Princess Delilah Explores an Evil Lair
Between Quests
The Former Lord of Grimnight’s Evil Lair
Treating it Like an Inn
The first time Delilah had visited the Lord of Grimnight’s lair, it looked like an evil lair.
Everything was black, black, and more black, and the forest was as active inside the lair as it was outside.
Vines climbed up the walls, twisting over railings and lamps and doorknobs.
Roots spread their tendrils to trip and ensnare the unwary.
Minions lurked around every corner, towering creatures she’d only read about in books.
As an imp led her through the lair now, it mostly resembled a condemned building. Sunshine streamed through dusty windows, illuminating drooping and dying plants. Dust coated most of the surfaces, thick enough to be ‘neglect’ rather than ‘poor housekeeping.’
“Wahlah!” the imp declared, slamming open a door with a creak of rusty hinges. “Your room, Madam Zelle!”
“Delilah,” she corrected, confused about who ‘Madam Zelle’ was supposed to be. She peered into the room, an office that had been mostly cleaned out. It had no furniture, not even a cot. “Where am I supposed to sleep?”
“Up here is nice!” the imp said, zooming up into a high corner. It curled its round little body into a ball, tucked its hands under its chin, and closed its eyes. Then it inhaled and exhaled with a sharp, phony, whistling snore.
“I can’t sleep in the air,” Delilah protested. “I don’t have wings.”
The imp immediately dropped its act. It gave her a pitying look and murmured, “Oh right, I forgot you were human.”
The words “I’m actually a cat” immediately leapt to her lips, but she swallowed them down. The pronouncement held less weight when she didn’t even have her collar. “I need a bed, and a nightstand, and clothes, and—” her stomach growled “—a proper meal.”
“But Master Wilde didn’t tell me to give you any of those things.”
Channeling Angelica at her most imperious, Delilah flipped her fluffy brown curls over her shoulder and declared. “I am a royal guest, and you will treat me as such.”
The imp groaned and rolled over lazily in the air. “Fiiiine. We can find you a bed. Come on.” Then it zoomed down the hallway.
She chased after it, but immediately lost it after the first corner. “Umm … imp? Hello?”
The imp peered around the left corner and said, “Mimsy.”
“Mimsy, please slow down. I don’t want to trip.”
Mimsy looked back and forth between Delilah and her feet, then conceded.
“Walking is tough, huh.” It waited for Delilah to catch up and floated through the air at such an excruciatingly slow pace that Delilah had to slow her own steps, and then the imp slowed further, until they only moved an inch at a time.
“We can go faster than this,” Delilah informed it.
And immediately Mimsy zoomed forward again. At least this time it remained in sight, pausing at the top of a flora-riddled staircase.
Delilah stopped and put her hands on her hips. “These lead to the dungeons.”
“You said you wanted a bed.”
Delilah peered down the stairs. They were covered in foliage, nowhere safe to step. Even the rail was so covered in twisting vines she only knew it was there because of the unnatural protrusion from the wall. What if she fell and broke her neck? Nibbling her lip, she took one tentative step.
“Stop.”
She froze, foot hovering above that first step, and turned to find Wilde behind her. He’d changed from the skirt and blouse into slacks and a button up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms. Like this, he didn’t look evil, just tired and a little annoyed.
“You should stay on the first floor,” he explained. “The last thing I want is for you to break your neck falling down the stairs.”
“You’d reset time and save me though, wouldn’t you?” Delilah asked, planting her foot firmly on the ground.
Wilde pursed his lips. Then he disappeared without answering.
“I hate when he does that,” Delilah said to Mimsy.
The imp laughed, rolling lazily in the air. “He’s just—”
Wilde reappeared, bedding overflowing from his arms. “Here.” He shoved everything at Delilah, and she scrambled to hold onto the thin mattress, thick blanket, and feather pillow.
“I also need clothes,” she informed him, her voice muffled from her armload.
“This is no more a marketplace than it is an inn.”
The bedding slipped from her hands, and she allowed it to drop to the floor so she could have her hands free to place on her hips to show how annoyed she was by his refusal to cooperate with this sleepover. “You must have plenty of girls’ clothes.”
Wilde disappeared again. This time when he returned, sweat stuck loose strands of pale hair to his cheeks.
A stack of clothes was folded over one arm.
Guilt crept in as Delilah realized he was exhausted, but still fulfilling her requests.
He shoved the stack into her arms and demanded, “Is that enough for you?”
“Yes,” she replied, her voice small as she held the clothes close to her chest. “Thank you.”
He stilled, a small furrow forming between his brows, before nodding once. This time when he left, he walked down the hall rather than teleporting away.
It turned out that life in an evil lair was fairly boring when there was no evil mage to fight. Delilah spent her days taking cat naps, chasing the imps around the safe floors, and pestering Wilde.
On her second day, more minions arrived, but the interviews weren’t very interesting to watch.
Wilde plucked his preferred choices from the crowd and kicked everyone else out of the lair, then he told the leaders of the two mercenary groups, “Figure out everyone’s assignments, but make sure someone is guarding the kitchen. ”
After that, they had hot meals every day courtesy of an orc named Gleb. Sometimes Delilah had to fight off the imps when they tried to steal her plate. Especially the day he baked fresh pies—a full fight broke out among the minions until Wilde arrived to sort things out.
Delilah lay on her stomach under the table, kicking her feet behind her and watching as Wilde arranged everyone, worked out who got what pie, and comforted the imps when they started crying about “Just cause we’re little doesn’t mean we should get smaller pieces!”
Once he finished, she asked, “Not taking any for yourself?”
Wilde looked around confused for a moment, then ducked under the table to find her. “You’re getting my clothes dirty,” he scolded.
She stuck her purple tongue out at him.
He rolled his eyes and returned to whatever he’d been working on.
The night before they were supposed to leave for Misfortune, Delilah found Wilde at the kitchen table, working instead of eating.
Gleb stood nearby, wringing a dishcloth in his large hands, expression caught somewhere between hopeful and distressed.
Hopeful, because he’d presented Wilde with a whole roast dinner of some sort of creature hunted from the woods.
Distressed, because it was cooling as Wilde fiddled with half-a-dozen pocket watches.
Delilah planted herself in the other chair and began carving the mystery meat.
It smelled of garlic, rosemary, and thyme, and that was enough to keep her from asking for more details.
She placed a hunk of meat on a plate for herself, then one for Wilde, and served them up both a large heaping of the potatoes and vegetables that had been roasted in the fat.
“Eat,” she said, pushing the plate toward Wilde.
He ignored her—or possibly didn’t hear her at all. In one hand he held a pocket watch, with the other he carefully extracted gears and pieces with a thin pair of tweezers.
Delilah took a bite of her dinner and gave Gleb a thumbs up. He grinned, black eyes sparkling with delight, and set about carving the rest of the meat to serve to everyone else.
People streamed through the kitchen, laughing and chattering as they grabbed their dinner, some of them wolfing it down so quickly they didn’t even bother to sit.
Wilde reacted to none of it. His plate forgotten near his elbow.
“What’re you working on?” Delilah asked, pushing her empty plate aside and shoving her face so close to Wilde’s hands, he couldn’t possibly ignore her.
“If you inhale clockwork, I’m not digging it out of your nose for you,” Wilde said. He carefully moved one of his clocks aside without looking at her.
“If you keep ignoring me, I’ll do it on purpose, then you won’t have any left of … whatever all this is.”
He finally looked up, eyes narrowed, and lips pursed in displeasure. “What?”
“Your food’s getting cold.”
He blinked, noticing the plate for the first time. “It’s fine.” Then he returned to work.
“Are you working on something for tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
The fact he’d answered her this time showed some improvement at least. “Is it a spell?”
“Yes.”
“How does it work?”
Sighing, Wilde set aside the pocket watch he’d dissected and picked up a fork. “Isn’t your uncle a mage?”
“Sure, but he doesn’t work magic in front of me. I think he works it all in his tower.”
One pale eyebrow arched at the mention of the tower. “Interesting.”
“I didn’t think you needed all of this”—she waved at the mess—“to work magic. I thought you just kind of … poof.”
“Depends on the magic. Since I’m working on a more complex spell, I need something to focus the energy.”
“So you’re enchanting a pocket watch?”
“No.”
She waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, she poked his side. He squirmed away, eyes widening in shock at her audacity. “Details, sir, or I’ll tickle you.”
“What kind of threat is that?” he demanded.
“The kind that has made Trey pee his pants more than once when I didn’t get my way.”
An odd look crossed Wilde’s face at the mention of his erstwhile boyfriend.
A mix of longing, curiosity, and heartbreak.
He picked up one of the emptied pocket watches and toyed with it.
“Sometimes magic is inherent: you think of what you want to happen, and magic makes it so. Sometimes it needs guidance. Components to feed the spell, or items to anchor it to. I’m using clockwork to guide the spell, but I’m not anchoring the magic to the pocket watch.
I don’t want to risk anyone destroying it. ”
“And Trey’s father taught you all of this?
” Delilah asked skeptically. When her cousin had confessed his role in the Lord of Grimnight’s plot, he’d specifically emphasized that his father was incompetent.
Trey’s whole plan hinged on the idea that the Lord of Grimnight would be an ineffective evil overload.
“No, I learned most of the basics from Melvin the Magnificent.”
He said the title with such a straight face that Delilah couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “Melvin the Magnificent?” she repeated, her delight raising the pitch of her voice. “What kind of evil mage title is that?”
“He wasn’t an evil mage,” Wilde said. “He was a tavern performer.”
Every time she learned something about Wilde it only generated more questions. “And he taught you magic? But I thought the Lord of Grimnight was your master?”
Wilde’s hands stilled. “He’s the only teacher I accepted as my master, he’s not the only person I learned from.”
“Why would you accept him as your master though?”
“It’s getting late.” Wilde scooped his clockwork pieces into his pockets. “And we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“But I’m not done—”
Wilde disappeared.
“—interrogating you.”
Delilah huffed and crossed her arms as she settled back against her seat. If she could reverse time, she would have gone back to the first day she’d arrived at the lair and followed Wilde around, pestering him with questions, until she knew everything about her cousin’s boyfriend.