Page 63 of Wickedly Ever After
“It’s your stomach,” Tinbit said. “I’m waiting until we get home, and then I’m making a roast beef sandwich bigger than my head and some deviled eggs. Hari could use the protein.”
“Hari can’t stay, Tinbit.”
“I know.” Chaff showered Hector as Tinbit shook out an empty bag. “But I’m not sending him home without a good meal and plenty of hot soup. He’s not well yet.”
“If you keep taking care of him, no amount of potion—”
“You think I don’t know what I’m risking? But if I can’t love him because he can’t love me, can’t I at least call him a friend? Even you’ll get to write to Ida when this is all over—I half think she’d actually like you to write more often than once a week if I read her right—but women aren’t really my province.”
“Ida does not consider me a friend,” Hector said. “We are professional enemies.”
“Right. And you pillow talk all your enemies, do you?”
Hector’s face burned. “That wasn’t pillow talk!”
“Could’ve fooled me. Face it, Hector, you feel something for her, and it’s bugging the shit out of you.”
“What I feel—and I’m not saying I do—is a normal physiologic response, explainable by proximity and an extremely minor reaction to love being unfortunately ‘in the air’ at the moment.”
Tinbit smirked unpleasantly. “Yesterday, I might’ve had some sympathy. Today, it’s not happening. I hope you get blue balls and don’t know what to do with them.”
“You are the most disrespectful butler in the kingdom.”
“You’re lucky you have me,” Tinbit growled back. “Now go in the far stall and jack off. Trust me, you’ll feel better.”
Thoroughly chastened, Hector fled.
***
Ida was helping Cear with ash removal when Hector returned to the room. The breakfast tray, largely untouched, sat on the battered oak table.
“Did you eat?” he asked.
“No, it looked too dangerous.” Ida used the gravy ladle to clean the firepot. “Hari is packing your things. I hope you don’t mind. He said Tinbit went to help you.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, although he very much did. But at least they’d be ready to leave sooner rather than later. He sat at the table and tore off a piece of hard, dry biscuit and dunked it in the dubious gravy.
Ida stopped shoveling. “You’re going to eat that?”
“It’s part of my duties as Wicked Witch. I rate the cooking at various hotels in this town. The worse, the better.”
Ida blinked. “It’s your stomach,” she said, echoing Tinbit.
The breakfast was truly terrible. Salty gravy, rancid mutton,and biscuit hard enough to break the teeth of a mountain troll. Five stars in his opinion.
It would be good to get home, to spend a night in his own bed—alone—to eat a good meal, walk his garden—alone—and try not to think about Tinbit, Hari, the princess, the dragon, or Ida. He shoved his plate aside, rose, and carried his own luggage and Ida’s down to the coach.
***
Trees made a welcome change from the fens of yesterday. Hector loved the Fearsome Forest, with its dark emerald shadows, dangerous dryads, and no shortage of carnivorous animals with which to threaten questing heroes. But today, even the bucolic sight of a lovely mother manticore and her three fluffy kits feasting on a deer couldn’t cheer him up.
Hari also stared out the window, elbow against the glass. His eyes were red and slightly swollen. Tinbit had elected to ride with the coachman, something Hector wished he could do himself. Being stuck in a coach with a sad gnome, a watchful salamander, and a scowling witch he’d wanted to kiss that morning put him dreadfully out of sorts, even more than the rotten meat he’d eaten at the inn.
“I thought we might discuss setting out to reach the dragons this afternoon instead of in the morning.” Ida’s mouth was drawn in a firm line, her gaze lofty and cold. Good. He preferred it to the soft—perilously soft—way she’d looked at him in bed.
He cleared his throat. “It’s unwise to start out too late in the day when hiking into the mountains.”
“Because of dangerous creatures?”
