Page 48 of Wickedly Ever After
“Good,” Hector said. He ladled out a bowl of the soup and gave it to her. “This isn’t my favorite soup. But I know better than to say that to Tinbit.”
“He does seem somewhat prickly.”
“Well, he works for me,” Hector said. “I am sorry about your gnome. If I’d known he was back there—”
“I never should have told him to go home. He’s very attached to me. And I to him.”
“I can tell.” Hector spooned up his soup and carefully blew on it to cool it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, blowing on her own bowl.
Hector blinked. “You’re overprotective of him. Of course, you believe I had a hand in Tinbit’s letters—”
“Of course, you had a hand in it. You knew it would hurt him, hurt me—”
“My dear Ida,” Hector said with a long, irritated sigh, “if we are to work well together, you must believe me when I say I had nothing to do with it. Did I discourage Tinbit from using a dating service? Yes. I don’t trust those things. Was I worried he might find misery instead of bliss? Yes. I care about him. I’ve known him since he was a gnomelet. Did I attempt to stop him? No. I know better than to order a gnome to do anything he doesn’t want to do. You’d have more success moving a mountain, which you should remember the next time you order your gnome to do something. Like seduce mine.”
“My dear Hector,” Ida said, “if we are to work well together, you’d better quit pontificating like you wrote the rules of magic with the pen shoved up your ass.”
He looked shocked. Good. He needed some shocking—the kind a nice lightning bolt called down from the sky would provide readily, were she not a good witch. “For your information, I did everything I could to keep Hari from seeing Tinbit. When you care about a person, you intercede when they are about to make the biggest mistake of their lives! You love them enough to protect them. You don’t let them run off and break their heartsbecause those things can’t be replaced, and they never heal. They scar.”
Hector’s pale, thin cheeks glowed a shade of bright brick. “Where is free will in your kind of caring? Where is autonomy? Where is trust?”
“Where it belongs,” Ida said. “In myself.”
“Trusting in yourself is what got us into this mess,” Hector said.
“Now you’re blaming me?”
“Yes! I blame you. You’ve shown yourself to be irresponsible with magic, and I, for one, don’t intend to lose my job and my immortality to your incompetence, woman!”
Ida slapped him.
Hector’s spoon clattered to the ground along with his soup. He reached up for his cheek and touched the place as if it actually hurt him.
Ida’s face burned. “Call me irresponsible again, I will name you for what you really are—a farm boy with limited magic who gets by on what he learns out of books and prays to the Gods that no one ever finds out he’s a fraud.”
Hector’s voice overflowed with anger. “And I will tell the other witches what I know. You’re nothing more than a provincial girl who dreamed of being a princess but you were never chosen. That’s why you became a good witch. You didn’t have the guts to become wicked like you wanted.”
Ida gripped her bowl tightly. “I’m going to eat in the coach. The second this trip is done, you’ll go back to your corner of the world, and I’ll go to mine, and we will never speak again except in the course of our professional lives.”
“Agreed.” He turned his back on her.
She stomped off, flushed and furious. She’d never told him anything about her life before she became a witch in her letters. He’d never told her any of his life story either, and yet his face grayed beneath the blush. She’d deduced it from what she knew about him, about his work, and from the way he cited every rule when he was questioned. Had he done the same? Gleaned all that from her letters? Two people couldn’t really know each other that well when all they’d done was pour words out onto paper and stick them in the mail.
Perturbed, she closed the door to the coach. Something was going on.
23
Hector
Dear Adair,
I’m disheartened you haven’t seen scale nor tail of Alistair yet, but tell Morga not to panic. It’s likely he and the princess are still together. I know he said he’d come home, and you’re as worried as I am, but we’ll sort this out. Regardless of how much trouble he can be, he’s a good dragon. More than likely, he’s simply making sure the princess is comfortably cared for given the delay.
I’ll write to you as soon as I’m home. Best not to try to contact me again while I’m on the road. I had to extract your letter from the stomach of a fire toad when it ate the carrier bat.
Your friend,
