Page 6 of Royally Hacked Belle & Flame
“Last year there was no winter,” Alix moans. “After the curse, the weather was sunny and beautiful all year. How were we supposed to know that wouldn’t last?”
My mother turns to Alix, her expression morphing immediately from one of stress to sympathy. “Don’t worry, I’ll fix it.”
“You’ll fix the weather?” I ask dubiously.
“Yes! Well, no, Aurelia will. Don’t even worry about it for another moment, I’ll take care of it.”
I grimace. Aurelia has a lot of magic, but changing the weather is a nearly impossible task. She tried it once before, and Fox was insistent she stop. He never gets worked up about anything, so we all took that seriously. I’m tempted to remind my mother of that fact, but Alix looks so relieved that I keep my mouth shut.
“What’s wrong with the cake?” I ask, turning to the baker.
The woman wrings her hands. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty! I was working on the cake at home. I ran out of sugar and left for a few hours to get more in the village, then came back to find the cake destroyed.”
“Destroyed how?” Alix asks.
“Someone threw a rock through my window and smashed it. The cake was knocked onto the floor. I’m so sorry.”
“Can’t you make another one?” I ask. “There’s still a few days until the wedding.”
The baker looks embarrassed. “I can, but the ingredients were all so expensive. I can’t afford to replace everything myself.”
I wave her off. “Money isn’t important. We’ll pay for another cake if you can bake it in time. Mother, can you?—”
“Yes, of course,” my mother trills. She reaches for the baker’s arm and pulls her back toward the kitchen. “Come along, I’ll find you the money so you can get started right away.”
“Someone threw a rock through the baker’s window to destroy our cake?” Alix echoes the moment the baker has left. “Who would do that?”
I put a hand on her back. “Don’t worry about it, Peaches. Come on, we have one more wish to grant.”
We turn back to the throne room and push the doors open. Inside, standing in the center aisle with the golden thrones towering over them, are two men. One is a stooped, elderly Fae man with graying hair. The other one is a pain in my ass.
“Connell!” I snap, my voice echoing around the room. “What are you doing here?”
The elderly man jumps at the sound of my voice, but Connell only turns toward us and grins. “Morning!” he says brightly.
It’s not morning—at best, it’s mid-afternoon, but that’s just Connell. I’m not sure he knows what color the sky is half the time.
Somewhere between houseguest and prisoner, Connell’s existence is only one of the many problems to come out of Odessa and Kastian’s trip to Hydratta earlier this year—the other problems being that there is now a new queen of questionable morals running our closest neighboring country, and both my best friend and my sister are magically bound to spend six months out of every year on their cursed ship.
The former captain ofThe Sea Witch, James Connell, is human. At least, he was.
Since coming to live here, we’ve learned that he was born in Alix’s world somewhere in the late 1800s. He was twenty-three when he accidentally found his way into Ellender, stowed away aboard a British merchant ship that was lost in a storm and subsequently became the captain of the ship that Kastian and Odessa are now bound to.
After turning over his captaincy to Kastian, Connell lost his immortality—or so we think. Since the curse that once affected him has been transferred to Kastian, we need to understand as much about it as possible. Connell is living here in Vernallis, both because he has nowhere else to go, and because we’vedecided it’s best to keep an eye on him to see if he starts aging or shows any other signs that the curse affected him.
“I was just entertaining your guest,” Connell says brightly. “Poor hospitality to leave him waiting so long, don’t you think? Not very royal of you.”
Beside me, Kastian grinds his teeth. “Where’s Jett?”
Connell shrugs. “Don’t know. Don’t care. You can’t expect me to always know where our wayward assassin is at any given moment.”
The old man stiffens at the word “assassin” and his eyes widen as he takes a step back from Connell. I shake my head, sighing wearily. Jett isn’t an assassin—usually—but that doesn’t feel like a point worth making at the moment. “Actually, no. We don’t expect you to know where he is;heshould know whereyouare.”
Connell is supposed to be Jett’s problem—after all, he was the one who brought the man here in the first place. It’s a bit like Jett brought home a stray puppy and that puppy turned out to be a wolf. He’s Jett’s problem now, and if he bites anyone, Jett will be the one responsible.
Kas steps forward. “Right. Come with me. We’re going to go find Jett.”
Connell sighs theatrically. “Right-o. You can’t blame a man for trying to meet some new people; all of you are so miserably boring.”
