Page 36 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)
“What he has in abundance. Fire.”
Cear’s breath smelled of hot wind, cinders, and sweetgrass “How unique. I long to see it.”
Ida sipped her wine. “So when you give a dragon the black rose, it makes them want to collect princesses instead of what they usually collect.”
“Yes. I prefer to influence the natural instincts of my…monsters, as you would call them. But Alistair was reluctant from the beginning. He said Happily-Ever-After was demeaning to both dragons and princesses.”
“Demeaning?” Ida leaned forward. The fern crawled down from its stand, up into her lap, and tangled its fronds in her hair. “Why?”
“Alistair is a dragon of strong, often controversial, opinions,” Hector admitted.
“He felt quite strongly that the whole thing left him no choice, and the girl had less than he. Went on about it for some time. Of course, both his parents and I explained to him the significance of Happily-Ever-After and that the girls actually compete to be princesses. I seem to remember that you have fairly extensive preparation trials—”
“He didn’t come to kidnap the princess,” Ida said, eyes wide. “He came to make a point.” She sat back in her chair, hand absently curled in the fern’s fiddleheads.
Hector irritably set his wine glass down and reached for the water.
He hadn’t meant to divulge that much, not in front of Cear.
“Perhaps, but in the end, he accepted his role.” At least he’d thought so.
“There’s nothing wrong there. Perhaps something was wrong with the princess.
She shouldn’t have even wanted to defend a dragon. ”
Ida reddened and set down her wine glass too.
“Like your dragon, Amber has strong opinions about fairness and right. But like you, I hadn’t changed my love charm since it was handed over to me by my mentor.
Once the princess takes the rose, she becomes open to love.
It’s as simple as that. When she meets the prince, who has had his heart opened by drinking a potion containing the petals of that rose, she falls in love with him and he with her, and they live happily ever after.
After the dragon comes, kidnaps the princess, and the prince goes on his quest to rescue her, of course.
Which clearly doesn’t appear to be going according to plan. ”
“Alistair did kidnap the princess.” Hector glared at Ida.
“Looked more like a rescue to me,” Ida said. “But, Hector, we’re never going to get anywhere arguing about who went wrong.”
She had a point. “If there’s nothing wrong with my dragon or your princess, could it be what we did at the end—you tried to protect your princess and I tried to protect my dragon?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. We shouldn’t have needed to protect either of them. The mistake must have happened before then.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, let’s go further back, to the choosing.
As I told you, Alistair is a prince of dragons.
They’ve built their entire royal hierarchy around Happily-Ever-After, with their king-eggs all descending from Flamelords who have fought princes from the beginning.
So how did you come to choose this princess? ”
“Are you insinuating that I picked the wrong girl?” Ida tossed her napkin on the table.
So much for not fighting. “I’m not insinuating anything. But Amber does seem a little—unusual—I mean, compared to your previous selections.”
She huffed. “I could just as easily say maybe you picked the wrong dragon! There’s never been any need for the dragon to be a prince.”
“It’s traditional.”
“Well, maybe I picked the Common Princess in the traditional way!”
“Very well then.” He sighed. “Let’s look at the Prince. You said you brew the potion with the petals of the red rose. Did something happen with that?”
“You were there, Hector. Aside from the theatrics of the thing, it went according to plan.” She rolled her eyes.
“I’d hardly call anything about that night according to plan,” he said.
She smiled slightly. “You still owe me a new wand.”
“And you owe me a new jersey. Tinbit couldn’t get the stains out.”
“So what? It will match the rest of your clothes.”
She was smiling now, and curses, the feeling he’d had—that he’d touched on a sensitive spot by attacking her choice in princesses—vanished in a pleasant bubble of wishing she’d smile at him that way all the time. He popped it with a forced frown.
“Walk me through the procedure anyway.”
She brushed an inquisitive leaflet out of her face.
“Very well. The spell is steeped in golden wine along with the rose petals for three days. It’s served at the Prince’s Dinner as the traditional toast to the happy marriage.
I made it the way I always do, and the captain of the guard—that Caedan fellow—served it to the prince.
I gave it to him as soon as I got there. ”
Hector stifled an unhappy burp. He regarded his untouched crabapple pie, appetite vanishing in a dreadful sense of foreboding.
The captain of the guard had been with the prince at the game.
Then he’d been on the field when Alistair landed, getting in front of the prince to defend him, and then there was Rupert’s cryptic comment about how he’d like the young man to be eaten by a griffin.
“Hypothetically, if the prince didn’t drink that potion, what would happen to your love magic? ”
“Nothing. With no love interest available, the princess wouldn’t fall in love. The spell would remain incomplete until she found a person with whom she might be naturally compatible. Oh, Gods.” Ida leaned back in her chair, face draining of color. “Do you think that—”
He nodded. The crawling, burning, and freezing sensation of doom had just galvanized into a horrific certainty. “Yes. The prince never took that potion. The captain of the guard made sure he didn’t. Archibald Quentin Rupert II is gay. And he’s already in love.”