Page 90 of The Prince and His Stolen Groom
As we took our places at the altar, Franny and Kit fell into line behind us. Kit wore an outfit similar to Brendon’s, but where his was green, hers was brown, and vice versa. She winked at me before her gaze fell on Franny, smoldering and appreciative.
The Good Wizard called everyone's attention to him. Dark circles were under his eyes, like he’d been awake for days. He somehow looked younger—the hair closer to dark gray than white—and older at the same time, with wrinkles of exhaustion crowding his face. How many weddings had this version of him already officiated? Where did we fall on the line?
“We are gathered here today—”
An earsplitting shriek interrupted the Good Wizard’s speech. Brendon and I both turned to look to the center of the room where a new cloud of sparkling black smoke billowed up from the red carpet lining the aisle. It rose higher, morphing into a hooded figure over six feet tall.
“Soul Stealer,” Cyril hissed from the front row.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.After everything we’d been through, I refused to let our book be dragged into a sequel by some twist-ending villain.
“Foolish mortals,” whispered a voice as deep as the abyss.
Beside Brendon, Kit had already rolled up her sleeves. “Do you still have that sword?” she asked the Good Wizard, holding out her hand.
“You think you can—”
The Good Wizard rustled around in his enormous sleeves. “Sword, sword, sword,” he chanted frantically.
“—defend your kingdoms—”
I couldn’t wait for the sword. A few of the guests had jumped to their feet and scrambled as far away from the cloaked figure as possible, leaving their chairs empty. I grabbed the nearest one and snapped it closed to wield it better, then stormed toward the figure with the chair raised like a weapon.
“—with forced unions?”
The words didn’t fully register until after I slammed the chair down on their shoulder.
“Ow!” they cried out and stumbled back a step. They reached up with a perfectly normal hand to rub their black clad shoulder. Thentheir shadowed face turned to me and they exclaimed, “Rick?” They lowered the hood from their head, revealing familiar golden blond hair and tawny eyes.
“Mattias?!”
The Final Interruption
Lucinda gasped at the latest development and clutched Cyril’s arm in a death grip. “This is the most exciting thing to ever happen in my life,” she whispered. When her husband’s scowl drooped into a dejected frown, she amended, “Aside from our own wedding, of course.” After all, this wedding didn’t haveanysnakes, giant or otherwise. A real oversight, in her opinion, but a last-minute interruption at the altar was a fair alternative.
Especially because she recognized the evil mage causing such a fuss. It turned out not to be the Soul Stealer, Cyril’s most bitter rival and the wife of Lucinda’s best friend, but the Soul Stealer’s young apprentice. It was his first outing, his introduction to evil society.
And it was going horribly wrong, she realized, with a pang of sympathy.
All of the menace leaked out of Mattias as he gaped at Prince Frederick. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “Isn’t this supposed to be Franny’s wedding?”
Princess Francesca pointed to herself, still standing at the front of the room, eyebrows raised in surprise as she silently asked, ‘Who, me?’
No one could blame the boy for not knowing about the change. The royals hadn’t bothered to announce it, surprising all of the guests present. Lucinda had relished her own private knowledge of the program change and, instead of watching the grooms walking down the aisle together, had gazed at all of the confused faces in the crowd.Confusion was almost as delicious as fear.
“It was,” Frederick hedged. “But now it isn’t.”
Mattias looked back and forth between the two grooms several times.
The Good Wizard finally pulled a sword out of his sleeve. Even though the confrontation had fizzled away, Kit still took it and held it in a ready position.
“Never mind all that, what areyoudoing here? And why are you wearing that?” Frederick gestured to the black cloak.
Mattias lifted up a long black sleeve and examined it with a frown. “Part of the job.” Straightening to his full height, he explained, “I have come to stop this land’s vile tradition of forced marriages to protect its own interests.”
“That doesn’t sound very evil,” Frederick said.
“Evil mages can have a lot of motives,” Mattias muttered. “It isn’t all about world domination.”
