Page 47 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

This just in! Prince Archie marries Captain of the Guard in secret wedding! Wild honeymoon in the Mermen’s Resort reported by eyewitnesses. Orgies! Sex parties! Pictures on page seven!

—The Sorcerer’s Star

Gone was the chain mail overcoat. In its place, Amber wore a gray robe, far too long for her. She’d tacked the bottom up so she could walk, and she was barefoot.

“Amber!” Ida cried out. “My poor girl. Are you all right?”

Amber looked surprised. “How did you find me?”

“Well, the dragon who carried you off—”

“Alistair,” Amber said.

“Excuse me?”

“His name is Alistair.” Amber stepped out of the doorway.

A huge, dark-scaled dragon slithered through the door, shapeshifting into a dark-haired woman as she came out.

“Oh, thank Gods, you’re here, Hector!” As she reached them, she donned a long silver robe and tightened it around her waist with a golden girdle.

She glared down at Amber from her impressive height of twelve feet.

Hector hadn’t exaggerated. Female dragons were impressive .

“Go inside, child. This doesn’t concern you. ”

Amber folded her arms. “The hell it doesn’t.”

Morga flicked an angry forked tongue at the princess. “Perhaps I’d better start at the beginning.”

“Alistair and I are married,” Amber said. “And there’s nothing either of you are going to do about it.” She turned on her heel and walked back into the cave.

Oh my Gods. Ida had about a thousand things she wanted to say, but half of them were curses. Married? Of all the things she’d envisioned finding here, she hadn’t expected that. Could the love magic have really hit them that hard?

From the expression on Hector’s face, he hadn’t expected it either. He turned to the tall woman with the bloodshot eyes and long black hair. “What happened, Morga? Tell me everything.”

“Oh, Hector, Hector, you have to do something. Alistair is bewitched. He spends every waking moment with this girl. He refuses to be separated from her. What are we going to do?” Morga blew her nose into her hands, and flames shot through her fingers.

Hector laid a hand on Morga’s arm. He looked like a ten-year-old boy guiding a giantess to a stone table in the dragon’s cave. “We’ll sort this out, I promise.”

The dragon sobbed. “He’s not her mate. I refuse—I refuse to accept her as my daughter!”

“Yes, yes.” Hector placed her in a chair. “Morga? Where’s Adair?”

Morga wiped her streaming eyes. “In his bedchamber. He tried to talk sense into Alistair, and they fought. I had to get between them before they killed each other. That hateful girl—she tried to hold Alistair back. Hector! What am I going to do? I had such dreams for my sweet boy. I wanted him to marry a nice dragon from the Snowy Peaks, have grand-eggs…”

Hector folded his hands on the table in front of him. “I know this is hard for you, but can you tell us what happened? Anything could be important.”

Morga sniffed and glanced at Ida. “Oh, where are my manners. I should offer…you…tea…” She broke off into hysterical sobs again.

“No, thank you,” Ida said, squirming in her chair. If she knew where the kitchen in this place was, she’d brew a cup herself and add a shot of something strong to steady her nerves.

Morga choked. “He left on the day of the tournament. We had to make him go. He was angry. We could only hope he would do his duty. When he didn’t come back immediately, we thought nothing of it.

We knew he had a lair ready. But we expected him to come and tell us how things had gone.

After all, what reason would he have to stay?

Yesterday he arrived—with her—telling us she was his mate and if the prince came for her, he’d roast the man and eat him.

And she was holding onto him like she’d help him do it.

I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life! ”

Ridiculous didn’t begin to cover it. It sounded very much like she’d been right—the open-ended spell had seized on the pair and created the bond it should’ve made between the prince and the princess. Damn Hector and his dragon “prince.” “And…the princess?” she asked in a faint voice.

Morga snorted. “Don’t talk to me about that girl!

She walked in here like she was a dragon.

Of course, Alistair told her to act like one and that’s all she’s done since she got here.

I offered her our guestroom. She said no, she would sleep with her mate.

Adair offered to take her home. She told him her place was here, with Alistair.

And Gods, the noise they make—the roaring, the panting, the sucking, the moaning—it’s every bit as bad as Adair was with me. ”

Hector turned almost as red as his blood orchids. “Don’t worry, Morga, Ida and I will fix this. I’m sure Alistair and the princess will separate, and soon.”

“Good,” Morga said. “Because if they don’t, I’m going to bite that girl, and sharp, right on her round little bottom. Steal my son from me, my grand-eggs—”

“I’d better see Adair,” Hector said, rising.

Ida rose too. “I’ll go talk to the princess.”

Hector caught her arm. “Ida—”

She touched his hand, patted it. “I know, I know! But we’ll get nowhere until we talk with the couple. The love magic is my specialty—let me find out what happened.”

He sighed. “Very well, but, Ida—”

“Yes?”

“Dragons are possessive of their mates. He may protect her if he sees you as a threat.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, smiling grimly. She raised the fold of her sweater, showing him the handle of her wand.

“All the same,” he said. “Be careful. Alistair’s room is just through there. You’ll find it by the smoke leaking under the door.”

***

Ida had never set foot in a dragon cave before today, but she soon appreciated this particular cave was a palace.

She wandered through the largest of the galleries, casting curious glances at the strangest folk art she’d ever seen.

Once out of the gallery, she passed a smaller cavern with couches surrounding a wall of fire, clearly designed as a family lounge, and a smaller room lit by the afternoon sunlight streaming through a wall of sheet crystal.

The light spilled over rows and rows of stone and iron plant benches like the ones in Hector’s greenhouses, filled with rare orchids.

But these were Dragon Hoards. Look, don’t touch.

When she got to the back of the cave, however, things changed.

Here, the halls were smaller, less adorned. The walls were scorched black, and the air carried a distinct odor. She wrinkled her nose. Apparently young dragons, like young men, exuded a rather peculiar aroma—musky, strong, pungent, and mixed with another odor. Smoke.

She crept closer to a faint line of red cracking the blackness of one wall with sudden shattering light.

A hot, roaring sound echoed in the hallway. “They’re both here?”

“Yes.” A woman spoke, her voice soft and fearful. “You know they’re going to try to separate us.”

A deep, masculine growl. “I won’t let them take you from me.”

“And I won’t leave you, not if they drag me away—but, Alistair, they’re Cardinal Witches. We can’t fight them and expect to win.”

“Hector won’t fight me. He’s a reasonable man, for a witch, and he’s my godfather besides. I don’t know the woman, though.”

“Far worse than Hector, believe me,” Amber said. “She’s rude, condescending, and arrogant. But if she hadn’t chosen me, I’d never have met you.”

A pleasurable growl, the sound of lips coming together. Gentle sucking sounds followed and Alistair moaned. “I’m never going to finish this sculpture if you keep distracting me.”

“Maybe I want to distract you.”

Ida coughed loudly and pushed the door open.

Alistair gave an annoyed hiss and covered his bare crotch. Amber scrambled to her feet, pulling the ragged edge of her oversized robe up over her shoulder.

Not lips coming together then. Ida blushed.

Amber folded her arms, blushing too. “Well, don’t say you are sorry for interrupting,” she said in an annoyed voice.

“I’m not going to,” Ida said, coming in. “You knew I’d want to talk to you.”

Alistair showed his teeth. They were sharp, and black in color, shiny as knives. “Amber is my mate. If she doesn’t want to answer your questions, she doesn’t have to.”

Now Ida could see what Alistair was making.

A life-sized statue of a woman stood on a block of stone, carved from magma.

Amber’s hair billowed around her shoulders in red and gold tendrils, her eyes blazed like those of a salamander from the smooth orange, blue, white, and red face.

Hints of purple shown in her naked skin, and her breasts shimmered like golden opals.

Clear to see a man had carved it, even if he was a dragon.

“I have no objection to you hearing what I say to your…to your princess,” she said, mindful of what Hector had said about dragons being possessive of their mates.

“Yes, she is my princess,” Alistair said. “But she is also my mate, a mate after my own heart. I knew it from the day we met.”

Ida held up her hand. “I understand. That was my fault, and I take full responsibility for it—”

“You don’t understand a thing about it.” Amber gripped Alistair’s hand, pressing her nails into his scales. “You didn’t make this love. And you won’t take it away from us.”

“But I did make it.” Ida sighed. “None of this is real. There’s been a—mistake—with Happily-Ever-After.

It’s not your fault at all, but it looks like you may have fallen in love with the wrong person.

You were supposed to fall in love with the prince—and I’m very sorry about that too, long story—but the point is I’m here to make it all better.

So if you’ll just pack your things—and Alistair’s too, because this certainly involves you, and I’m not forgetting that—we’ll all go back to the castle and get this sorted out.

You don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to, Amber. I’ll make sure of that.”