Kristen Ashley - Fantastical

“She doesn’t leave these rooms,” Tor ordered.

“Yes, your grace,” Perdita said on a quick curtsy.

I smiled at her and gave her a wink. Perdita smiled and winked back. She did not curtsy to me because I told her not to. I didn’t like people curtsying to me, it weirded me out and enough people curtsied to me everywhere in town, in the courtyard and around most of the castle, I didn’t need my closest servants curtsying to me (in other words, Perdita, all the girls in the kitchens and all the maids who cleaned the castle). So, I asked them to stop doing it.

Tor led me out of our rooms and when we were through the doors and walking down the wide hall, his head bent to me and he caught my eye.

His face was disapproving.

He’d seen me wink at Perdita and he noticed the absent curtsy.

I looked away, biting my lip.

Okay, so, I promised never to vex him and be the perfect princess. And I was breaking that promise.

Hmm.

I gave this a moment of reflection then I mentally shrugged.

Oh well, whatever. He’d get over it.

He always did.

“You understand what you have confessed, Cora?” Tor’s Dad, King Ludlum, was sitting in Tor’s uh… prince chair (or whatever you call it) in Tor’s throne room. It wasn’t exactly a throne, as such, but it was a freaking big chair, the seat and a big panel at the back covered in royal blue velvet, the intricately carved wood painted a gleaming black and it had a lot of silver accents on it that looked real.

I didn’t know what Tor’s Mom looked like. But, now knowing his Dad, I knew Tor took after him. And hopefully Tor would age like him. His Dad definitely still had it. He even looked not stupid wearing a big, gold crown with lots of brilliant sapphires on it and seriously, anyone who could pull that off definitely still had it.

Tor was standing to his father’s right side, Orlando to his father’s left. Dash was on his way to Bellebryn having spent the night in a village miles away.

They were taking no chances that day.

I was standing next to Tor. There were four sentries across the room, standing two and two on both sides of the door.

The Forrest and Dara Goode of this world were down the steps to the right, holding hands and looking like they were doing exactly what I was certain they were doing. Fretting.

Seeing Rosa’s parents didn’t hurt me like I thought it would. This was mainly because I knew them both now and I was getting to know them pretty well. They might look like my Mom and Dad but they were not one thing like them. Forrest of this world would be a staunch conservative Republican in mine and Dara wasn’t all that bright (albeit sweet and kind).

I knew they were worried about their daughter but they were already treating me like one, even though I could tell it startled them to look at me (still). Then again, I was now a dab hand at this business and they were not.

They’d get used to it.

The Cora Goode of this world was bowed in a curtsy before us. This was the first time I’d seen her, she had been sequestered the minute Tor returned to his world (the time he returned without me, of course) and she had not been allowed to talk to anyone but Orlando and members of his trusted guard.

Seeing her freaked me out. Definitely ten pounds lighter than me, at least, even with all that takeaway and junk food she ate when she was away.

But other than that, all me.

Creepy weird.

Tor had the annulment drawn up the evening we arrived back in his world, waking some official dude to do it. He signed the paper before the ink was dry.

Then he took me to bed.

I would have preferred it the other way around but in the end I got what I wanted (three times) so who was I to quibble?

Four days later, Rosa, Dara, Forrest, the king, Orlando and Dash all descended on the castle and Tor and I were wed in this very room.

I wore a new kickass gown made of ivory silk.

Tor wore his usual black but he added a brocade vest for the occasion.

I wanted to invite all the servants in the castle to the festivities but I wasn’t allowed. The information that I was not of this world would be held only by the inner sanctum (the inner sanctum being whoever Tor decided to let in, I might add). This was Tor’s decree but at least, even being bossy in giving it, he took the time to explain it to me.

He made sense so I gave in.

We had one more guest. Aggie attended the ceremony and he did this perched on the pastor’s shoulder.

Salem, although the throne room was big enough to accommodate him, was not invited (Tor put his foot down, saying, “I’ve already given in on the bird, I’m not having a horse at my bloody wedding.”).

Just to be safe, I didn’t see Tor the day of our wedding until Rosa and I walked hand in hand into the throne room.

We got married at seven o’clock in the morning.

This was another Tor edict. He didn’t want to wait to take me as his bride, he said. And after two weeks of enduring the same pain as I had while he was searching the kingdom high and low for a witch who could magic him back to my world, he wasn’t all that hip on spending even half a day without me.

I got where he was coming from.

It was a bitch getting up way early to prepare for my wedding. But I did it.

And, in the days prior to the wedding, I thought it kind of sucked I wasn’t going to have a big do to celebrate my nuptials, nuptials that bound me to a handsome prince from a fairytale land. All the heroines in animated movies got their big do. But Dara and Rosa had arranged for me to have a beautiful bouquet made of peach roses and white lilies, Tor had arranged for us all to have a delicious wedding breakfast after the ceremony and Perdita and the girls went all out on a sumptuous spread (Perdita and the girls obviously being in Tor’s inner sanctum since they were there to see us disappear, and they were sworn to secrecy, and thus they knew the important occasion they were preparing for so they went all out).

Then Tor took me straight to our rooms and neither of us left them for twenty-four hours.

So, in the end, it wasn’t a wedding extravaganza but it was still sweet and it meant I was Tor’s real wife and a true princess so I certainly wasn’t complaining.

I watched Cora lift her head and she started, “Your grace –”

King Ludlum cut her off. “You sought the company of witches for reprehensible purposes, to find the means to keep your sister, who you should cherish and do all in your power to keep from harm, and her intended, who, incidentally, is my son and a prince of this realm, from being wed. You discovered the existence of another world and conspired with The Shrew to transport yourself from this world to that. You schemed to place your sister in harm’s way. And all of your plots succeeded, causing your sister to be held by the she-god putting her, your prince, your other self and your world at great risk.”

This was all true. She’d copped to it. Tor told me. It was all about Dash. Stupid cow.

Cora came back to this world, Tor guessed, because Minerva had double-crossed her, not meaning to send her to my world for all her natural born days as Cora said Minerva had promised she would. When we went back, Tor had come along for the ride, again a guess, because he held me in his arms – a mistake Minerva rectified with all due haste, taking Tor away from me but separating us before she did.

Since no one had (or wanted) a direct line to the evil Minerva, we would never know, except, of course, Cora and since Minerva couldn’t get to her on sacred land, she couldn’t ask either.

What was certain was that Tor and I shared a soul. That we knew (boy did we know). And from the battle on the coast, Minerva was willing to throw everything at keeping us apart which one could assume meant that was her plan all along, to bring us together then tear us apart… forever.