Page 36 of Wickedly Ever After
“We’ll go as soon as I’m done with the Council meeting. Why don’t you stay with the coach today? That way you don’t have to see him again.” He wiped the tears accumulating in the corners of Tinbit’s eyes with his handkerchief before they did any harm. He had limited experience with broken hearts, but one thing he knew for certain—time and distance helped.
***
In the stables, Hector found Tinbit working on the horse. He bent over, drilling holes in the horse’s left front cannon bone while the skeleton coachman stood nearby, helpfully torquing a silver plate to fit. The patient, happily removed many years from the pain of such proceedings, stood three-legged, munching on a feedbag. It held chaff, which dropped to the floor through the open jawbone, but the horse didn’t care, and Hector preferred them to remain as horse-like as possible after death.
“Almost done with Napoleon Bone-Apart,” Tinbit said with a snort. “Maybe next time you resurrect a horse, give them a little more sense about not jumping at shadows that can’t hurt them anymore.”
“I’ll consider it.” Hector gave the horse’s long frontal sinus a pat. “I need my scrying mirror. Where is it?”
“In the bag with your dirty jersey, I think. Those butterflies shat all over it.” Tinbit wrinkled his brow. “Why do you need a mirror? And why don’t I hear Alistair roaring?”
“That’s why I need it. Our dragon prince hasn’t arrived yet.”
“Oh, shit,” Tinbit said, straightening. “I only brought the medium distance one.”
“If he’s not in range of that one, I couldn’t bring him here in time, anyway.” The dragon had better be in range. His hands shook as he fumbled with the mirror. “Alistair,” he breathed, fogging the glass. It remained passively gray.
The one day he needed a dragon to actually act like a stereotype—one day—and the chosen dragon had chosen to act like himself. It was one thing for him to know the fire-breathing reptiles were actually sensitive, deeply intellectual men and women, but the people of the kingdom shouldn’t know thatabout their traditional creatures of fight and fear. That was part of the magic—there had to be something to test the magical love in order to make it stick. The black rose had to meet the red. If Alistair didn’t come…
He didn’t want to think about that, but his thoughts strayed back to an abandoned battlefield, the bodies lying there, a cauldron full of magic and hope, and the desperate understanding that if Happily-Ever-After ever fell apart, all he’d given up his life for would fall apart too. The kingdom would split into factions again with each nobleman trying to seize power. Within a decade, war, plague, famine, death, and destruction would follow, and none of it meted out carefully by witches who actually cared, and he’d go down in history as the wicked witch whose incompetence destroyed the world.
He slapped the glass angrily. “Alistair! Answer me right now or I’m calling your father!”
A few wisps of darker gray swirled in the atmosphere. He caught a glint of white and blue, clouds and sky, and finally the burning sapphire of a dragon’s eye.
“What do you want?” A low, grumpy growl came from the mirror.
“Where are you? You should be here by now.”
“What if I’ve decided I’m not coming?” Alistair’s sharp teeth snapped in the glass. “What will you do then?”
“Your father—”
The dragon’s voice climbed in pitch. “My father can burn his behind. Let him destroy my sculptures. Let him kick me out. I don’t care!”
Hector shook his finger in the mirror. “You listen to me, young reptile! You’re the prince, and this is bigger than bothof us. You don’t have to believe Happily-Ever-After is the right thing, or want anything to do with ruling the dragons, but I’m asking you on behalf of your people and as a friend, think of somebody other than yourself for once!”
“You are a friend of my father’s,” Alistair hissed. “Not mine.”
“Iamyour friend. I’ve known you since you were a hatchling, and I’ve watched you grow from a thin, scrawny dragonet to a fine young dragon. You will be Flamelord one day, and I know you remember our lessons on your duty. Your privilege.”
“I remember,” Alistair growled. “You tweaked my tail when I didn’t answer your questions right.”
“Answer me now,” Hector said. “What is the first duty of the Flamelord?”
“I’m not coming!”
“First duty of the Flamelord!”
“We dragons have been used long enough!”
“Alistair!”
Hector seldom raised his voice, and he’d never done it with Alistair, not even when the young dragon blew insolent smoke rings at him during his school sessions. He didn’t like to do it now. If Alistair wanted, he could lift up and fly the other direction, and probably take himself out of range. If Hector wanted, he could put a spell on Alistair to make that impossible. Probably. There was the question of range. From what Hector could see of the sky behind Alistair, it looked like he might still be in the mountains.
“The first duty of the Flamelord is to his people,” Alistair recited with a huff of smoke, “to protect their interests, to safeguard their families, to uphold their traditions.”
“That’s correct. This is the oldest and grandest traditionof your people. For millennia, dragons kidnapped princesses. Once, they did it for food. Now, it is the key to peace. You are young—you may know the history of dragons, but I was there for it all. I was there when Happily-Ever-After was created. I was there when princes killed dragons to preserve that magic. I held some of their hands while they died. And as one voice, they judged it a death worth dying, and do you know why?”
