Page 42 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

Following the Morning-After, the Happily-Ever-After is concluded.

The obstacles to love have been surmounted.

The couple have indulged their carnal desires.

They have reflected on the choices that led them to this place in their lives.

But it would be premature for the witch to congratulate themselves on their success.

Your love magic must be strong enough to combat a lifetime of argument, misunderstandings, and occasional just plain meanness.

True love can’t be a hothouse plant—sensitive to everything from a light frost to heavy rain. It must be more stubborn than a perennial weed.

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

Ida North

She didn’t know what she’d said. But whatever it was, it had shut Hector up.

What was it about men and their mouths? When you wanted them to talk, you couldn’t get a word out of them.

When there was nothing to be said, you couldn’t shut them up.

He had nothing to say that would erase what he’d said last night, and it had better stay that way, because she’d been up all night thinking about it, crying, and then kicking herself for caring.

He was a wicked witch. Of course he was going to do the wrong thing.

She just hadn’t expected it to hurt quite so much.

She took the bowl of stew Tinbit handed her, keeping one eye on Hector, wearing that ridiculous black wool robe, pacing just beyond the shadows at the fire’s edge.

And here she’d thought she could trust him to listen, that he would pay attention to her concerns because he cared .

That was the foolishness that came with having a heart, she supposed.

Or maybe it was just the lack of sleep making her morose.

“I thought we were staying at the hostel,” she said. “Why aren’t we pressing on?”

Tinbit stirred the pot. “We are staying there. But you don’t want to eat anything in that place. Sebastian is famous for disguising three-day old dead man as pot roast.”

“How long has Hector employed Sebastian?” she asked, picking dubiously at the rabbit now that Tinbit had brought up cooked corpse.

Tinbit blew on the ladle before he refilled Hari’s bowl.

“It’s been three hundred years or so now, I guess.

He used to own the inn in Thieves’ Town.

Some guy came through bragging about never knowing fear, and he was told to stay there so he’d learn.

Anyway, Sebastian scared the piss out of him, so he decided to burn the place down rather than show his dirty underwear.

Hector needed an innkeeper for this hostel, and he gave Sebastian the job.

He’s a soft touch for ghosts who pop their eyeballs and their teeth out at him. ”

“You don’t like him.” Hari took a biscuit and sopped up the broth with it.

“I think he’s a perfectly fine ghoul.” Tinbit jabbed the ladle in the stew pot.

“He’s just the kind of person who always speaks his mind.

If he had a mind to speak with, I wouldn’t object.

But his brains are mush—and he likes to demonstrate—so everyone better digest that stew or it will be coming up later.

” He got up, grimacing, and left the fireside where the salamander roasted in the coals, devouring dry sweetgrass and a few oak leaves Hector had gathered on the way as a change of diet.

Hari blew out his cheeks. “Well, I don’t understand everything the ghoul said to Tinbit, but it messed him up,” he said to Ida. “What do I care if Tinbit has been with people before me? It doesn’t matter.” He wrapped a green velvet jacket Tinbit had given him tighter around his shoulders.

“You shouldn’t have come with me. You should have gone home like I told you to.”

“I told you, I’m not letting you go anywhere without me. And the back of a pony beats the back of a coach. At least it’s dry.”

Perhaps too dry. Hector was worried about the climate change.

Well, so was she. She’d seen everything he had—the scarecrows, the browning trees, the grain ripening before it was ready.

Did he think she didn’t care too? But what was that compared to the use of Happily-Ever-After to marry off a prince to a princess with no considerations for their desires, their needs?

And without the magic, things would go back to normal in time.

Normal hadn’t been bad—well, except for the famines.

“So how was dinner?” Hari asked.

“Delicious, I’m sure.” She picked a bone out of the stew. “I’m just not very hungry.”

“No, the dinner with Hector. Tinbit said you were there for hours.”

“We were discussing the situation with Happily-Ever-After. What is wrong with that?”

Hari’s eyebrows went up. “You fought with him, didn’t you? I thought something seemed off today.”

“We didn’t fight. We argued, Hari, like we always do. I don’t want to talk about it. Why don’t you go help Tinbit with the pony?”

“Okay, but remember I’m here for you when you want to talk.” Hari shrugged and took her bowl.

Ida settled down beside the fire with a pained sigh.

Even after custom fitting Hector’s boots for her feet, her socks weren’t up to the task of protecting her toes and heels from discomfort.

She hoped that however horrible the hostel might be, there might at least be some reasonably clean water for a soak in lavender salts, if Hari had remembered to pack them.

They’d been in something of a hurry that morning; she wasn’t sure if bath salts survived the cull when he’d gone through her luggage to select only the essentials to pack on the pony.

Cear stretched out, salamander style, on the nearest log. “Hector is not a bad man. He’s only a wicked witch. He does not enslave his creatures.”

“That is not what I said.” Ida grabbed a handful of sweetgrass and placed it near the salamander for their consumption.

“Nevertheless, you thought he had. Do you really believe he never had the best interests of these people in mind when he became a Cardinal Witch?”

“Of course, I don’t. I’m sure he had their best interests in mind,” Ida said. “They’re his monsters. So naturally, he would improve the lives and health of everything under his care.”

“As have you, Ida North,” Cear said. “And yet, have you never questioned your own wisdom the way you questioned his?” Their fathomless eyes were piercing in their intensity.

She fell silent. Nearly every witch went through a midlife crisis at some point in their long lives, and she’d been no exception.

The unicorns died out, despite her best attempts to facilitate the breeding program.

And she’d had to order the removal of the last unicorn’s horn to keep it from killing itself.

She’d brokered a peace treaty to resolve a centuries-old conflict between the pixies and the fairies, and watched it fall apart ten years later when one pixie insulted a fairy and the war began again.

She’d discovered the oak dryads were quietly murdering pine dryads who infringed on their territory, and yes, it had occurred to her then to wonder if she could change behaviors to protect creatures with their own ways of doing things.

And what about the commoners? She gave them their committee with the best of intentions, and they’d turned around and used it to elect princesses whose daddies would buy them a tiara.

Left to their own devices, people didn’t always do the right things.

Suddenly she had a very great desire to go pack the pony with Tinbit. “Someone has to be in charge, I suppose. Whether that was wise or not, it was done. I’ll go get your firepot. We should be getting on before it gets dark.”

She rose and walked away from the fire, leaving Cear curled up in the coals.

She wasn’t about to sit here questioning every last one of her decisions.

And she damned well wouldn’t even entertain the idea of trying to fix a system that had been broken from the beginning, no matter how much it mattered to one Hector West, formerly Hector Prim, stuck irrevocably in the past, and no matter how much he might, after all, have a point.

***

The hostel lay at the end of a particularly steep section of trail.

A narrow path dropped off on one side into a dark ravine with water running far below.

On the mountain side, the rock outcrops grew strange, angular cactuses with particularly sharp spines.

They stuck out everywhere. Hari got one in his hand, which immediately swelled to three times its usual size.

“What are these things?” Hari grumbled as Tinbit pulled the thorn out.

“ Artemisia horribilius ,” Hector said. “The locals call it the Boot-ripper. Lovely yellow flowers in the summer.”

“Another one of Hector’s mistakes,” Tinbit grunted, bandaging Hari’s hand. “It’s not native.”

“It’s naturalized,” Hector said. “And I didn’t introduce it.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t eradicate it either.” Tinbit resumed his place in front of the pony. It eyed the prickly plant with a hungry eye.

“How much farther?” Ida yanked a thorn out of her boot before it worked its way through the leather.

Hector pointed upward toward a faint star of light gleaming out in the mounting mist. “Tinbit, take Hari, Ida, and Cear inside when we get there. I’ll stable the pony—”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Tinbit said. “That’s my job, thank Gods.

You get to make a deal with your ghoul for a good night’s sleep.

I’d probably tell him to go boil his head, and that would be disgusting.

” Before Hector could protest, Tinbit swung up on the saddle behind Hari, put his arms around him, and spurred the pony to a gallop.

They were soon out of sight, although the noise of clipped little hoofbeats echoed on what sounded like a well-groomed gravel path.

Hector turned to Ida. “Well, shall we?” He offered her his hand.

After a moment, Ida took it. The path was in complete darkness now, and he probably knew these trails from old.

“I wish I’d worn chain mail instead of my robe,” she grumbled.

“The thorns are only thick on the paths. The ponies keep it well grazed out in the mountain valleys, and beyond that, the dragons burn it. In the colder regions where the giants live, it won’t grow at all.

In fact, they make a soup called Artemisia Delight featuring imported plants. It’s quite delicious, or so I’m told.”

“You haven’t eaten it?”

“No. It’s poisonous to humans.”

“Which was why you didn’t eradicate it, of course.”

“A knight or two has boiled it down to his demise, I’m sure, but anyone here would tell them not to. They just never ask. Mind your step. Sebastian likes his little tricks.” He guided her around a stone that opened its maw hungrily and glared up at her with a hurt frown when she stepped over it.

Sebastian—well, Sebastian from the neck down—waited at the front door of the inn. He waved at them, beckoning them on.

“Where’s his head?” Ida asked.

“At the front desk, let us hope,” Hector said. “He often leaves his body to wait tables and greet the guests.”

The headless corpse bowed animatedly to them as they entered. Ida thought it reflected the head rather well, being jumpy and vigorous as it bounded from table to table, pulling out chairs, and menus, which Hector declined by pushing the hand away.

An appetizer appeared hopefully on the table—a large bowl of pickled eyeballs rolling around to wink at her.

“What did Tinbit mean, make a deal for a good night’s sleep? It can’t be guessing his name.” She glanced at the bright sign full of pixie-light on the wall. Sebastian’s Place flashed in brilliant neon over the bar. “I presume he doesn’t want a firstborn child?”

“Nothing so severe, my dear lady!” Sebastian’s head bobbed happily up from behind the counter, and she jumped. “What did you do with your sweet little gnome? Didn’t hand him over to Hector’s hardluck case, I hope?”

“I need the key to the room for Ida and her gnome,” Hector said. “No room service or wake-up call, please.”

“The Honeymoon Suite is prepared,” the head said. The body handed over the keys to Hector with a flourish and a complimentary spider, which Hector released on the counter.

“And for your gnomes, my delightfully austere Wickedness, the Presidential Suite. All the floating heads of the last century at your beck and call, skeleton keys to go with the skeletons in the closet. Only the best for the boss’s boy.”

“No suite. I want a regular room, again, for me and Tinbit.”

Sebastian’s rolling eyes glinted. “Are you sure? I thought you and her Goodness might prefer to be alone to do the dirty.”

Hector’s voice dropped by an octave, and the temperature in the room went down by ten degrees. “That’s uncalled for, Sebastian.” He took a black box from beneath his robe and set it on the desk.

Sebastian’s eyes took on a surprised and then malicious red glow as his gaze raked Ida’s face .

“Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh…Hector. My, my, how the evil have fallen. Don’t worry, my dear.

You won’t miss it when it’s gone. And when it is, you’ll feel so much better, I guarantee it!

Got rid of mine with a side of fried poison apples and see how happy I am!

” With an explosive pop, the head vanished.

“What was that about?” Ida raised her eyebrows.

“His idea of a joke,” Hector said, glancing at the neon sign now advertising cocktail hour at nine, complete with cocks. “I didn’t hire him for his sense of humor, obviously.” He was red in the face, and now she was blushing too.

“Go on up to the room. I can almost promise you a skeleton won’t jump out of the bed, but you might want to draw your wand anyway.

I’ll send Hari up when he and Tinbit are done seeing to the pony.

Would you kindly see if Cear would like to stay in the lobby’s fireplace?

It’s roomier than the ones upstairs. And probably less vile. ” Hector turned away from her.

Ida carried Cear past the table and into the main room, but glanced back down in time to see Hector pull a small key from his pocket and set it on the counter. An uneasiness settled in her stomach that didn’t feel like the natural reaction to staring at pickled eyeballs.

She didn’t like the way Sebastian had looked at her when he said, “Oh.”