Page 5 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Hector

The only thing more offensive than laughing at a dragon is refusing to have tea with one.

A Thousand Years of Wickedness: A Memoir

Hector West

The Flamelord Adair was a beautiful dragon, more than ten feet tall, with blue eyes the shade of a summer sky and shiny red hair trailing well past his shoulders.

When he smiled, rows of fabulously sharp, serrated teeth sparkled like rubies in the sunlight.

He used this human form for visitors, but Hector had seen him in his true shape, soaring over the mountains as a twenty-foot dragon-king, all smoke, fire, and roar.

He was red then too, with massive, webbed wings and a heavy, armored tail complete with razor-sharp spikes.

“Hector!” The dragon grabbed Hector’s hand in both of his. “What’s with your mask? We specifically had a no-smoking order for the last week in anticipation of your visit.”

“Dwagon foo,” he spluttered through the tiny hole he’d left between his lips, turning another giggle into a cough.

Adair grinned. “Got my vaccination earlier this year. Hector, Hector, Hector. When will you ever learn you’re not completely indestructible?” He clapped Hector on the back.

“Can’t shay long. What’s wong?”

Adair still smiled, but it looked forced now. “I need you to talk to Alistair. Come in and I’ll explain. Morga has made your favorite, toffee cakes and chamomile tea.”

A laugh shuddered through him so suddenly, he almost didn’t suppress it in time. He patted his throat. “No fanks.”

“Just the tea, then.” The Flamelord put his arm around Hector and propelled him into the cave.

Once upon a time, Hector believed dragon caves were just caves—uncomfortably large spaces underground, featuring ridiculous faux dwarf interior design, straight out of the overactive imaginations of second-rate writers.

He also believed they should be filled with treasure, mostly of the shiny variety, equating dragons to oversized magpies with an unfortunate craving for fresh princesses with a side of butter and a hot roll.

He was sixteen. By seventeen, he’d met his first Flamelord and been reeducated.

The room Adair led Hector into was indeed a cave but spacious, airy, and beautifully decorated.

The walls were polished black granite, with sensible furniture carved of the same.

No gold lay about—the dragon kept that in a safe deposit box.

But the room was filled with treasure, although the average person might be hard-pressed to see its value.

The Flamelord collected obscure folk art—the more inscrutable the design and obscure the artist, the better.

He’d acquired a new piece since Hector had been here last.

Adair paused a pregnant moment to let Hector admire the animal in the corner, an odd combination of a horned animal and a fish, covered in black and white spots, made of driftwood and shells.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, looking gratified by Hector’s stunned silence.

“It’s called Sea Cow. It was made from natural materials, locally sourced, by an old mermaid who lives by the coastal city of Myst.”

“Mmm.” He’d call it more striking than beautiful, but he wasn’t artistic, unless he counted picking the right color of orange prickly poppy to contrast with black pussywillow.

All the works of art in his castle came from friends, including the young dragon who slouched through the hallway at the back of the gallery clearly trying to be invisible.

“Alistair!”

The boy paused. He turned slowly. “Yes?”

“Don’t you go flying off,” the Flamelord said.

“Hector has come to see you, and after I talk to him, I want you to hear what he has to say.” He sounded unnecessarily loud.

Alistair must have been listening to that heavy metal dwarf group again—Smashing Mountains?

Crushing Gravel? Hector couldn’t keep track of them anymore.

That might have been the Flamelord thirty-odd years ago.

Funny how parents could never remember how rebellious they’d once been when their teenagers turned against them.

He smiled. A small bubble of giggles trickled from the hole between his mostly sealed lips. He turned it into a coughing fit.

The Flamelord patted him on the back. “Dear me—you really do need a cup of hot tea. Morga! Hector’s here.”

Morga swept into the room in her human form, long black hair swinging down to her ankles.

“Hector!” She took his hands in her own and held them up to her mouth to kiss them.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. Addy and I need your advice on how to deal with Alistair.

You see, Hector, he doesn’t want to kidnap the princess! ”

“Fwat?” An explosion of furious laughter almost burst out of him.

Morga looked at Adair in confusion.

“He’s got dragon-flu.”

Morga rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you get a shot? Hector!”

“That’s what I told him. A big grown-up witch shouldn’t be afraid of a little needle.” Adair sat in one of the huge granite chairs. “Now, how about a cup of your lemon-chamomile blend and a slice of cake for him?”

“No cake.” Hector sat and removed his mask.

His nose was practically bumping the edge of the table, but he didn’t like to ask for a booster seat.

In the middle of the table sat the magical centerpiece: the everblooming black rose shedding petals on the stone table.

Of all the foolishness. Alistair had been groomed for this position since he was a twelve-year-old wyvern-sized dragonet.

Now at eighteen he was getting new ideas?

“S’why?” he asked as Morga plunked a flagon full of tea at his elbow. At least it was large enough to hide his grin when he drank it, and he’d have to. It would be rude not to.

“It’s all those weird books he reads,” Addy said. “At first, we thought it was a phase—him reading outside of the traditional fairy tales. And frankly, Morga and I were just glad he was reading. You remember how hard it was for us to get him to give up comic books.”

“Graphic novels, dear,” Morga said.

“He thinks girls shouldn’t be forced to go with a dragon against their will.

It’s like he doesn’t believe it’s the way the whole world works.

I’ve tried to tell him how good it is for the Common Princess, how it greatly improves her life, how it lifts her out of her usual station and lets her become a queen.

But all he keeps saying is he won’t support a practice that has its roots in medieval… abduction fantasies.”

“Talk to him, Hector,” Morga said. “Alistair respects you so much, and you are, of course, human and can explain it so much better than we can. Addy has gone over the dragon’s role in the Happily-Ever-After with him—how he doesn’t even have to touch the girl’s hand if he doesn’t want to, and how he’s to be a perfect gentleman and furnish her a cave as befits a princess.

I even suggested he decorate it with his art for her—he wasn’t having any of it.

Please, Hector. We’re at our wit’s end.”

Cwap indeed. The date for kidnap was barely a week away.

Ida would be interviewing the candidates today or the next.

He’d have to find some way to talk to Alistair without laughing.

A teenage dragon was about ten times as volatile as a grown one.

He lifted his empty cup and set it down beside the slab of cake Morga now pushed hopefully in his direction. “I’ll twy,” he said.

***

Alistair’s studio used to be his bedroom.

Hector had been there countless times in the past, when Alistair was a young, wiggly, excitable dragonet who couldn’t keep his form from one second to the next.

Sometimes he was a wild-haired, brown-skinned, blue-eyed little boy with grabby hands, rushing from one treasure to the next, eager to show off his latest toys.

The next minute, he was a hard-scaled, lithe little snake with undeveloped wings, fawning against Hector’s ankles, climbing up his robe with razorlike claws, panting in his eagerness, a typical dragon child.

His room used to be the typical room of a dragon child too—brightly colored stone furniture, windows open to the sky, a balcony from which to take the air, and a large, open bathing pool for shedding skins—in short, everything to make a dragon prince feel like a king.

Not anymore.

Hector coughed. Smoke billowed out the moment he opened the door, although the crystal windows stood open, admitting a stiff, cold breeze and plenty of sunlight into what had essentially become a volcanic vent.

Everything was black—the curtains, the walls, the asbestos bedding.

Even the ceiling was black. The bright furniture had been removed, leaving a long, sterile-looking sleeping couch completely covered in ashes.

The swimming pool-sized bath was empty and soot colored.

The reason for all the cinders was evident immediately.

Alistair had completely filled his room with fire sculptures.

The closest one roared all the way up to the ceiling, flying up as a man, crawling down itself as a dragon. It stood far taller than the dragon himself, breathing out enormous jets of fire onto a granite base, shaping them boldly with his hands.

Alistair wasn’t as tall as his father yet—he had years of growing left to do—but he wasn’t the vampire-thin, scrawny boy he’d been a year ago.

Working with fire had given him an upper body a dwarf would’ve been proud of.

His muscles rippled as he worked; his skin glistened in the heat.

Hector was somewhat surprised to see Alistair caught between dragon and man—his human legs were covered in his dark scales and he sported crimson wings from his shoulder blades.

Only when Hector saw the mirror did he understand.

Alistair was carving a self-portrait. Every now and then, he’d check the mirror and blow another long, flaming breath into the sculpture. He glanced at Hector, smoke leaking from both nostrils.

With the greatest of care, Hector fully unzipped his lips. A smile still curled the corners of his mouth but no giggles emerged. The worst might be over, and this wasn’t the sort of conversation one could conduct through a blowhole.

“Very nice. What do you call this one?” he asked, gesturing to the sculpture.

“ The Quintessence of Being ,” Alistair said.

With a broad slap of his large hand, he carved off a substantial chunk of semi-soft lava.

It shuddered in the air and fell from the pedestal as a pyroclastic cloud.

“I know why you’re here, and you’re wasting your time.

I won’t do it. Find another dragon. There must be any number of hotshots who want the notoriety. ”

“Notoriety is not the point,” Hector said. “Alistair, you are the prince. Every Flamelord for the last thousand years starts his reign by kidnapping a princess. Your father did. Your grandfather did. Your great-grandfather—”

“And my great-great-great-grandfather did, yes, I know. You sound like Dad. But it’s not for me. I don’t want to be the Flamelord. I’m an artist. And I don’t want to take an innocent girl, trap her in a cave, and fight some stupid prince when I wanted nothing to do with it in the first place.”

“It’s not like that at all, not now,” Hector said, seriously disturbed. “It’s not a real fight—no magical weapons allowed. And your scales will turn any blade that isn’t enchanted.”

“Dad got wounded.”

“That was a…misunderstanding.” It wouldn’t be happening again. A stint in his dungeon had taught that royal fool a lesson.

“Well, if dragons aren’t supposed to be wounded and it happened anyway, what makes you think the princess actually wants to be shut up in a cave and kept as a prisoner until she’s rescued?

What if she wanted to rescue herself? What if she didn’t want to be a princess at all? Have you ever thought about that?”

“Frankly, no,” he said. “That’s not my department. But I can assure you that the princess does not want to rescue herself and she does want to be a princess. It’s all included in the spell.”

Alistair snorted sparks. “Yeah, right. Because you say so, it has to be true.”

“Fine. Don’t fight the prince. Leave the princess in the cave and come right home. I’ll find some way of making it work—an illusion of some kind, perhaps. But you can’t overturn centuries’ worth of tradition because of human feelings.”

“Maybe they are dragon feelings. Did you ever consider that?”

Hector’s lips trembled, curled. Oh no. No, no, no, no. He laughed.

Alistair caught him full in the face with a blast of ultra-hot dragon fire and roasted him like a marshmallow.

***

Adair was incensed. He stormed off to Alistair’s room, promising to ground him for the rest of his life.

Morga bandaged Hector tenderly, apologizing until she literally turned blue in the face.

Pocket, bless his kind heart, wrapped Hector carefully in blankets, tucked him in the basket, and ran all the way home with him.

Tinbit, all concern and very little sarcasm, made Pocket tell him what happened about ten times while he undressed Hector and hissed with sympathy over the crispy bits while Hector tried to assure him he’d gotten worse in his lifetime, which he had, but a very long time ago, back when the dragons were wild, ungoverned, and particularly suspicious of wicked witches, who compelled them to fight in the wars.

What was wrong with kids these days? No respect and irresponsible to boot.

But he would have handled it better if he hadn’t been laughing.

Hector glanced again at the unfinished letter lying on his bathtub writing table.

He crumpled it up and grabbed a fresh sheet of paper.

If Ida wanted war with him, he’d give her one.