Page 104 of Wickedly Ever After
He lay still, reflecting on the image of Ida hovering above him, hair drifting over his face, soft, vulnerable, and yet utterly in control. He’d thought of dragons, how the female ruled the lair, laid the eggs, and won the male by her fighting prowess and strength of mind and heart, and he realized for once, he wasn’t simply observing this mating game like he’d done most of his life, he was participating. For once, he was the oneinlove.
Tinbit was right. It would’ve been better if it had never happened.
48
Ida
When I reflect back on my childhood, it’s like gazing at an ancient fresco in a dwarf city. My past, like that fresco, is hazy, cracked, and faded with the way memories fragment over time. But one stands out in perfect clarity.
I remember my stepmother, a sunny day, the rank smell of geraniums floating through the summer air. She held my hand tenderly, teaching me the rudiments of palmistry.
“See, Ida? That’s your lifeline. You’ll have a long, long life. See how long it is before the smaller line? That’s where love will cross your path. You must be patient. Love is a slow-growing plant, and you’ll wait a long time for it to flower.”
Immortality, it turns out, is a very long time.
Magic and Mischief—A Thousand Years of Happily-Ever-After: A Memoir
Ida North
Hari’s eyes were red with weeping. He rubbed them constantly, claiming it was hay fever.
Ida didn’t question him. She’d used the time to reclaim her robe and put her hair up in something resembling order. She hada million rat’s nests where Hector had pawed through it. The thought of him made her blush and burn inside at the same time. She shouldn’t have given in to her desires, that much was plain.
“You shouldn’t have yelled at Tinbit,” Ida said. “He was only angry with Hector.”
“No, he was angry withyou,” Hari said. “All the way up here we were talking about it—he asked me to come live with him and Hector. He tried to tell me you were no kind of good witch, that you shouldn’t have a hold over me. I told him he was full of shit, and he got snotty with me. Then we ran into the manticore. I didn’t have time to finish telling him off. I guess this was his way of getting the last word.”
“He’s right, though. I don’t want to hold you back.”
“You aren’t,” Hari said. “But the way he’s been acting, you’d swear he wanted to keep me and put me in a cage somewhere to take care of me. He’s got control issues. I don’t think I want to deal with them.” But his eyes welled up with tears again as he said it. “Let’s go in, Ida. I need to wash my face and get rid of this awful nettle rash.”
***
The one great disadvantage to dragon guest rooms was the lack of a private bathing area. Hari washed in the large central pool while Ida busied herself unpacking her bags, trying to ignore his sniffles.
Most of her things were safe. Her crystal, at least, wasn’t broken. She examined it carefully for any hairline cracks, wrapped it back in its velvet cloth and set it aside. Her silk nightgown was rumpled. She picked it up, brought it to her nose. It still smelled like the inn, like Hector. Hector.She couldn’t regrethim, and she wouldn’t forget this night, not if she lived another thousand years. She laid it on the bed. The smell of him would be gone soon, but she’d not be free of her feelings, not in whatever was left of her lifeline.
Hari let out a choked sob.
She closed her eyes. “Please, Hari. I know you love him. You were never meant to be this sad. Stay with him forever.”
Hari spun around. “And have him see me, find out what I really look like?”
She opened her eyes although she didn’t want to.
The twisted wreck of his face glared at her from behind the illusions. He’d been so young when it happened. Always toddling around, lisping her name. And he liked to be with her, the first gnomelet who’d ever taken a shine to her. She couldn’t have been happier.
One second of inattention to a boiling cauldron of magic was all it took. She’d been conferring with his mother about the meal plan for the week, and they’d gotten into a happy little gossiping conversation about the doings in the village between the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker—a love triangle if ever she saw one—and then she heard him scream, the gagging, terrible scream of a baby in pain beyond endurance.
Months of healing followed, wrapping his blistered, charred skin with herbs and rags. The healing salts hurt him so much he cried even under heavy sedation. But he survived. As soon as he was well enough, Ida set about reducing his scars. Fixing up bad transformations was something she was good at—it came with being a good witch. Frog-faced prince? No problem. A head like a horse? Fixed. But no matter how hard she tried with Hari, she couldn’t undo the damage. He’d been scalded byhermagic. Shegave him the most beautiful face and body by illusion, but like most illusions, it meant she must maintain it for him.
“Tinbit would be so angry, so disgusted—” Hari tossed the bath towel across the floor.
“You don’t know that!”
“You know what the first thing he said to me was? ‘My Gods, you’re so beautiful.’ He won’t want me this way. Please tell me we’re almost done here. I want to go home.”
She sighed. “We will be going home soon. I’m going to put an end to this mess, whatever it takes.”
