Page 76 of Wickedly Ever After
“I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is that maybe they’re right—the princess, the prince, even your dragon. Perhaps Happily-Ever-After should end now. This isn’t the world we grew up in. It’s changed. The people have changed. And we need to change too.”
“You speak of that time like you never lived through it.”
“I lived through it,” Ida said quietly. “And I remember it as well as you do.”
“We can’t let that happen again, Ida. I promised myself—no war, no starving people, no plagues that kill whole cities. Never again. No one else should ever have to go to the graveyard and watch their mother weep for her dead father and brothers. No one else should ever have to come home and drink himself to death in a ditch because he can’t get past what he saw in war. No one else need ever stare at their fallow fields, knowing they’ll never yield grain again while their children starve in front of their eyes.”
She set a hand on his shoulder. “We’re not going back there, Hector. People aren’t that way anymore, they aren’t consumed by the need for power—”
“You can say that, when a king and his son wear dragon skin and threaten to kill a boy you’ve known since he was a dragonet—”
“Did the prince say he wanted to kill Alistair? Did he?”
Hector said nothing.
Ida drew herself up. “We find the princess and the dragon. They didn’t deserve to become mixed up in this, especially Amber. And we’ll make sure the prince and his captain of the guard wed, if that’s what they want. But when this is over, we need to go to the Council and tell them the truth. Happily-Ever After has to end.”
Hector looked up, eyes smoldering. “Are you serious? You want to undo the only thing that has held this land safe and happy for a thousand years? We can’t just abdicate our responsibility like that. I won’t let you. We will fix Happily-Ever-After, not abolish it. We will recruit common men as well as common women for the princess, I mean the prince—”
“And how do you think the world will react to that? Some of them will understand, certainly, but others will not—they’ll want to know why we haven’t been doing that all along—”
“Ida, I am way beyond caring what anyone thinks at this point! What’s important is preserving the magic.”
“You honestly think that people won’t ask questions? TheStaris—they’ve already called Amber’s selection into question. How long do you think it will be before they’re demanding more transparency in the process and all this comes out?”
He rounded on her, tall, furious, and his green eyes shonewith a vivid, almost yellow light in the darkening garden. “What you want is for me to tell you you’re right and Happily-Ever-After is wrong. I’m not going to say that. I don’t agree. And I’m not going to let the world fall apart because you can’t get past your little fit of conscience. Like it or not, your slipup caused this whole disaster.”
“It was your candor curse that gave me that ‘little fit of conscience,’” she said, staring up at him, her temper building to a mountain of wrath.He, of all people, should have understood. She knew he was stubborn, but she’d never thought he was stupid.
“I’m not forgetting that,” he said. “But you wouldn’t have had one if you hadn’t outsourced your responsibility in the first place.”
“Of all the—” She stormed after him as he stomped off toward a beautifully constructed arbor of sleeping pea plants, all drowsing comfortably in the rising moonlight. “I didn’t outsource my responsibility. I let the magic choose, as I should have done all of these years, and it picked the wrong person!”
“More evidence that you shouldn’t have ever been in charge of Happily-Ever-After in the first place.”
Had he slapped her, it couldn’t have hurt more. She stopped where she stood, frozen in fury. “Fine,” she said, finding her voice although it broke against the torrent of things she wanted to scream at him. “Fire me, revoke my immortality, whatever you want to do when we get back. But the truth will get out. I’ll make sure it does.”
He glared at her, face twisting in rage. “And I’ll make sure no one ever suffers because of you.”
She fled toward the castle, blinking away angry tears.
35
Hector
Dragon Kidnaps Common Princess; Prince Refuses Quest!
Queen Annabeth and King Rupert are said to be recovering at a resort spa in the coastal village of Serenade-By-The-Sea following the unexpected refusal of Crown Prince Archibald to leave on his quest to rescue Common Princess Amber Smith from the clutches of the vile (and incredibly sexy) dragon who carried her off to his evil lair.
The prince first claimed his best horse foundered, but this paper has obtained information from the First Stableboy that the horse, a gray destrier named Champion, is healthy as any horse and has suffered no lameness. The prince remains in the castle with the Captain of the Guard. Are wedding bells soon to ring for the prince and his paramour? This paper says yes!
Council Set to Burn Witches Over Magical Snafu. Is Happily-Ever-After Dead? Juicy details on page four!
—The Sorcerer’s Star
A distant thud from the direction of the castle let Hector know Ida had reached it and that she was still in a towering temper. Heturned and walked off in the direction of the bog garden.
This was his favorite place, and one he’d wanted to show Ida especially. Here, a peace descended with the mist that brought him comfort on restless nights. It had always brought him comfort on the nights when the belladonna failed to keep the insomnia away. He loved to walk the paths he’d raised between the pools, where his tame mire imp might be snacking on stray Will-o-the-Wisps, to smell the skunk cabbages reeking, and listen to the fire-toads croaking in the mist. And he loved to gaze at the dangerous snapdragons devouring gnats, the ghost lilies floating on the water—here one minute and gone the next—and to hear the stray plop-fizz when a firewort shot off a volley into the murky water. But he found no peace tonight as he made his way, a garden trowel in hand, to the lone tree on an island hidden in the middle of his sanctuary.
