Chapter Eleven Wilde
Back at the Beginning
The Lord of Grimnight’s Evil Lair
Pinned to the Floor
Delilah waited less than five seconds for me to answer. When I didn’t—because I was still struggling to breathe—she asked all the questions she should have started with. “Where are we? What did you do? Is this part of an evil plan?”
I teleported to the other side of the room.
Instead of moving away from her, she came with me.
We were standing up now, but she still held onto my wrists.
Because she’d been holding them above my head, I was now the one holding her up.
She kicked the air twice before her weight pulled us back down and we crashed against the floor a second time. At least this time I’d landed on top.
“Let me go,” I ordered. Her hands were tiny but strong. No matter how I twisted and turned, she followed with me.
“Make me,” she growled, an inhuman rumble filling her throat.
I finally wrenched my wrist out from between the weak point where her thumb met her fist. She closed her now empty fist and punched me in the stomach. I choked on a breath and glared at her as my eyes watered.
“Where. Is. My. Collar.” She ground her fist into my stomach with every word.
“I don’t know!”
“Liar.” She stopped grinding and started feeling me up, her hands sneaking under my blouse, as if I’d hidden the damn thing in my non-existent cleavage.
“Enough.”
Time stopped.
I carefully extracted my hand from her grip and pushed myself to my feet.
Time restarted.
The world shifted sideways, sliding out from under me. I caught myself on something solid, wrapping my fingers around it until the world righted itself again. When I finally looked at what I’d grabbed, my stomach jolted in shock. My fingers had closed around the arm of the destroyed throne.
“Wilde?” Delilah’s voice was soft, tentative.
I wrenched my hand away so fast that a sharp twig cut me. A thin line of blood welled up on my palm. I closed it tightly to keep any of it from spilling onto the throne. It’d already taken enough from me; it didn’t deserve any more.
“I don’t know where your collar is,” I told Delilah, focusing on her rather than the throne. “It was lost in the chaos.”
“Then make me a new one.” She sat cross-legged on the floor, as if she wouldn’t move until I granted her request.
I opened my mouth to tell her I couldn’t, then closed it. Rick was an untrained amateur. Surely if he could make a collar that gave her silly little ears and a fluffy tail, so could I. But I wouldn’t do it for free. “Let’s make a deal.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m listening.”
“You’re about to go on a quest,” I said carefully, not sure what she remembered. “I need to join you.”
She groaned and flopped onto her back. Her brown hair spread around her in a fluffy halo. “We already went on a quest. Why do we have to do another one? It’s not fair.”
“You remember the first quest?”
“Yes. I remember the woods, and the centipede, and the library, and the evil lair. Your evil lair.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Wilde!” the imps shouted as they flew into the room.
Not this again. “The master’s gone, I’m in charge, tell the applicants to come back tomorrow.”
The imps paused, looking between Delilah and I, then saluted. “Yes, ma’am, Mistress Wilde!” And as one they fluttered out of the room.
I scowled and pulled my wig and glasses off. The disguise was useless if Delilah could recognize me by scent alone.
Delilah pushed herself up on her elbows and arched a meaningful eyebrow at me.
“It’s a disguise,” I grumbled, suddenly embarrassed to be standing in front of her in makeup and a skirt.
“Oh, I don’t care about that. I have a mother who is sometimes my father but usually is just my parent. I’m looking at you meaningfully because those are clearly your minions, and this is clearly your lair.”
I sighed and sat on the floor a few feet away from her. “I don’t want it to be.”
“Well, sometimes we don’t get what we want. Like me. I was perfectly happy to have two husbands, but you took that from me, you thieving mage!”
I flinched, expecting her to lunge at me again, but she just pointed an accusing finger. Without her collar, the nails were blunt, with ragged edges as if she’d bitten them off in frustration. “Did you expect me to watch Treasure marry Angelica?”
Delilah shuddered. “Alright, that was a bad match. They’d probably kill each other within a month. But he’s my cousin, so I certainly wasn’t going to marry him.”
“Exactly. No one has to marry anyone. I thought I’d killed that idea the first time, but apparently you came up with a creative solution,” I muttered.
She perked up and crawled toward me on all fours. “What do you mean, the first time?”
“I—” I scooted backwards, then remembered I was a mage and teleported to the other side of the room.
Her head swiveled around as she tried to find me. When she finally did, she scowled. “That’s cheating.”
“Evil,” I reminded her, pointing at myself.
“Yes, about that.” She remained on all fours, ready to pounce. “You’re evil. You’re also Trey’s boyfriend, unless you were lying about that as well. Since you interfered with his marriage, I suppose you weren’t.”
I pursed my lips but didn’t comment. Our relationship was more complicated than that. He’d called me his boyfriend as a desperate explanation for why I was ‘helping’ them, but we’d also made love. Then he’d abandoned me to save the champions. To save the woman in front of me.
“Tell me about the first time,” she said.
“It has nothing to do with you—”
“Do you want me to help you or not?”
I glared at her.
She smirked back and I could almost see the canary feathers sticking from the cat’s lips.
“Princess Gwendolyn and Genevieve were originally supposed to participate,” I begrudgingly explained.
She blinked several times before admitting, “I have no idea who they are.”
“Fitz’s older sisters.”
“Oh.” And then longer the second time, “Ohh. I remember now! They were engaged right before the first meeting.” She gasped, a mix of delight and outrage. “Wilde, did you seduce them?”
My face involuntary scrunched in disgust. “Gods no. They already had a handful of idiots in love with them.” Who would have been doomed to admire the princesses from afar if everything went according to the Good Wizard’s plan. “I simply suggested their suitors act before anything was finalized.”
Delilah stared at me in awe. “You’ve been interfering the whole time.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t bother to answer.
“So, what happens now? Did you—” she paused, her tongue sticking out as if she could lick the word from the air “—reset everything again? How many times have you done that? I remember a quest and an engagement, that’s it. Were there other times?”
“No. Resetting the timeline is difficult. I’m not even technically doing it for everywhere, just our own little bubble.”
“But … why? What’s so important?”
Trey once asked me the same question. At the time, I knew he was struggling with his own morality. I just thought I’d come out on the winning side. I gave Delilah the same answer I gave him: “Everything.”
Her brow furrowed, then her face suddenly crumpled in the other direction, transforming from confusion to an aching sadness. “Trey died,” she whispered.
“He didn’t,” I snapped. “Because I saved him.”
“Does he know that?”
It was like she’d punched me again, knocking the wind out of me so I couldn’t answer.
“He doesn’t, does he? Because you made him forget.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. It couldn’t shut her voice out though, and she kept talking, digging her claws into me and toying with my soft innards for her own amusement.
“He knew who you were before. You were close, even before the quest began, because you worked for his evil father. Now, you’re a stranger. An attendant eavesdropping. A woman seducing another prince—”
“I did not seduce Fitz, that was a misunderstanding!” My eyes snapped open to glare at her.
She scanned me from head to toe. “You put a lot of effort into that misunderstanding.”
Heat suffused my cheeks. “I was just a girl who was his friend. He didn’t have to proclaim his love for me!”
“It happens to the best of us,” she said, like she received unwanted confessions every day. Though maybe they weren’t unwanted, if she was happy to collect multiple husbands.
I pushed past the embarrassment to demand, “Will you help me or not?” If not, I would have to figure out what to do with her.
I could send her back to Woe and reset the timeline again, before she confirmed my identity, but nothing said she would forget me, or that she couldn’t remember me again.
There were still dungeons downstairs and a host of potential minions outside who would be happy to guard them.
She scooched away from me, lips pursed. “You’re looking at me all evilly. Stop it.”
I softened my features and stared back at her with a blank face.
She shuddered. “Somehow, that’s worse. Alright, let’s make a deal. If you can turn me into a cat—not just parts of me, all of me—I will provide you with a backstory to help you secretly join our quest.”
“Deal.” Cursing someone into an animal shape was easy. It was turning them back into a human that caused problems.
As if reading my thoughts, she held up a finger and said, “I want to turn into a cat at will, and turn into a human at will, as well.”
“That will take time,” I said carefully.
“You control time,” she replied breezily.
I sighed. “I’ll take you back home—”
“Don’t bother.” She stood up and dusted her pants off.
I scrambled to my feet as well. Allowing someone to stand over you gave them a certain power I refused to concede to Delilah. “What do you mean?”
“I told you we need a plausible backstory. I’ll tell everyone that I left on my own, afraid my parents would try to prevent me from attending the meeting. On my way to Misfortune, bandits attacked—”
“There have never been any bandits.” Except the ones wanting to work for me.
“—and a kind young—” she paused and asked, “Will you be a man or a woman?”
“Man,” I said through clenched teeth.
“And a kind young man saved me. He’s a mage, you know, quite useful on a quest.” She beamed at me. “What do you think?”
“It might work.”
“Perfect!” She clapped her hands together and hopped up and down in excitement. “Now, I can’t arrive in Misfortune until a reasonable amount of time has passed.”
I certainly did not want to spend the next ten days with her. “This isn’t an inn.”
“It is now,” she chirped and skipped past me.
I could forcefully remove her, but if she wanted to stay here as my willing guest rather than a prisoner, at least I could keep an eye on her. “Don’t touch any—”
She was gone before I finished my warning.
Cursing her into a cat sounded more and more appealing. At least then she couldn’t interfere with my work. Though cats were known for knocking things over and getting into places they shouldn’t. Having a smaller body would only help her efforts.
I sighed and called for Mimsy. The green imp fluttered into the room so quickly the little fiend had clearly been listening at the door. “Prepare a room for our guest.”
Now that I had a much needed ally, this time would go better. I could feel it in the air. This would be the time Treasure and I finally reunited.