Page 30 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

There’s Only One Bed Charm—used in the latter half of the Happily-Ever-After spell to instigate emotional and physical bonding. Use when the bonding at the Rescue is weaker than anticipated.

Magic and Mischief—A Thousand Years of Happily-Ever-After: A Memoir

Ida North

Hari drank the potion in good faith, trusting her to cure him. Then he’d heaved, and grabbing his chest, he began to sob, a dreadful brokenhearted sound, and the tears—so many tears. She’d rocked him like she used to do when he was a tiny gnomelet, sweet and furry as a kitten in her lap.

He didn’t know why he wept. She did. His love for Tinbit was strong, even if it wasn’t real. But some things weren’t meant to be. Hari didn’t want to leave her. Tinbit certainly wouldn’t leave Hector, even if Hari had asked him to. At least this way, they’d never have to endure that heartache.

A pine log snapped in the fireplace, shedding bark. She stirred and picked up her tea cup. Grit polluted the bottom now that the tea leaves had settled, and it tasted dirty, but at least it was hot. Belinda offered it as Hector’s favorite.

“Well, it’s over now,” Hector said. “We can concentrate on what we’re going to do once we find Alistair and the princess.

To be frank, I’m disturbed by how upset Tinbit was about taking the potion.

The dragon and the princess may have also been affected in the same way.

And if they’re anything like Hari and Tinbit, we may have difficulty in getting them to understand. ”

“This potion, could we use it to—”

“No.” Hector shook his head. “It might work on the princess, but not on Alistair. Dragons are largely resistant to potions. The fire in their bellies deactivates everything.”

“Even when they’re human?”

“They’re not human, no matter how much they look it.

And most of them don’t look it very much.

Alistair can pass because he’s only around seven feet tall, but he’s young.

He’s not attained his full growth. His father is over ten feet tall, and his mother is taller—the females usually are.

For him, at least, I must unravel where the magical threads got tangled and cut him out of it.

I can’t help but think how much of this is my fault for not listening to him.

He didn’t want to be the chosen dragon this year, and I blew him off.

I thought he could separate his personal feelings from the theater of it, but I was wrong.

Perhaps if I’d been more understanding, he wouldn’t have overreacted. ”

Not in another ten centuries would she understand the man.

What on earth was he trying to do? Earn her sympathy?

Assert his own guilt? Or something entirely different—like getting her to play along and blame herself for the princess?

She’d already done that in her own mind, thanks.

She wouldn’t play games with Hector West. And yet—he seemed entirely honest when he leaned forward, clasping his bony hands over his equally bony knees.

Odd, she’d never thought of him as a man.

In her mind’s eye, she’d always imagined him the consummate wicked witch, strolling around his castle in long black garb, stiff, stained, and forbidding.

But in these worn, faded trousers with the odd patch in the left knee and a button-up plaid tunic dug off a goblin-resale rack, he appeared utterly ordinary, like someone’s stray husband forgotten on a park bench in autumn.

“We’ll find a way to sort it out,” she said quietly.

His fingers closed over her hand. “Thanks for the confidence.”

“It’s not confidence,” she said, staring at his hand.

“You don’t want Happily-Ever-After broken any more than I do, and that’s a strong motivation to work things out.

I think I’ll go upstairs to see how Hari is doing.

And then we need to fix the sleeping arrangements.

With a whole inn to stay in, I believe I’d like a room down the hall for myself and Hari.

Now that they’ve taken the potion, it would be better to keep them apart.

The love magic is still active after all. ”

“I wish I could say that was a good idea,” Hector said.

“But I recommend we all stay together. It’s only for one night, and while I can safely say I can keep the inn from burning down or being stormed by bandits, it’s harder to put safeguards on more than one room at a time.

The bed isn’t full of rats—we had a piper through last year.

And the bedbugs are easily repelled with a burning hex.

Please. I insist. You and Hari take the bed. ”

***

But Hari didn’t want to sleep in the bed. He lay curled up on the couch, back facing Ida, when she came in and gently asked him if he might be willing to eat dinner, provided she found anything edible in the kitchen.

“I don’t want to eat. I want to be left alone.”

“You’ll feel better if you eat something,” Ida said kindly.

He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “I thought the potion was supposed to make me feel better.”

“It will,” Ida said. “Your fever’s come down already.”

“Not that part of it. The other part. But I don’t feel better. I feel empty.”

“That’s why you should eat.”

“Not that kind of empty. I want something—I really want it—but I don’t know what it is.”

“Well, I’ll bring you some stew anyway,” Ida said. “Then you should get some rest. I’ll pull down the sheets and make sure Hector got rid of the bedbugs—”

“I’ll eat. But I’m not sleeping in the bed. I want to sleep here. Alone.”

She didn’t argue with him. Hector and Tinbit could share the bed.

She’d drag in a mattress from one of the other rooms and sleep on the floor.

Of all the foolishness. She often cooked this up into a spell for the happy couple after the Rescue—a room in an inn with one bed where the lovers must shed the last of their reservations about each other and give in to the magical experience of acting on their passion. But this was ridiculous.

Tinbit opened the door tentatively. “Your Goodness?”

Hari jerked around like he’d been stung.

Tinbit glanced at him, and a red blush bloomed in his pale cheeks. “Hector asked me to ask you if you want to eat in the dining room with him and Belinda or if you’d rather I bring dinner up here.”

“Here, I believe.” She watched Hari’s face closely. He looked hurt but not distraught. She could breathe easier now. It would be all right in the end.

“Very good,” Tinbit said. He glanced at Hari. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. You…you are feeling better?”

“Much better.” Hari flushed slightly. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

“My pleasure,” Tinbit said with a completely friendly, non-romantic smile. He backed out the door.

Hari sat up, twisting the blanket between his fingers. He grimaced. “Ida?”

“Yes?”

“He’s the empty place,” Hari said faintly.

“Lie down,” Ida said, feeling sick. “You’re still weak. Once you’ve eaten, I’ll give you something to help you sleep.”

***

Hector brought the stew. “Tinbit made it, so it won’t kill you, although I can’t vouch for the quality of the ingredients. How’s Hari?”

“Still tired,” she said and sampled the stew. To her great surprise, it tasted good, although perhaps a bit smoky and mushroomy. “He just needs time.”

“I told Tinbit I’d make him a sleeping draught tonight. You’ll want the same for Hari, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Ida said. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” Hector said. “I’ll get the belladonna.”

When Hector and Tinbit came up the stairs to the bedroom, quite late, darkness had fallen. Ida stood by the window, watching the lights come on in the town. Faintly candling beyond the range of torchlight, Hector’s wisps floated through the swamp to be gobbled up by mire imps.

Hari snored on the couch, a light blanket pulled up almost to his chin. In the firelight, he looked almost like himself again—brown, small, a slight smile curving his mouth, reminding Ida of his laughing face every time he woke her in the afternoon and said good morning.

She yawned. The trip and the week of forced early rising were wearing her down.

She ought to be wide awake at this hour.

Instead, she felt ready to drop on the straw mattress Belinda brought in and draped with a rough blanket.

But she dreaded the bug bites. Cear had offered the help of a magical barrier of fire, but the idea of sleeping on a straw mattress surrounded by flames, even magical ones, unsettled her.

“He’s sleeping?” Hector said.

“Like a child,” Ida said.

“Good,” Tinbit said grumpily. “I’m about to join him.”

Ida froze.

He glared at her. “I meant in sleep,” he said.

“Of course,” Ida said.

Tinbit kicked off his boots and with a grumpy sigh, he lay down on the mattress on the floor.

“Uh—” Ida started.

“Tinbit, you and I will take the bed,” Hector said.

“No, we won’t.” Tinbit folded his hands over his chest. “I want to be alone. You want me to be alone. You want Hari to be alone. Well, we’re alone. You and her Goodness fight it out for the bed. I’m tired, I’m mad, and I’m going to sleep. Night.”

Hector glanced helplessly at Ida. “I’ll go back downstairs.”

“You said you didn’t feel it was wise to be separated.”

“It’s not, but—”

Ida looked at Hari’s face. Thin silver streams of tears trickled down his cheeks and his shoulders shook. Not asleep after all then. She sighed. “We’ll share the bed, Hector,” she said.

“You can’t be serious,” he stammered, going as red as any one of her roses. “I mean—you…and me…and…” he trailed off, obviously too flustered to go on.

“For pity’s sake! It’s not like we’ll be naked! Put your pajamas on—but I’m warning you, I will smother you with a pillow if you snore.”