Page 1 of Wickedly Ever After
Prologue
Hector
On a deserted battlefield, the scent of smoke and death steams in the mist trailing from the nearby fens. Ravens are hard at work on the corpses. Mire imps pick over what the ravens don’t dare to touch, but much remains uneaten. Necomantic constructs aren’t meant to be ingested. Not voluntarily anyway.
Not far from the corpses, a fire has been kindled under a cauldron. The flames are blue, gold, red, and green, all the colors of magic. A boy stirs that cauldron, the sleeves of his black tunic rolled up to his shoulders, which are knotted in equally complicated folds. His long black hair sticks in strands over his forehead, but he doesn’t touch his face. Like the ravens, he knows better.
With an ominous rattle, a construct approaches, an ancient skeleton held together by sinews and magic. It gazes at the apprentice through hollow eye sockets. A question shines in the red light glowing in the darkness there as it holds up a twisted root.
“Put it in—but carefully.”
With a soft plop, hemlock slides into the black soup.
“Thank you,” the boy says. It’s never felt awkward saying thanks to the dead. He’s never had a problem with them. It’s the living who irritate him the most—the people who have gone to war over this particular patch of ground so many times that the compacted soil has long since turned to bone dust and blood meal. The boy has been tending this cauldron for hours—seven stirs counterclockwise, seven clockwise, seven counterclockwise, all day long. But it won’t be long now. He has a clear view of the great snowcapped range of the Dread Mountains, and the sun is kissing the peaks of Mount Dragon right now. In the chilly mists stealing across the plain, he sees the newcomers approaching. Three of them stride across the field, two in white robes, one in black. They are all old women, and they walk with purpose.
“Gretel?” His voice cracks. “They’re here.”
His mentor puts a hand on his back. “You can stop stirring now, Hector. It’s as done as we can make it.”
He steps back, arms aching, more alert now than he’s been all day. He’s been working with Gretel on this piece of magic for his entire apprenticeship, but for her and the other Cardinal Witches, it’s been the study of their long lives.
The oldest of them, a sharp-eyed crone with faded hair and a deeply wrinkled face, gives the boy an appraising glance. “What ishedoing here, Gretel?”
His mentor smiles all over her grandmotherly face. “That cauldron is heavy. I needed a young back and strong arms. You should consider getting an apprentice yourself, Hilde. You’re not getting any younger either.”
The old witch snorts. “When I do get one, it will be a fine, upstanding young lady, not some stray farm boy I picked up outof the woods.”
“Farm boys have a way of turning into heroes if you don’t catch them soon enough,” Gretel says. “There’s plenty of precedent. Besides, he’s good with the plants. Did you bring the wine?”
From the folds of her white robes, Hilde pulls out a flask filled with a liquid so bright that it puts the rays of the setting sun to shame. “Golden wine from the frost grapes of the north—the last of it, I believe. No one grows them anymore, not since the famine.”
“And the other items? Rosalind? Judith?” The other witches come forward, holding out two objects. One of them, the boy has only heard of in legends that his uncle used to tell, before the long war took him like it took so many members of his family. It’s an ancient crown that once belonged to the high king, back when there was such a thing, and not this splintered kingdom where every family with a drop of royal blood has decreed themselves king. The other item is something he’s quite familiar with. It’s a simple workman’s hammer, probably taken from some camp forge.
Gretel nods in approval. “Now all we need are the elementals. Hilde, will you call them please? My hands are full.”
The apprentice is so enthralled by the elementals, he forgets to ask his mentor if there’s something he should do to help. He’s never seen one before, except in Gretel’s books. The books didn’t do them justice. The earth elemental starts out as a toad, and then becomes a tall, thin green person with hard onyx eyes; the sylph materializes from the mist as a moth before becoming blue from the hair to the feet; the green undine swims through the nearest dewdrop as a tiny fish before taking their shape; and thesalamander! They are a lithe blue, gold, red, and purple entity, sliding out from between the coals beneath the cauldron. When they take their form, they turn their bright blue eyes on him, and he feels like he’s been looked through from head to heart in a glance.
“Hector?” Gretel’s voice recalls him. “I need the stone knife.”
“Coming.” He turns around to the bag to fetch it. Witches don’t react well to iron, something he’s been coming to terms with since he found out he was destined to be one. It was highly disconcerting to find out he could prick his finger on a nail and wind up in bed for three days. But he’s so interested in the spell being chanted and items being added to the cauldron by the elementals, he can barely concentrate.
“What are they doing?” he whispers to Gretel.
She explains patiently, as she always has. “Elementals are the guardians of magic, Hector, and this is a very complicated spell. We needed their help to build it. A thousand years of peace is a long time to ask of magic.”
“A thousand years of war would be longer,” he says.
“That’s true.” Gretel pats his arm as if hearing his bitterness. “The earth elemental has brought a grain of sand from the far reaches of the south seas, the sylph has a breath of the north wind in their wings, the undine has brought a drop of water from the driest desert in the east, and the salamander has come all the way from Mount Dragon itself with a tongue of dragon flame.”
“And the crown and the hammer?”
“Watch and see. The knife please.”
The boy hands it over. What he sees next will haunt him for the rest of his life. Gretel takes the knife and plunges it into her own chest. “Gretel!” He reaches out to stop her, but it’s too late.
The blood slides over her hands and she smiles at him. “Don’t worry, child,” she says. “It doesn’t hurt much as long as it doesn’t belong to anyone else.” In front of his unbelieving eyes, she removes her heart from her chest.
“Hilde?”
