Page 33 of The Prince and His Stolen Groom
“Children, stop arguing in front of our esteemed guest,” Mother murmured, her smile wide but her eyes narrowed in warning.
“Yes, Mother,” we said in unison. Then Franny pulled the Good Wizard into the sitting room. Before I could follow, Kit stood in the way, their hulking form completely blocking me.
“Please,” they begged, “I’ll be so busy with wedding preparations, I won’t be able to get away.”
Wedding preparations my ass, you imposter! Why were you buying a gift for someone else’s fiancée anyway?“I—”
“Thank you so much!” They closed the door in my face.
I turned to see if my parents were as shocked by their behavior as I was, since they had also been locked out of this conversation with the Good Wizard. Mother only smiled and patted my hand. “Let them have their privacy.” Then she and Father glided away to see to whatever royal business would keep them off the page today.
“And then they kicked me out!” I complained to Madame as she wrapped up the box in pretty golden paper. “Can you believe it?”
“They probably wanted to discuss intimacies,” Madame replied, waggling her eyebrows significantly. “You don’t want to hear about your sister and her fiancé planning their visit to the honeymoon suite, do you?”
It made a sort of sense, but since Franny still thought Kit was Brendon, and Brendon was a man, and to my knowledge, Franny had zero sexual interest in men, I couldn’t imagine her being eager for that discussion. Unless it was ‘do we have to consummate the marriage to make it official’ or something along those lines. Thatwouldexplain why it needed to be a private conversation. Even if the subject was ‘how long can we go without fucking,’ it wasn’t something I needed to be a part of.
“Since you’re here,” Madame said, focusing intently on tying a beautiful bow, “would you like to hear some juicy gossip?”
Arching a brow, I leaned forward on the counter. Madame heard all the best news from her clients, but unlike Griffin, she didn’t typically share. If anyone tried to ask her, she tapped her lips and winked—if she liked them—or scolded them about what kind ofbusiness they thought she was running—if she didn’t. If she was bringing it up now, it either had something to do with me that she wanted me to know, or it had nothing to do with any of her paying customers, making it fair game. “Do tell.”
“An unknown Lord and Lady are staying at The Moonbeam and Starlight Inn.”
The celestial inn was the most expensive establishment in the kingdom, attached to a five-star restaurant—that cost more per dish than my family typically spent on a meal for the whole castle, staff included—with a team of masseuses on call twenty-four hours a day, and enchanted tubs with settings like bubbles and jet streams, colored waters, and customized scents. The inn was so expensive and exclusive that it only had three rooms and was the kind of establishment a couple would only go to on their twenty-fifth anniversary after scrimping and saving for the entirety of their marriage. Even my parents would have to save for years to afford it on their salaries.
“They might be wedding guests,” I suggested. “I haven’t seen the guest list.”
Madame nodded along. “That was my first thought. Until”—she leaned forward, and I also leaned closer so she could whisper in my ear—“I saw him for myself.”
“Him?”
“The lord. Or should I say”—she looked both ways three times, triple checking that no customers had snuck into the shop while we’d been chatting—“themage.”
Dread shivered down my spine. “Was it the Good Wizard?” I’d assumed he’d flown all the way here from … wherever, but maybe he’d spent the night at the inn and then just flew from there. That would use a lot less magic. Except, she’d mentioned a lady as well …
“Of course not! I know what the Good Wizard looks like. I attended the last wedding, between Misfortune and Gloom. He’s quite the character, with that beard of his,” she said, pretending to stroke a beard at least two feet long. “This man looked nothing like that.”
“Then how do you know he was a mage?”
“He snapped his fingers,” she said, demonstrating, “and the shadows around him took form. I couldn’t hear what he said to them, but then they disappeared, and he went back into the inn.”
Fuuuuuuck.Talking to shadows was not good. That didn’t just sound like a run of the mill mage. That sounded downright, stereotypically evil.
I couldn’t wait around for Franny and Kit to finish whatever bullshit discussion they needed to have with the Good Wizard. I started to run from the shop, then turned back to get the gift and called out a rushed farewell to Madame before hurrying back to the castle. I needed to fix this messnow,before the evil mage enacted whatever he was planning.
Interruption Four
Cyril’s current evil plan was to find good food. As they traveled, his wife had heard rumors about the renowned Moonbeam and Starlight Inn and insisted they stay there during the days leading up to the wedding. The prices were eye gouging even to a man who knew he wouldn’t be paying them, but worse, the restaurant’s food was absolutely inedible. Foams and smears, large domes that melted away to reveal minuscule portions, and all the vegetables and fruits that no normal person wanted to eat. In his desperation, he’d called a shadow-walker—one of his highest-level minions—to fetch him a BLT.
He barely managed to wipe the traces of his sin—in the form of a passable mayo—from his lips before his wife entered the room, a dozen shopping bags in her arms. “You won’t believe it!” she exclaimed as she dumped her haul on the floor.
Cyril certainly hoped she had not paid for any of that. One did not get to his level of great evil without wriggling out of monetary commitments, but his beloved wife didn’t share his principles. She’d trained under a hag, who cared less about amassing wealth and more about tricking men into their clutches for a fine feast.
“What won’t I believe?” he asked as he pushed the brown paper bag further into the inn’s trash bin.
“The Good Wizard arrived in a carriage driven byflying horses.” She looked at him significantly and repeated, “Flying horses,honeybunches.I simply must find out where he got them.”
“He probably conjured them,” Cyril replied, waving his hand in dismissal. Any Good Wizard worth the title was typically flat broke. Their morals prevented them from making a profit off of other people’s misery, so much of their work was pro-bono. However, magic could make up for many of life’s deficits. The flying horses, he guessed, could only stay in the air for an hour—two if the Good Wizard was a particularly strong mage—before disappearing.
