Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

To his credit, Cereal didn’t continue the charade once I’d called him out. Another snap of his fingers—I should really learn that trick—and he’d gone through another costume change, back to the evil mage attire. “I normally wouldn’t impersonate one of them,” he explained with a hint of embarrassment, “but you’d presented such an excellent opportunity to gain your trust.”

“Yeah, that was kind of dumb of me,” I muttered.

Cereal shrugged. “Mistakes happen.”

I stared at him warily, not sure how to react to his easy-going attitude. “You’re a lot less intimidating than I expected.”

“I’m on vacation,” he informed me blithely. “I assure you, if this was a serious venture, you’d be properly terrified.”

“So, you’re here to ruin the wedding for fun? Or”—I thought back on his words of advice—“save it? I’m not actually sure where we stand on that.”

“Let’s say I’m here to save it,” he replied, his lips quirked in amusement.

“By kidnapping me.”

“By preventing you from running away from your responsibilities.”

“I wasn’t—” I stopped. Explaining any of this to him would just give him the upper hand. It sounded like he’d gotten his genders swapped somehow, dubbed Kit the unofficial Princess of Bane, and decided we were the bride and groom. Which meant Brendon and Franny were safe as long as I kept the charade going. “Why do you want to save it anyway?”

“It’s my wife, you see. She wants to brag to her friends about attending a royal wedding. Which means I can’t have the groom running off with another man.”

I wondered if he might be bullshitting me, but his reason was so weird and specific it sounded like the truth.

Which meant he had no idea that the wedding was part of the Kingdom Defense Spell. Because if he did, I don’t think any amount of displeasure from his wife could stop him from destroying it. “So, you’re going to what, keep me here until the morning and give me marriage advice?” It sounded ridiculous, and yet … “Wait, are you the one who gave me the love potion?”

“It was the quickest way to make you and your bride fall in love.” He scanned me with narrowed eyes. “Though it doesn’t appear to have worked at all. What did you do to neutralize it?”

“Nothing. It failed because you accidentally dosed my sister and I, so all I got was a rash.”

Sheer horror crossed his face, and he shot a scathing look into the shadows. “I sincerely apologize for the mistake.”

I shuddered at the memory. “Itched like hell.” Other odd events started falling into place. “You also made the forest all thorny, didn’t you?”

“Yes, though you weren’t supposed to be in the tower at the time. I simply wanted to discourage you from meeting your lover so you would spend more time with your fiancée.” He continued to scowl in irritation at the shadows. Then he perked up and said, “But she did come to save you. Wasn’t that romantic? Didn’t it get your heart pumping? She seems like quite a lady.”

I don’t know if I would call Kit a ‘lady,’ but she’d clearly impressed the mage. Think back, Kit had come to the tower in the armor, but Brendon had left in it. “And you were behind the maze.” Which is why Kit and the Good Wizard hadn’t run into it—he’d only activated the spell when he saw me and my ‘bride’ together.

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked eagerly. “My wife and I did one on our honeymoon. Though ours was much more complicated—a thousand different routes to the center, with far more pit stops along the way.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “But it took us over a week to complete, and the two of you didn’t have much time, so I simplified it.”

“So, this whole time you’ve just been trying to play matchmaker to an already engaged couple? That doesn’t sound very evil. Are you sure you’re in the right profession?”

With a vaguely patronizing look he reminded me, “Vacation.”

“Right, so you’re off the clock and can do a few ‘good deeds.’”

His eye twitched, as if having ‘good deeds’ attributed to him was like catching a nasty disease. “I won’t pretend to be altruistic, but I promise to deliver you unharmed to your bride tomorrow morning.”

“What if I decide not to marry her?”

He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “The first love potion only failed because of a mistake, which means you are not immune to them.” He held out his hand and one of the shadows behind him stepped forward.

The movement startled me, and I jumped backwards in my chair, the legs clattering on the floor. One of my hands came loose from the bindings and I had to hide it before he noticed and ordered his imp to tighten them again.

Cereal handed the shadow a bottle and it disappeared again. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s delivered to the correct woman this time.”

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, as if he wasn’t about to force me to fall in love with someone. Alright, that felt more genuinely evil.

If I confessed I wasn’t the groom, would he stop? Maybe he wouldn’t believe me. But if he found out Franny and Brendon were the bridal couple and still not in love, he might force-feed them the potion. I pictured the way Franny had looked at Kit over the last few days, glowing with happiness and hope. Except this time she was looking at the real Brendon, and he had that soft look in his eyes he’d had right before he kissed me.

Fuck that.

I started to slide out of the ropes, determined to reach the shadow and smash the bottle before it escaped. The black silhouette merged with the other shadows in a corner, but I could still see the blue glass bottle floating in the air.

“Master, he’s escaping!” the imp shrieked, and jumped on me. It wasn’t heavy, but its claws dug into my skin, making it difficult to dislodge without gouging myself.

“You loosened the ropes too much!” Cereal snapped, trying to grab me.

I shoved the chair between us, tripping him. The bottle moved in a blink, now appearing at the front door. The doorknob rattled frantically, then the bottle disappeared and reappeared in another corner of the room.

“Your Evil Eminence, I can’t leave the tower.”

Cereal and I both lunged for the door. He reached it first and instead of fighting him for it, I ran up the stairs. No one ran after me, probably thinking I wouldn’t be stupid enough to climb out that window anyway. But the window wasn’t my goal.

The mage cursed and shouted when he realized that I wasn’t locked in the tower with him, he was locked in here with me.

Which would be a lot more impressive if my stash of magical items was full of weapons instead of sex toys. I pulled out the first chest and searched through it, swearing at the useless assortment. The candles might work on that shadow thing and the imp, but they wouldn’t hurt the mage. The whips and paddles would only bruise him for an hour or two.

I shoved the box away and reopened the secret panel. A second box—a simple wooden crate, less stylized than the chest—had been gathering dust in the shadows for the last few months, ever since I stopped seeing Griffin.

Inside were untested magical prototypes, a bit more dangerous and volatile than the ones in the official chest. I grabbed blindly, pulling out handfuls, and then turned to find the mage huffing and puffing as he leaned against the bedroom door frame.

“I must say,” he panted, “that whoever enchanted this tower is more formidable than I expected. And more devious—to lock the outside is understandable, but to lock the inside.”

He blinked at me for a few seconds and then looked around at the other objects scattered through the room. “The tower, the ropes … you’re the mage, aren’t you?”

Since he wasn’t attacking me right now, it felt a little ridiculous to make the first move. Like I was about to punch a teacher who was in the middle of praising my work. “Yes.”

His eyes lit up with interest. “Forget the wedding,” he announced grandly. “How would you like to be my apprentice?”

How evil do you have to be for an evil mage to want to hire you? I stared at him dumbfounded for a moment before asking, “Are you serious?” By which of course I meant ‘what the fuck is wrong with you, this is not the time for a job offer.’

But he took it literally. “Quite. You’ve already got the wardrobe for it,” he said, gesturing to the black-on-black-on-black clothes I’d changed into for the rehearsal dinner. Which looked awfully close to what he was wearing under the cloak.

“I’m really not interested in being one of your minions.”

“Not a minion,” he corrected. “An apprentice—completely different. And it’s even a paid position! Despite some misconceptions you might have about our role in society, we do treat each other well.”

“You just kidnapped me! Why would I want to work for you?”

He crossed his arms and gave me a frank look. “It’s all part of the trade. Tell me honestly, with a tower like this, have you never kidnapped anyone before?”

Since I’d done just that less than a week ago, it wasn’t like I could argue with him. “I’m not interested in working with you or becoming any sort of evil mage!”

“So, you weren’t about to engage me in battle using the weapons you’ve personally enchanted?”

I blinked and looked down to my full arms. I’d been so stunned by his offer, I’d forgotten what I’d come up here for. I was oddly flattered that he’d called the hodgepodge assortment ‘weapons,’ but I couldn’t let that stop me from using them against him. Tossing half of my stock on the bed to free up my hands, I grabbed a thin chain with weights on each end and whipped it toward his legs like a bola.

He hopped backwards out of the way and out of the room, teetering on the landing, not close enough to the stairs to fall. The makeshift bola only managed to wrap around one leg, which made it mostly useless.

Holding the captured leg up to inspect it, he asked, “Are those clamps on the end? What are they meant to—augh!” The clamp resting on his shoe turned red hot, burning a hole through the leather.

Note to self—absolutely do not let those near any one’s nipples.

While he was distracted, I sorted through the other things I’d grabbed: harness, the beginnings of a swing, cane, gags, and muzzles. The harness was too complicated to work quickly, even if the enchantment behaved, and the swing was mostly a jumble of rope and leather. I grabbed the cane and a muzzle for the imp and turned back to the mage.

The shadows had swelled again, blocking off all light in the stairway and slowly creeping into the room. The mage’s eyes glowed almost as hot as the clamp, which he had untangled and tossed to the side where it merrily burned a hole in my rug. “You dare challenge me?” he asked, his deep voice echoing in the round bedchamber.

He stepped toward me, cloak billowing in a non-existent wind. He raised his right hand and pitch-black shadows coalesced around it, expanding into a gleaming black sword. One slash through the air sent me sprawling backwards onto the bed. It had sliced through my clothes diagonally, the fabric scraps falling aside to expose a thin cut across my chest, blood welling to the surface.

What the fuck will happen if that blade actually touches me? Suddenly, malfunctioning magical sex toys did not seem like a good defense.

“I am the Lord of Darkness,” the mage bellowed. Another wave of shadows rushed forward, coating the room. Somehow a small circle of light remained, showing me how little space I had to move in.

“The Prince of Shadows,” he continued. Figures leapt from the shadows, grabbing my arms and legs, pinning me to the bed. I struggled against them, but it was like they weighed a thousand pounds, too heavy to budge no matter how I tried.

“You have belittled and mocked me.”

Heart pounding, I forced myself to look into his eyes, now as solid black as the shadows he controlled. If I was going to die, I was at least not going to be a gods damned coward about it.

“You have scorned everything I offered you.”

The sword tip lowered to my throat, piercing the skin. Blood trickled down my neck.

“And you have ruined my boots.”

The sword’s pressure released from my neck as he swung his arm back, raising it high above his head for more momentum. “These were a gift from my wife!” he snarled right as the sword came down.