Page 98 of Wickedly Ever After
He straightened. “I came out to look for the pony. I left Tinbit patching up Adair. He gets short with me if I try to help with bandaging.”
“He brought enough herbs?”
“Apparently so. He was worried Hari might need him to mix a tonic or treat a blister, so he decided to carry it all on his own. He says I owe him. I checked on Cear, by the way; Morga put them in the fireplace.”
“I saw,” she said. “They looked happy.”
Hector climbed the last few feet and stood next to her beside the rock, gazing back at the valley. “No sign of the pony yet.”
“Wouldn’t it run back home?”
“It would if I didn’t have a compulsion on it,” Hector said with a soft grunt.
“It will be hard for it to climb out of a manticore.”
He chuckled. “If it got eaten, I pity the manticore,” he said. “Goblins breed their ponies to be almost indigestible. Dragons used to hunt them, you know.”
“It’s hard for me to imagine them hunting,” Ida said. “Now that I’ve met them, I can’t see them being so barbaric.”
“Humans are even more barbaric.”
“You still feel the same way, don’t you? You still want to fix Happily-Ever-After.”
He hesitated. “To be completely honest, I’ve been trying not to think about it for the last hour and a half. I talked to the princess, you see.”
She folded her other hand over his. “She’s quite a formidable woman.”
“Not unlike the witch who chose her.” Hector smiled. “Whether she thinks she did or not.”
She squared up to him. “I’ve been thinking. When we do get this sorted out, I’m going to resign from the Council. I’m going to tell them why I can’t continue in my post. But I’m not going to tell them that I let the magic choose. Maybe—maybe it made the right decision after all. I’m not fit for my position. Maybe I never was.”
“What are you talking about?” He put both hands on her shoulders. “You’re not going to resign. I’m the head of the Council—it’s my responsibility!”
“Hector, do you think Agatha could do half the job you do? All she does with any degree of proficiency is enchanted sleep and hauntings. She certainly wouldn’t enforce the rules about not killing dragons. Remember when she fought you on whether or not dragons who died of natural causes could be harvested for their magical properties?”
“I remember—but when I’m gone, you’ll be head of the Council, and you do care about it—”
“I don’t want to be head of the Council, Hector!”
Hector took her hands. “Ida. Listen to me. If you really believe there is something intrinsically wrong with Happily-Ever-After, shouldn’t you be the one to investigate that? And if it turns out that I’m right, you’ll be the best one to fix it. You can convince the others. I have faith in you—”
“But they won’t listen to me! I was responsible for the love magic after all.” He wasn’t saying this, doing this. She couldn’t stand it if he left. She couldn’t. “You’re better at that than I am. If we talk to them together, maybe—”
“We can’t both take the fall for this, and you know it,” Hector said. “Forget about Agatha. What about Tara? Do you honestly think she would pick princesses and princes with any attention to their worthiness? She’d turn the whole thing into a cake competition.”
Ida choked back a sobbing laugh. “But they need you. The prince. The princess. The dragons. What’s going to happen to them if you leave? What about the giants, the goblins, and your silly old ghoul? And your plants? What would you do with all your plants at the castle?”
Hector turned away from her. “Perhaps you might adopt my plants. I personally wouldn’t trust Agatha with a weed.”
“And adopt Tinbit too?”
He sighed. “He won’t leave me.”
She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously. Hari had said not to, and she wanted to respect that, but Hector couldn’t resign. He couldn’t. She couldn’t sit in the Council room and stare at an empty seat where he used to be, knowing she had caused it. “Hector—would you—if—I think Hari—” She took a breath. “It’s just, he cares a great deal for Tinbit, and if he wanted to stay, to come live with you, would you be open to that? I’d so much like for him to have a happily-ever-after of his own.”
“You know I would. But I don’t think he’ll ask, or you wouldn’t have done it for him.” Hector laughed mirthlessly. He leaned heavily against the rock, staring down into the gathering darkness. “You know, the more I think about it, the more Ithink you might be right. The problem with Happily-Ever-After isus. No matter what we try to do, it all seems to end up wrong, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly feels that way,” Ida said.
