Page 108 of Wickedly Ever After
“I was going to let you take credit for saving the prince of the kingdom from a marriage to someone who wasn’t his true love!” He huffed.
“Doesn’t matter now.” Ida flopped down beside him.
Hector was quiet for some time. He nudged her shoulder. “You actually wanted me to look like the big, bad witch?”
“Well, of course. It’s good versus evil. If evil has to lose, it should look damned fine doing it.”
“Thank you.”
“And you wanted me to look like the wise old woman who knows love in all its forms?”
“Well, it’s true,” Hector said.
Ida smirked. “The old part is.”
“Wise woman! Not old—good Gods.” Hector snorted. “Why do you always do that to me?”
She cuddled into him. “Maybe I need you to make me laugh to keep me from being so scared.”
He put an arm around her. “You realize that if this works out—and Gods only know if it will—we can’t be together? We’ll still be Cardinal Witches, and no one can know what happened between us.”
She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Hector, if this works out, we’ll both come to accept it. The time when we could’ve been something passed a long time ago. But Hari and Tinbit, and Amber and Alistair, they have their whole lives to love and be loved. They deserve a chance. That’s all I want right now.”
“You’re right, of course,” Hector said. “Show me where you put the prince and I’ll see what I can do to make that a reality.”
She shook her head, feeling sick. “I can’t show you. I can’t even tell you. The moment the magic took him I couldn’t find him again if I tried. Only one person can find Alistair: the princess.”
51
Hector
So many spells are subject to the magic of truelove’s kiss, it’s a marvel lip balm companies haven’t turned it into a slogan.
A Thousand Years of Wickedness: A Memoir
Hector West
There were many things Hector didn’t know about good magic. He’d concede his ignorance gladly most of the time. But then again, most of the time he wasn’t riding between the backplate scales of a large, grumpy mother dragon, on his way to transform a beautiful prince back into a charming reptile, assuming Amber could find him. Wisely, Ida hadn’t said anything about that to Alistair’s parents. If she had, Hector might have been reporting back to the capital city alone, blaming himself for the dragons turning her into dinner.
Ida flew opposite him, perched precariously on the Flamelord’s back. Although wounded, Adair wouldn’t be left out of trying to save his son from becoming a hideous human for the rest of his life. Hector had reservations about having Ida ride him, but the princess was having enough trouble flying withoutputting a person on her back. She flapped in Morga’s draft, her large brown eyes dilated with fright.
Morga glanced over her shoulder at her daughter-in-law. “Do you need to rest again?”
“I’m fine,” Amber said, then dropped a foot because talking and flying at the same time was a feat her brain hadn’t mastered yet. She flapped harder than ever.
“Set down on the next crag,” Adair roared, also glancing back with worry written on his scaly face.
Hector smiled grimly. Something about watching the girl struggle with her new wings and her coordination must be reminding the dragons of their early days parenting Alistair. Or maybe it was simply what Hector told them: if this worked out, they’d get an actual dragon for a daughter-in-law, not a human in dragon skin. He’d felt it prudent to ignore the frightening possibility that Amber already wasn’t human enough to give a truelove’s kiss. Ida had been deeply concerned on that point. Had he said that, Ida would’ve been headed back to the capital alone to report their failure, and he wouldn’t have blamed the dragons one bit for turninghiminto dinner.
***
He and Ida had consulted for most of the morning, leaving the lovely breakfast the gnomes had cooked largely uneaten.
“Handsome prince,” he said, feeling hopeful. “Well, Alistair is a prince, and he’s considered quite handsome. So if she kisses him, he could resume his dragon form after all.”
Ida shook her head. “You are looking for a loophole, Hector, and I don’t leave those. If a kiss makes a man into a prince, you’d better believe you’ll get what I ordered. I ordered a handsomeman, the way Alistair appears in his human form but truly human. And he’ll stay that way for at least six weeks. I wanted to give Amber time to say her farewells, and then there’s the media. They’ll want interviews.”
“Wait a minute,” Tinbit spluttered. “Allmagic has loopholes. They’re built-in for curse breaking.”
