Page 40 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

There are times when turning someone into stone would solve so many problems.

Mischief and Mayhem: A Thousand Years of Happily-Ever-After

Ida North

He ought to scream at her. He ought to at least step back as if completely stunned.

Or look outraged. Anything besides just staring at the pea-gravel floor with both hands jammed in his robe and ficus leaves poking out of his pockets.

His mouth worked for a moment, like he couldn’t decide whether or not to curse.

He’d obviously come to the same conclusion she had and didn’t know how to process it.

But she already had come to the inevitable answer.

“It’s not that our choices alone were flawed,” she said quietly.

“You yourself said we were fallible, and for that, we could make amends. We could get the princess, the dragon, and all go back to the castle and sort things out, that’s true.

I’m even willing to bet that if the prince marries his Common Prince, the magic will be fulfilled and we can go on thinking everything is right.

But it’s not. If the magic can’t make mistakes, then how do you explain Amber?

I can’t. And it absolutely chose her, Hector. ”

“I don’t see that you gave it much choice,” he said.

“If that’s so, why didn’t the rose simply wither in my hand?

The magic made a mistake—and if that’s the case, what if we haven’t been monstrously wrong all this time?

We’ve been insisting that the prince marry a commoner since the very inception of Happily-Ever-After—two hearts for the peace of the world—because it seemed right to us and because magic of this nature requires constant maintenance.

But we manufacture that love—you with your monsters to test the courage of the royals, and me with my potions and charms to make everything end happily-ever-after for the common people.

Without that, do you seriously think that any prince we’ve ever married to a Common Princess would have chosen that union? ”

“Of course not. That was the whole point.” Hector jerked his hands out of his pockets and leaned on the orchid bench, staring into the forest of green leaves and crimson flowers dripping that deep purple-red nectar all over the ground below, creating a slick of blood that pooled around his feet.

“We couldn’t count on anyone to do the right thing but ourselves.

The royalty had practically salted the earth—you haven’t forgotten that and neither have I.

They deserved to have their choice taken away from them! ”

“How was that fair to the common people?”

“Happily-Ever-After wasn’t ever intended to be fair. It’s there to hold the world together, to keep the peace. What’s not fair is to ask an entire world to suffer because two people object to being in love.” His voice carried a distinct chill.

He was angry. Well, so was she.

Ida pulled her arms tighter around herself. “Three objections now. I’d hoped it would be four. Can’t you see how wrong it is? I thought you were better than that, Hector.”

“Better than—Ida, I was there when we cooked that magic up. Believe me, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind—including mine—that it was necessary.

Why else would we Cardinal Witches give up so much for it?

Don’t presume to lecture me about sacrifice.

I know what I lost, the same as you do.” He leaned heavily on the bench, long dark hair sweeping into his salt-and-pepper beard like the night sweeping into the stars ahead of a storm.

She’d never thought of him having any regrets about a life without love, without family—a long life of loneliness.

She’d always thought he might as well have been born heartless.

A sudden sadness filled her. He’d missed as much as she had.

She touched his shoulder gently. “Well, maybe I think it was all a little much to give up for something that would force people to fall in love where they have no natural inclination.”

Hector rounded on her. “The alternative was an eternity of war. I don’t think the desire of two people—or one witch—outweighs the need of an entire world for peace. And I can’t believe you’d think that now.”

She drew back from him in horror. “You would force the prince and Amber to marry?”

“Did I say anything about forcing them to marry? No! We’ll find Alistair and Amber, get them all together with the prince and the captain of the guard, and we’ll work something out.

You can pick a few more roses, put them in the right hands, and we’re done talking about this. ” He turned, heading for the door.

She stalked after him. “No, we’re not done talking about it! Just putting people to rights won’t fix Happily-Ever-After. We were wrong! The magic itself is wrong! You can’t ignore that, Hector.” She grabbed his arm, stopping him.

He was breathing through his nose like he’d just been running from a griffin. “No one is pretending we can’t make mistakes, Ida, but the moment you go blaming magic that has worked perfectly for a thousand years—”

“Maybe it never did! Did you think about that?”

“Next you’ll be saying you think the world would have fixed itself without Happily-Ever-After.

After how many people died, though? After how many acres were forever ruined?

After the royals hunted every magical creature to extinction, looking for the secret ingredient that would give them a potion that would make them invincible? ”

“I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is that maybe they’re right—the princess, the prince, even your dragon. Perhaps Happily-Ever-After should end now. This isn’t the world we grew up in. It’s changed. The people have changed. And we need to change too.”

“You speak of that time like you never lived through it.”

“I lived through it,” Ida said quietly. “And I remember it as well as you do.”

“We can’t let that happen again, Ida. I promised myself—no war, no starving people, no plagues that kill whole cities.

Never again. No one else should ever have to go to the graveyard and watch their mother weep for her dead father and brothers.

No one else should ever have to come home and drink himself to death in a ditch because he can’t get past what he saw in war.

No one else need ever stare at their fallow fields, knowing they’ll never yield grain again while their children starve in front of their eyes. ”

She set a hand on his shoulder. “We’re not going back there, Hector. People aren’t that way anymore, they aren’t consumed by the need for power—”

“You can say that, when a king and his son wear dragon skin and threaten to kill a boy you’ve known since he was a dragonet—”

“Did the prince say he wanted to kill Alistair? Did he?”

Hector said nothing.

Ida drew herself up. “We find the princess and the dragon. They didn’t deserve to become mixed up in this, especially Amber.

And we’ll make sure the prince and his captain of the guard wed, if that’s what they want.

But when this is over, we need to go to the Council and tell them the truth. Happily-Ever After has to end.”

Hector looked up, eyes smoldering. “Are you serious? You want to undo the only thing that has held this land safe and happy for a thousand years? We can’t just abdicate our responsibility like that.

I won’t let you. We will fix Happily-Ever-After, not abolish it.

We will recruit common men as well as common women for the princess, I mean the prince—”

“And how do you think the world will react to that? Some of them will understand, certainly, but others will not—they’ll want to know why we haven’t been doing that all along—”

“Ida, I am way beyond caring what anyone thinks at this point! What’s important is preserving the magic.”

“You honestly think that people won’t ask questions? The Star is—they’ve already called Amber’s selection into question. How long do you think it will be before they’re demanding more transparency in the process and all this comes out?”

He rounded on her, tall, furious, and his green eyes shone with a vivid, almost yellow light in the darkening garden.

“What you want is for me to tell you you’re right and Happily-Ever-After is wrong.

I’m not going to say that. I don’t agree.

And I’m not going to let the world fall apart because you can’t get past your little fit of conscience.

Like it or not, your slipup caused this whole disaster. ”

“It was your candor curse that gave me that ‘little fit of conscience,’” she said, staring up at him, her temper building to a mountain of wrath. He , of all people, should have understood. She knew he was stubborn, but she’d never thought he was stupid.

“I’m not forgetting that,” he said. “But you wouldn’t have had one if you hadn’t outsourced your responsibility in the first place.”

“Of all the—” She stormed after him as he stomped off toward a beautifully constructed arbor of sleeping pea plants, all drowsing comfortably in the rising moonlight.

“I didn’t outsource my responsibility. I let the magic choose, as I should have done all of these years, and it picked the wrong person! ”

“More evidence that you shouldn’t have ever been in charge of Happily-Ever-After in the first place.”

Had he slapped her, it couldn’t have hurt more.

She stopped where she stood, frozen in fury.

“Fine,” she said, finding her voice although it broke against the torrent of things she wanted to scream at him.

“Fire me, revoke my immortality, whatever you want to do when we get back. But the truth will get out. I’ll make sure it does. ”

He glared at her, face twisting in rage. “And I’ll make sure no one ever suffers because of you.”

She fled toward the castle, blinking away angry tears.