Page 67 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Hector

You heard it here first, folks! King Rupert and Queen Annabeth Divorced! Queen claims King cheated on her with Lady Gray, first lady-in-waiting and highest in the confidence of the queen. King denies all—says Queen is carrying on with the Head Gardener Exclusive from Lady Gray on page four!

I Was Seduced By A Two-Headed Strawman With A Giant Eggplant—one woman’s sizzling erotic encounter with a scarecrow continues to top the bestseller’s list…

—The Sorcerer’s Star

Crown Prince Archibald Quentin Rupert II and his consort Caedan Cay visited the flooded province of Westfale today where unseasonably heavy rainfall resulted in a dam break on the River Fale.

Over a hundred people are confirmed dead and many others remain missing.

The prince is expected to go before the Parliament of Commons and ask them to match the offer from the royal treasury to assist in recovery efforts.

In other news, the annual quest for the Holey Pail remains in jeopardy after three knights errant and their scouting master were reported missing.

Knights Lanceboil, Piercenavel, Galehead, and master Arthur Pin-Dragon were last seen in the company of three banshees headed for Lake Wildmere.

Anyone with information on the missing men should contact the Wildmere Sherriff’s Office.

—The Kingdom Wall Journal

Last chance to sign up for Witches’ Weeds Annual Garden Contest—Don’t Miss Your Chance! All new this year: Best Bog Competition!

Sale on Jack-in-the-Beanstalk’s Magic Root Powder!

Shop Cinderella’s Emporium for all Your Giant Pumpkin Needs!

—Witches’ Weeds

“Gods.” What had he said this time? All he was trying to tell her was that he would never have forced the issue had he not been so sure that she was right about Happily-Ever-After.

Couldn’t she see how much he cared? How could he have fired her and spent the rest of his life alone without her to keep him company?

Because he couldn’t lose her now. He’d known it from the moment he watched the immortality leave her eyes.

It had been all he could do to restrain his anger and not shatter Agatha as soon as he turned her into stone.

He clutched his heart protectively. No wonder he’d felt her pain so intensely.

Part of it had been his own. Ida, why? Why does it always have to be this way between us?

Why is it so hard to just say what I want to say?

He stomped down the stairs. It wasn’t hard to see where she’d gone. The crystal doors that led into the garden stood ajar.

“Ida!” he called, pushing both doors open. “I didn’t mean it like that! Of course, it wasn’t all about duty—I simply thought you were better equipped to deal with the aftermath than I was. I don’t understand love magic—or even love for that matter. I never have!”

“You got that part right.” Ida knelt at the base of a lily, digging it up with a hand spade.

With an angry jerk, she lifted it and divided it with her fingers.

She set a slip in one of the tea towels, then settled the remaining plant in the ground before waving her hand over it.

Golden sparks drifted downward like fertilizer.

“If it wasn’t all about duty, then what else was it about?

” She moved on to the next flower bed. He followed, picking up the stack of tea towels she’d left behind.

“If you couldn’t bear to sit in the room and stare at the chair where I used to sit, what makes you think I could?”

She stopped digging but didn’t look up. Her rose-gold hair fell partly over her face, covering it.

Now. Now or I’ll never do it.

He squatted down next to her, touching the leaves of the plant in front of them both.

“I know…I know I’m an old fool, and I know you and I…

well, I doubt we’ll ever agree fully on anything, even when to have dinner, but these last few days—” He set his hand on her shoulder. “Ida? Will you look at me please?”

She turned toward him, face pink in the light flowing through the roses.

“Ida, I’ve lived more with you in a week than I have in a thousand years. When I thought about living another day without you, I knew I’d never want it. I’d be dead inside, truly heartless. I…I didn’t know if…”

“…I felt the same way?” She looked full in his face then, melting lavender eyes warm and wanting.

“I couldn’t tell you I loved you before.

How could I when I knew what I’d done would make Happily-Ever-After impossible to restore?

I killed the rose, Ida. When I destroyed my own immortality, I destroyed that magic.

If they had demanded you restore it, I’d be nowhere to be found.

It was the least I could do for you, to make things right.

But now you’ve sacrificed your immortality for me, I dare to hope.

Ida, if you could find it in your heart to stay by my side, to be my constant companion, there’s nothing I want more. ”

“Oh, Hector.” She buried her face in his chest while he held her.

He pressed his nose into her hair, breathing in the warm scent of her. “Come with me. We can protect each other. I don’t want you to go anywhere else. I want you with me until the day you die, and when that happens, I won’t be far behind. I don’t want to be alive if it means I don’t have you.”

“Oh, you, you stupid, stupid—you amazingly foolish man. How do you do this to me? I think I know what you want, and then you go and”—she thumped his chest with a gentle fist—“you ruin everything, you blow my plans up in a word, you turn over everything I do.” She gazed up at him, purple eyes filled with tears, but she was smiling. “And I don’t even care.”

“Say you love me. Do you? Please say you do. Please say you’ll come back with me.

I have a little gingerbread house in the foothills of the Dread Mountains.

It’s old and the foundation might be a bit cracked in places, and the style is hopelessly out-of-date, but I think I still have the batter recipe. We can fix it up together.”

“How did you know I love gingerbread houses?” She laughed, tears running down her cheeks.

“Is that a yes or no?”

She shoved him sideways. “That’s a yes. For now. Until you make me mad and I leave in a fury.”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Well, since that’s unavoidable, perhaps I can make you laugh enough to stay.”

She cupped her hand around his cheek. “And I hope I make you annoyed enough that you’ll never get tired of me.”

“I think you can count on that,” he said.

“So, I do annoy you.” She huffed, eyes sparkling.

He pulled her close. “So much that I don’t think I’d ever have a happy day if you weren’t there to do it.”

“You infuriating man,” she said as he helped her up. “You could have told me all of this instead of just sacrificing yourself and telling me you wanted to resign. I’d have understood.”

“At first, I was afraid I was being selfish. That I’d let my desires rule my decisions. Or worse, that I didn’t care if they did. And I had hoped that possibly…”

“…the Council might listen to us if we both explained.”

“Yes.” He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “I think your optimism rubbed off on me.”

“And your pessimism on me.” She gazed sadly at the red rose, glowing brightly in the afternoon sunshine. “They didn’t.”

“No, but I hold out hope that the world is ready to rule itself regardless of what the Council thinks,” he said, breathing in the scent of those ancient flowers—wild, intoxicating—so like the flowers of his Skeleton Rose that he could almost believe they’d never been different species at all, more like variations on a theme.

“Amber said that the dragons had outgrown their need for me. Perhaps the people will prove just as capable of handling their own affairs without us.”

“In time, maybe. But right now—no. I can see a manhunt happening as soon as the king and queen find out there will never be a Happily-Ever-After again.”

“Probably.” He curled his fingers around his staff.

It felt so final, the end of Happily-Ever-After.

Odd. He’d always thought he’d pass on the seeds from the black rose to an apprentice, much as they’d been given to him.

He’d thought about it often, but every time he considered it, something held him back.

Perhaps there was a destiny to it after all.

He’d seen it come into being. Now he’d be here at the end of it.

But not alone.

He reached for her hand, and she took it.

Together they walked toward the garden wall where the root of the enormous rose grew, thick as a tree trunk and guarded by thorns as long as Hector’s hand.

She bent over and picked a small bloom, twirling it between her fingers.

“This is where it was planted, Hector, so long ago. My mentor brought me out, gave this seed to me and said, ‘I’ve been needing to hand this over to you for some time. It’s going to be your responsibility in the future.

You might as well be in charge of it now. ’”

He smiled. “I received almost the same speech.” He reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out the crumpled, wilted bloom he’d taken from the Skeleton Rose.

He kissed it gently. “I had rather hoped that we could have made this a bigger event. I’m not one for spectacle, as you well know, but I think the Sorcerer’s Star would have liked front row seats.

” He set the tip of his staff on the ground beside the rose and let the power flow through him.

A sudden stinking smell of death, decay, and rancid meat filled the air to mingle horribly with the roses.

Ida watched the plant wilt with a firm, resolute look on her face. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in explaining to anyone else, but I think I’ll send a note to the prince and his husband to explain things. Maybe they’ll listen.”

“I was thinking of doing the same for Alistair and Amber. I plan to suggest he send an envoy to Archie and Caedan, just to feel out the possibility of formal diplomatic relations.”

“And if that doesn’t work out?”

“Then they’ll know where to find me when the fighting starts.” He glanced up at the rose bush, now curling and blackening in the sunset. He reached out and plucked a fading blossom and handed it to Ida. “A keepsake. Hold onto it like holding onto hope.”

She pressed her forehead against his shoulder. “Like holding onto you.” She tucked the red rose in her hair. “My horrible, horrible Hector.”

“My dear detested Ida.” He kissed her.

A gust of wind picked up the drying petals and showered them with crimson.

The End