Page 110 of Wickedly Ever After
Hector helped her up. “How in blazes did you get him in there?”
She pushed his hand away. “He flew here, transformed, and walked in of course. You must remember I intended for a human-sized princess to rescue him. Oh, my back.” She stretched with a grimace.
Hector eyed the slit in the rock with deep misgivings. “How far back in the cave is he?”
Ida brushed herself down. “I don’t know, Hector. He walked in. At some point he lay down and became a dragon in an enchanted sleep. We must find him, animate him, and walk him to the door so she can kiss him.” She sounded confident, but he could see the way she bit the corner of her lip when she didn’t think he was looking.
He’d simply have to put a good face on things. With a calm smile, he patted Amber on the nose. “Don’t worry, we’ll get him out in a few minutes.” If they didn’t, hiding in the back of a cave with a dragon in an enchanted sleep might not be a bad idea.
He slipped through the crack. Ida followed him.
Inside it was dark beyond all reckoning. Amber’s nostrils jammed the doorway immediately after they entered, blocking out the thin light of the setting sun. Hector lit his staff, and a few frightened bats took off and sailed around the cave in a panic when they found a dragon outside their door. But there was no dragon inside.
Ida’s face withered in the light. “He should be here. It’s nice and roomy, the logical place for him to lie down.”
“No. He’s a young dragon in dragon country,” Hector said.“He wouldn’t lie in state where anything could come and eat him. He’d look for a good place to hide. Let’s go farther in.”
Two side caves parted ways at the back of the gallery, one with a low ceiling. Ida immediately rejected it. “I don’t do well with tight places. I’ll take the other if you can explore this one. If you find him, call me.”
Hector stooped into the tunnel, ducking to get past the low overhang. He didn’t state the obvious—if Alistair had reverted to his dragon shape in the tight tunnel, they couldn’t walk him out. But how much more transfiguring could an enchanted, sleeping dragon stand? How much more couldhetake? He’d used so much necomancy on the transformation of Amber. Most of his greenhouse was probably dead because of it, possibly every plant he owned. It might take a forest, and if he did that, Agatha would certainly take him to task for it. He didn’t know what else of his own that he could sacrifice to transform Alistair, even if only for the moments it would take to get him to the door. His hope sank into his boots when he came out through the narrow space and saw the dragon.
Alistair lay wedged comfortably under a ledge, cocooned in rock.
“Ida?” he called, trying not to panic. “He’s in here.” He found a flat rock and sat down gingerly. As far as he was concerned, dragons were never meant to be ridden.
Ida joined him quickly—she evidently hadn’t gone far down the other tunnel. “It was a dead end,” she explained. “I was already on my way back.” Then she saw Alistair. “Oh my. How did he do that?”
“Shapeshifting,” Hector said. “Parts of him are compressed, others inflated. It’s so no one can drag him out.”
“Oh.” She sat on the rock next to him.
“Can you do anything to reverse your spell?” he asked. “Anything at all?”
Ida bit her lip. “No. Only a kiss from the princess will break the enchantment and make him a prince.”
“I can’t transform him,” Hector said. “I used a lot of magic on Amber, and there’s only so much death I can use before there’s an inquiry.”
“Well, I’m about at max myself,” she said. “I created a lot of life last night to bring Alistair here and make the enchantment to turn him into a man.”
“Life?”
Ida touched Alistair’s face. “Your magic makes you pay in death. I pay in life. When I make magic, trees fruit, grains swell, and animals give birth. Why do you think we do Happily-Ever-After in the spring? I can get away with it and not risk upsetting the balance. If I use too much vivomancy, too many twins are conceived and sometimes the animals can’t give birth. We’ve already seen the crops are out of season. And I’ve upset the balance more with what I’ve done here. I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I thought it would fix everything.”
“Regardless, one of us has to either get him out of here or get the princess in here. Short of flying in a team of goblins to open up this tunnel and the entrance, I don’t see a way to do the second.”
“How feasible would that be?”
“First, I’d need to convince the goblins it’s in their best interest to help the dragons. Then they’d have to vote on it. Then I’d need to go to the dragons and present the demands the goblins want in exchange for their help and—”
Ida held up her hand. “Stop. I know how dangerous that would be.”
Hector gnawed his knuckle. “What about waking him? If we could do that—”
“He would still be trapped here, wouldn’t he?”
“I don’t think so. He’s still a dragon. He might well be able to shapeshift and make his way out.”
Ida considered. “Break half the spell. I’ve never even considered such a thing. But I couldn’t wake him, not entirely. The best I might be able to do would be no better than sleepwalking.”
