talk,” Ida said in frosty tones.

“We do,” he replied. “But not here.”

“No. We’re going to do this right now, before you blame this whole thing on me. If you so much as insinuate that I picked the wrong princess, I’m going to tell the Council that you sent me a candor curse. What’s more, I’m going to the Star with it. Is that clear?”

He folded his hands on the table in front of him. “That’s supposed to scare me?”

“It should. Agatha would love to take your place.”

“And curse you so she can take leadership of the Council. I suggest you remember that. The last person who crossed her ended up a rather hairy creature confined to a drafty castle with only a bunch of furniture to take care of him.”

“That’s supposed to scare me?”

His stare would have turned a Medusa to stone.

“It should. Forever is a long time to have fleas. And while we’re on the subject of threats, if you even mention that candor curse, I’ll have something to say about laughing charms and just how little regard you have for the magic you’ve been entrusted to protect. ”

“You think I haven’t spent every waking minute of my eternity protecting and preserving Happily-Ever-After?

You’ve no idea of how hard I work. All you ever have to do is manage the monsters.

” She huffed. “You’ve got all this time on your hands to come up with diabolical plots—like picking a dragon to act the fool and burn up the stadium. ”

“I did not—”

“And setting your gnome to seduce mine because you knew it would humiliate him and hurt me.”

Hector’s face flamed. “I never—”

“You did it to get back at me for my laughing spell. Burned your balls, did it?”

He sat back in his chair, arms over his chest. “Oh, for the love of magic! I wouldn’t be so petty. That’s more your thing—putting love potions in the ink so poor Tinbit would fall in love with someone he’d never met! Don’t think I don’t know one of your schemes when I see it—”

Her cheeks grew hot. “I did nothing of the sort! I’m a good witch—I don’t go around trying to break people’s hearts!”

He leaned forward, fist balled as he set his elbow on the table. “That’s rich, you talking of hearts when you’ve never had one.”

“Nor did you,” she snapped back. “You’ve never cared about anything or anyone in your entire life.”

“I care about Tinbit.” His teeth were bared, his eyes sparked with fury. “I would never, ever, in any way, do anything that would hurt him. I set a rather high value on hearts, particularly the hearts of people under my protection. Like Tinbit. Like Alistair.”

“I care about the hearts of the people I love as much as you do. Hari is like my son, and the very idea that I would do anything that might cause him pain is unthinkable.”

Hector’s eyes glinted. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t believe you either.” But she almost could. There was a sincerity in his hard, angry face, almost as if he really did care about his gnome and the dragon. Alistair. So that was the dragon’s name. She never bothered to learn them. They weren’t part of her side of the magic.

A sudden smell of earth and moss accompanied a small earth elemental, beetle-black eyes glinting, who entered the room with a soft brown velvet cushion, which they placed in the chair to the left of Hector.

Tara came in, smiling in her butter yellow robes. She smiled as she seated herself across from Ida. “Are you well, my dear? Such a fright today with the dragon. I wonder that you had the courage to face it!”

Oh, that was a slight if ever she’d heard one. “One does what one must. I am not afraid of dragons or any serpent.” Ida sat back in her chair. Tara hated snakes. Let her chew on the insult instead of the strawberry Danish with rose water cream the earth elemental set in front of her.

A blast of humidity signaled Agatha’s entrance. She waved the undine, the one with the mop, away with an impatient hand, and sat, digging her sharp nails like talons in the end of the table. “Sorry to be late. I was delayed. Reporters for the Star , you know.”

Hector grimaced. “I really think, given the delicacy of the situation, none of us should be talking to reporters right now.”

Agatha smiled, showing all her teeth. “Oh, I don’t know about that Hector.

People will want answers. Something seems to have gone wrong with Happily-Ever-After, and just between us, if what I’m hearing is accurate, if it isn’t fixed, a couple of witches might as well turn over the keys to their castles and start looking for huts in the woods in which they can spend their retirement. ”