Page 52 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

Contrary to popular opinion, people in love, even magical love, don’t always agree on everything. They stand together despite their differences.

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

Ida North

“I’m sorry for leaving like that,” Ida said, facing Hari’s angry, raised shoulders. “Hector and I thought it would be best if we confronted the dragon and the princess ourselves and not put you and Tinbit in danger—”

“Danger? Danger?” Hari pulled down the bedspread and plumped Ida’s pillow. “We nearly got eaten by a manticore! Tinbit and I barely got away. I’ve no idea if the pony escaped.”

The bad luck kept coming like a landslide. Her crystal, her clothes, her books, not to mention all the roots and herbs Hector had insisted on bringing—just in case—were somewhere walking around the mountains or giving a manticore wicked indigestion.

“I really am sorry. I’m glad you saved the salamander.”

“More like they saved us ,” Hari said. “But if they flame both your britches for running off and leaving them, I’m going to be there handing them matches.

” He stripped his dirty shirt and wiped a dark smear of smoke from his cheek.

“I need a bath. Don’t suppose they have anything here that would fit a gnome?

” He glanced at the long red robe Ida wore.

“I don’t think so,” she said, hitching Morga’s belt tighter around her waist.

“No matter.” He sighed. “I’ll wash my things out and dry them by the fire. Yours too. And then we both need sleep.”

“Later, perhaps,” Ida said. “I’d better go see if Hector needs help. He was counting on the pony so he could prepare wound balms for Adair.”

“Tinbit was carrying as much on his back as the horse. He’ll manage. I don’t think there’s much he can’t do, except when he doesn’t want to.” He gave the pillow a particularly aggressive punch.

“Are you hungry? We ate grilled cheese. I’ll make you one—”

He sighed. “You’d burn it. I’ll eat later. Right now I want to bathe and rest my feet. It’s a long way up a mountain when you’ve been running half a day trying to get away from a manticore with kits.”

Feeling worse than before, she nodded. “Okay. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll go apologize to Cear.”

Hari said nothing. Something must have happened between him and Tinbit beyond running for their lives.

***

Ida found Cear in what she’d termed the dragon’s living room.

She supposed Hector might call it a hospitality chamber, but had the furniture not been all stone with carefully arranged human comforts in various places, she could imagine the whole dragon family settling down to watch the latest sitcom on the crystal at night.

As in her room, a fire burned over the gas vent, soaring to the ceiling in a solid sheet of yellow, red, and blue, undulating softly.

Sinuous and graceful, vaguely serpentine, Cear curled inside the flames, expanding, swimming back down, and as they turned, their eyes glowed a bright crimson, gazing at Ida.

“Are you well?” Ida asked, reaching for the sweetgrass bale. A few flakes were missing. Hector had seen to their comfort before going to attend Adair with Tinbit.

“I have not been so comfortable since leaving my home,” they said, assuming more of a human face, but thin and angular, shining like a multifaceted jewel. “This is how we exist in our natural habitat. I hope I do not distress you with my form.”

“Not at all,” Ida said. “I wanted to be sure you were comfortable and to apologize for leaving you alone at the hostel.”

“But I was not left alone. Your gnome is quite resourceful, and Hector’s gnome equally brave. They attended to me as well as you or Hector might have done.”

“We meant no disrespect. Hector thought we needed to speak with the dragon and the princess first, to ascertain how badly they were affected by the Happily-Ever-After. We were worried about its effects.”

“On your gnomes?”

Ida fed a flake of sweetgrass into the flames a handful at a time. “Yes.”

Cear curled down around the sweetgrass, nibbling it daintily. “Are you not concerned for yourself or for Hector?”

“I’m concerned for every creature who has been affected,” Ida said, not without a twinge of wry amusement at referring to herself as a creature.

“But you hold Hector’s heart,” Cear said in a sibilant hiss. “He is the one you fear for. You care for him.”

“Please don’t tell him about the heart. I don’t regret saving it, and I do plan to return it when all this is over, but I’d rather him not know that I have it for the time being.”

“I will say nothing. But Ida, don’t you wish to consult your own heart in this matter?”

“I don’t have anything to ask it, Cear.”

Her head ached. Somewhere far away, her heart probably ached too.

Fresh air might help with the first. Nothing would help with the second. She left Cear and headed for the cave entrance.

***

Outside the cave, dusk settled over the mountains like a gray blanket.

The sun wouldn’t be down yet, not at this hour.

The mountains merely blocked it from filtering through any place but the mountain passes.

These lit up like red and gold torches, spreading their flames through the valleys wherever the evergreen forests didn’t swallow the light whole.

Stars pricked the blue night above her as she walked a little way down the path.

She didn’t go far, despite the urge to wrap Morga’s overlarge robe around herself and walk home, dodging dragons, manticores, and bandits. Some good witch she’d turned out to be. She couldn’t get Hector to listen to her. Couldn’t get the princess to listen to her. Couldn’t even get Hari to listen.

A soft cough made her slip into the shadows of a large rock, thinking of a dragon blowing fire if they sneezed, but it was only Hector, coming back up the path.

He wore a worn, black dragon robe, probably something of Adair’s, and leaned heavily on his staff like he wished it would bear up the whole world, not just him.

“Come to make sure I don’t wander off?” she asked, stepping out from behind the rock.

He straightened. “I came out to look for the pony. I left Tinbit patching up Adair. He gets short with me if I try to help with bandaging.”

“He brought enough herbs?”

“Apparently so. He was worried Hari might need him to mix a tonic or treat a blister, so he decided to carry it all on his own. He says I owe him. I checked on Cear, by the way; Morga put them in the fireplace.”

“I saw,” she said. “They looked happy.”

Hector climbed the last few feet and stood next to her beside the rock, gazing back at the valley. “No sign of the pony yet.”

“Wouldn’t it run back home?”

“It would if I didn’t have a compulsion on it,” Hector said with a soft grunt.

“It will be hard for it to climb out of a manticore.”

He chuckled. “If it got eaten, I pity the manticore,” he said. “Goblins breed their ponies to be almost indigestible. Dragons used to hunt them, you know.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine them hunting,” Ida said. “Now that I’ve met them, I can’t see them being so barbaric.”

“Humans are even more barbaric.”

“You still feel the same way, don’t you? You still want to fix Happily-Ever-After.”

He hesitated. “To be completely honest, I’ve been trying not to think about it for the last hour and a half. I talked to the princess, you see.”

She folded her other hand over his. “She’s quite a formidable woman.”

“Not unlike the witch who chose her.” Hector smiled. “Whether she thinks she did or not.”

She squared up to him. “I’ve been thinking.

When we do get this sorted out, I’m going to resign from the Council.

I’m going to tell them why I can’t continue in my post. But I’m not going to tell them that I let the magic choose.

Maybe—maybe it made the right decision after all.

I’m not fit for my position. Maybe I never was. ”

“What are you talking about?” He put both hands on her shoulders. “You’re not going to resign. I’m the head of the Council—it’s my responsibility!”

“Hector, do you think Agatha could do half the job you do? All she does with any degree of proficiency is enchanted sleep and hauntings. She certainly wouldn’t enforce the rules about not killing dragons.

Remember when she fought you on whether or not dragons who died of natural causes could be harvested for their magical properties? ”

“I remember—but when I’m gone, you’ll be head of the Council, and you do care about it—”

“I don’t want to be head of the Council, Hector!”

Hector took her hands. “Ida. Listen to me. If you really believe there is something intrinsically wrong with Happily-Ever-After, shouldn’t you be the one to investigate that? And if it turns out that I’m right, you’ll be the best one to fix it. You can convince the others. I have faith in you—”

“But they won’t listen to me! I was responsible for the love magic after all.” He wasn’t saying this, doing this. She couldn’t stand it if he left. She couldn’t. “You’re better at that than I am. If we talk to them together, maybe—”

“We can’t both take the fall for this, and you know it,” Hector said. “Forget about Agatha. What about Tara? Do you honestly think she would pick princesses and princes with any attention to their worthiness? She’d turn the whole thing into a cake competition.”

Ida choked back a sobbing laugh. “But they need you. The prince. The princess. The dragons. What’s going to happen to them if you leave? What about the giants, the goblins, and your silly old ghoul? And your plants? What would you do with all your plants at the castle?”

Hector turned away from her. “Perhaps you might adopt my plants. I personally wouldn’t trust Agatha with a weed.”

“And adopt Tinbit too?”

He sighed. “He won’t leave me.”

She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.

Hari had said not to, and she wanted to respect that, but Hector couldn’t resign.

He couldn’t. She couldn’t sit in the Council room and stare at an empty seat where he used to be, knowing she had caused it.

“Hector—would you—if—I think Hari—” She took a breath.

“It’s just, he cares a great deal for Tinbit, and if he wanted to stay, to come live with you, would you be open to that?

I’d so much like for him to have a happily-ever-after of his own. ”

“You know I would. But I don’t think he’ll ask, or you wouldn’t have done it for him.

” Hector laughed mirthlessly. He leaned heavily against the rock, staring down into the gathering darkness.

“You know, the more I think about it, the more I think you might be right. The problem with Happily-Ever-After is us . No matter what we try to do, it all seems to end up wrong, doesn’t it? ”

“It certainly feels that way,” Ida said.

They stood quietly for a while, hand in hand, staring down the mountain path.

A light breeze kicked up, but it felt more like a breath of winter despite the warmth of the late sun, gilding the snowy peaks of higher mountains with fire.

Ida leaned into Hector’s comforting warmth, grateful for the thickness of his robe in addition to hers.

To her surprise, he pulled her closer to himself, and briefly, he touched his nose to the top of her head.

“They’ll be all right,” he said. “Whatever happens.”

“I want to believe you,” she said. “But I’m just so worried.”

“Quite frankly, I’m more worried about the dragon and the princess. I’m no expert on humans in love, but I know dragons, and there’s no mistaking it. This has gone way beyond Happily-Ever-After. They’re in love, Ida. Worse, it is real.”