Page 95 of Wickedly Ever After
“It’s Hector. May I come in?”
“Alistair isn’t here.”
“I would like to come in anyway, if you don’t mind.”
The door opened.
The princess had changed clothes. She wore another one of Alistair’s long wool robes, a blood-red one, too long for her. The way the folds clung to her shoulders and hips, she wasn’t wearinganything underneath. So she was adhering to dragon tradition too.
He thrust the tray with the sandwiches in her direction. “Grilled cheese and coffee. I’m not the cook my gnome is, or there would be hot onion soup.”
Amber stuffed the sandwich in her mouth and started eating as fast as she could. “How’d you know?” She spewed crumbs as he poured a cup of coffee and set it on the table between them.
“I’ve spent many years being entertained by dragons. Please?” He gestured for her to sit.
“If you’re here to talk me out of my marriage, I won’t listen.” She glared at him.
“I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do something so hazardous to your health.”
“Alistair would never hurt me.”
“Orhishealth,” Hector said. “Believe me, I have no intention of breaking up your mating unless it is a completely mutual rupture, and for that, I need Alistair. I take it he’s out hunting.”
“Yes.” Amber glanced at the brazier in the center of the room that she’d fitted with a makeshift grill. Definitely tired of barbecue. She grabbed the second sandwich and started in on it ravenously. He wished Alistair could see this. His bride wasn’t a dragon, and he couldn’t expect her to behave like a dragon indefinitely.
“My dear, how long has it been since you had a proper bath, a fresh set of clothes, or eaten a green vegetable? This isn’t sustainable.”
Her eyes turned dragon-fierce. “I’m not leaving him,” she said with her mouth full. “You can tell that to Ida too. She sent you to scare some sense into me, didn’t she? Tell me all those horror stories about how Alistair will get angry and burn me upby accident, or how I’ll say something wrong to his mother and she’ll eat me in a single bite.”
“Morga wouldn’t eat you in a single bite. It would take two at least—she’d want to savor it. And as far as I know, Alistair has only burned one person in a fit of temper.”
Amber snorted a laugh. “Who?”
“Me.” Hector smiled and leaned back comfortably in his chair. “To be honest, I deserved it. He would not be so careless with the person he loves.”
Amber’s eyes widened. “You believe he loves me?”
“Of course, he does.”
“Ida doesn’t believe that.”
“On the contrary; she’s convinced you’re both as in love as any prince and princess could ever be, as am I. It’s magically induced. I know you don’t believe any magic is capable of that—but believe me, it is.” He sighed. “You underestimate the power of this kind of love magic on a susceptible heart.” He certainly had.
“You are only saying this to get me to believe I wouldn’t love him if the magic wasn’t there. That’s not true. Don’t you understand? Maybe we did start to care for each other because of magic, but it’s different now.” She stood and walked around the room. “I don’t know how to explain it. You’re old. You’re wicked. You’ve never loved anyone.”
“Why don’t you try me?”
She squared up to him, folding her arms in her robe, a curious expression of determination on her face that reminded him of Ida. “When Alistair carried me off, I thought he’d simply set me down in the field. We’d say goodbye. I’d walk home. He’d fly home. But when he told me he was sorry he’d ever let himself getinvolved in such a horrible barbaric ritual, and he hoped I could go back to my smithy and have a wonderful career because he could see I loved to work with my hands, it was like I’d found the second half of my soul. The way he looked at me, the way he held my hands in his claws, I knew he felt the same way. I asked him to take me to the mountains. I suggested it might keep both of us from being in trouble for a few days, but even then, we both knew. And the morning after, when I turned over in his arms and saw his eyes shining in the dark and the happiness in them, I realized I could see him every morning, in any form, every day until the morning I don’t wake up, and I’d die happy. What is that, if it’s not love?”
He winced as a sudden vision of Ida petting the fern in his library flashed across his memory. “It’s magic. All magic.”
“Who are you to say true loveisn’tmagic?”
“But it isn’t true love, and if you knew even a fraction of the risk you are taking—”
“I know what we’re risking. Alistair told me if we mated, I would risk not only my life, but also his. I told him I didn’t care about me, but him—I would do anything for him. If he wanted me to go, I would. Then he held me, and he said he could think of no one he would rather risk his life for, risk his lifewith. I felt the same way.” She dropped the half-finished sandwich on the plate and walked to the brazier to arrange the coals. “Whatever he asks me to do, whatever we have to do to be together, I’m with him through all of it.”
“Respectfully,” he said, “I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”
