Page 51 of Wickedly Ever After
She smiled. “Well, we have that in common. It’s a good thing you and I can’t be affected by love magic or we might find ourselves in the same predicament as our gnomes.”
He snorted. “Impossible.”
“I’d like to press on to your castle today. If you think your horse can’t make it, perhaps you could leave him there and we can hire a coach in the village.”
She had good sense, and if he hadn’t been so concerned about Napoleon, he might have agreed. He certainly would prefer to clamp the lid on this disaster before things far worse than love magic leaked out. “I wish we could, but hiring a coach isn’t a good idea.”
“Why not? Don’t they have stage service in the village?”
“Oh, yes. But they rob them in the Fearsome Forest and leave the bodies for the trees. It’s part of the service they worked out with the dryads. No, I think it’s probably best we stop for the night there and continue on tomorrow morning.”
She gaped. “And you mean to stop there for the night?”
“It’s far easier to hex the doors of a hotel room than to fight fifty armed bandits in the woods. That gets messy. One night and Napoleon will be fit to make the rest of the journey without another break, providing nothing else does. And Hari could use the rest. You know as well as I do, this isn’t a natural swamp fever.”
She regarded him quietly, deep lavender eyes squinting asif she was considering his confession and deciding what to do about it. He’d never noticed how brightly they sparkled or how deep they became when she was thinking. “All right,” she said finally. “One night. No more.”
“Agreed.”
***
Hours later as he rocked and ruminated in the coach did he reflect that he and Ida had agreed on more in the last twenty-four hours than they’d agreed on anything in the last nine-hundred years.
Something was going on.
24
Ida
Dear Malia,
Hari is with me. I’m sorry, I’ve been on the road and haven’t been able to write. I hope this letter doesn’t take too long to reach you. I had to grab a stray bat last night to deliver it. I hope it didn’t bite too hard—I checked it with a spell and it’s not a vampire. Rest assured, Hari’s quite well and safe.
Don’t worry.
Ida
Hariwasn’tdoing well at all.
The gnome ate breakfast, but he did it to please Tinbit, not because he was hungry. If Tinbit had served up frog spawn and swamp water instead of huckleberry clafouti and hot tea, Hari would’ve gobbled it and called it the best meal he’d ever eaten. But Cear crawled over Hari’s forehead and pronounced him still on fire before they retired to feed on the sweetgrass in their firepot. The whole coach smelled like burnt vanilla pudding. Hari lay in the seat, head in Tinbit’s lap, wrapped in Ida’s wool robe, shivering uncontrollably.
“Are you doing all right?” Tinbit combed his fingers through Hari’s thick hair.
Hari’s smile was a wan moon. “A little uncomfortable.”
“Next stop, you can rest,” Tinbit said. He’d been saying that every fifteen minutes since breakfast.
Ida glanced at Hector. “How much farther?”
“Another three hours.” He regarded Hari, and after a moment, he reached out and adjusted the wool robe to cover Hari’s feet. He was surely worried about his own gnome and if the swamp fever would get him next. She would keep telling herself that because she’d started to believe he actually cared.
It seemed like he cared. And it had sounded like he cared this morning, walking side by side with her in the mist, his tall frame slightly stooped, salt-and-pepper hair catching every drop of light like a prism and turning it into rainbows.
Stop it. Stop it, woman. You are immune.She ought to be anyway. True, she’d never destroyed her heart, but having a heart had never been a real drawback before. She rather thought it gave her an edge. Well, she knew about the love magic’s effects at least, and she could combat them.
She leaned across the coach to take Hari’s hand. “Sweetheart, do you need us to stop for a minute?”
“I think…I think so,” Hari said faintly. “I don’t mean to complain.”
