The Magic Queen (2 page)

“Oh, no.” Aphrodite flicked her fingers and opened a rift in time between dimensions. “It will be impossible to hate this one, though I can’t guarantee he’ll be happy to come along either. He’s been known to be a tad...let’s call it impossible.”

Caly shook her head as giant threads of misgiving wormed their way through her belly. But it wasn’t like they had many choices left. “Well, take me to him. Poor fellow.”

Dite, who was just about to step through the shimmering silver veil, glanced over her shoulder and grinned. “Don’t feel bad for him, Caly. If anything, you should feel bad for Baba. This male might be her undoing.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait.” Calypso grabbed Aphrodite by the elbow, halting her forward progress. “Before we continue, I need to make sure you’re on board with how we’re going to play this thing.”

Aphrodite smiled sharply. “Good cop. Bad cop. Got it. You do know the women are going to think you rather savage by the end of this thing, Caly. I could play the bad guy in this game if you’d like. It’s near impossible for anyone to hate me. But you...they might just want to stick a magicked dirk in your side when it’s all said and done.”

Calypso had thought of that, but the truth was, she hardly cared whether she was liked or not. The ones she loved, loved her back, and that was all that mattered. It was a point of honor and pride to Caly that these women get their happily ever afters.

Villains weren’t supposed to be happy. It was the way the stories were written, stories Caly had never hated more than now. She and Aphrodite had handpicked the worst of the worst in literature and tales, and with Baba Yaga especially, she knew that to get a woman that prickly and cranky to actually fall in love, Caly was going to have to make herself look like a cold-hearted bitch of a goddess. She smirked, thinking of what Hades would say when he learned of her plan. He always loved it when her claws came out.

Caly nodded. “I can do it. I’ll be saying and doing some things that will, no doubt, raise your eyebrows. All I need to know is that you’ll be on board with me in this and that Themis can’t know everything. There will be times I’ll need to go rogue and move against Justice’s edicts. Promise me now you’ll have my back, Love.”

“I will always have your back, my friend. On that, you can always count. Now, let’s go find these dark queens their mates, shall we?” Stepping forward, Aphrodite sealed her vow with a light kiss pressed to Caly’s lips.

Calypso nodded because for all her talk of not caring what others might think of her, she did actually care.

She just hoped no one hated her too much when it was all done.

Chapter 1

Baba Yaga

There wasn’t much time left, but there was still so much to be done. Baba hummed under her breath, a lilting little tune as haunting as it was catchy. Her audience of one was held rapt. She felt his stare all over her face, the questions in his head... They rubbed against her flesh like the softest fingers.

What now?

Is this it?

But I could still be of some service to you
...

She snorted, dropping the wart of a dead man’s toe into her cauldron, which glowed with green phosphorescence. Balthazar’s deadly tongue flicked out scant inches from her neck. One swipe of that ruby red tongue to any bit of flesh would not only begin to necrotize the skin, but it could stop a heart cold—instant death in a land where death was far from commonplace.

“Oh, can you really?” The whisper of her words was like the rattling of dry bones. Reaching out gnarled fingers with black-tipped nails, she plucked an eye of newt from its vial and dropped it into the brew.

It hissed and burbled. The magick within rose high like a spire as it sought to escape from her chicken-footed home. The house, sensitive to any spell-casting she used, let out a shrill, blood-curdling scream that never ceased to make her break out in a wash of delighted goose flesh. Her prisoner shuddered. It seemed no one else quite enjoyed her pretty little hut quite like she did. Oh, well...

“And tell me, Goblin,” she hissed, “just how can you help me?”

He grunted, shaking the bars of his iron cage futilely as his eyes widened in panic.

“Oh, that’s right,” she said almost sweetly. “You can’t. I cut out your tongue.”

Cackling—and just because she could—she grabbed up her latest acquisition: tongue of goblin, terribly hard to come by these days, as those nasty goblins rather hated parting with their selves. Go figure. Well, the beast had had it coming, after all. There wasn’t much in this life that she hated more than a man full of hubris. The Under Goblin’s prideful arrogance and misogyny landed him in his current predicament. Let it never be said that she hadn’t warned him first. Baba always dealt fairly with her supplicants, though she doubted any of them would ever see it that way.

She glanced up, staring into the starlit eyes of her newest pet. He was still as swarthy and handsomely ugly as he’d always been. She treated him well...fed him, bathed him. He simply couldn’t talk back to her. Men were never so lovely as when they were silent. She grinned and resumed her humming.

Dipping her pinky into the brew, she then brought it to her mouth, smacking her lips as she tasted the magick. Almost there. It only needed a pinch of dragon tears.

Balthazar’s golden body coiled lazily along the bottom of her neck. He rubbed his sleepy little head into her collarbone sniffing at her flesh. She tasted like bat guano to her pet, which made their arrangement oddly perfect. He did not want to eat her, and she was rather fond of his beady red eyes.

Reaching over to her stack of shelved vials, she snatched up the one that glowed a fiery scarlet with threads of shimmering amethyst. Uncorking it, she tipped it over her cauldron. The twin tears sizzled, and the inside of her barren home glowed the strange hue of green hell flame.

She smiled. “All done.”

Feeling the Under Goblin’s eyes like a brand, she decided to humor him. She so rarely had company, and good or bad, she made the best out of what time she had. Baba still hadn’t quite decided what she was to do with her latest possession. The Goblin could possibly be useful. And so long as he remained so, he’d stay exactly as he was.

Standing slowly, she straightened her knobby knees, feeling the aches spread the length of her. She’d stayed in this form far too long. Baba was powerful, but in one thing she was a slave: her tie to the thrice-lunar cycle.

It was time to take up her next manifestation. But she’d been known to get the elements wrong before. It was her fault, really. If she’d only take the time to measure things properly as her spirits had taught her, it wouldn’t happen. If she were honest, she was lazy, but Baba was rarely prone to honesty with herself. Honesty was a maudlin affair.

“Are we ready for a drink then, goblin?”

He grunted, scrambling back on his heels until his back pressed tight up against the iron bars behind him, and there was no place else to go.

She frowned. “You are an untrustworthy fellow, are you not, my dear?” She
tsked
. Shaking her head, she waddled to his side. Her knobby knees creaked and ached with each step. Bloody, damn crone form, her very least favorite of her three-sided nature.

She snapped her arthritic fingers, and a cup carved from the skull bones of a Scarpiathian warlord suddenly appeared in her hand. Scarpathians were nasty little devils that lived in the Northern icelands of Kingdom—giants as tall as her roof with shaggy ice hair all over their bodies and teeth filed from iron.

Their bones made great stock.

His lip curled, and even caged as he was, the haughty goblin had yet to lose even a farthing of his raging hubris. She chuckled delicately, which in this form, sounded more like a winter avalanche.

“’Fraid it’ll taste bad, goblin? Used to your rich puddings and cakes? Drink up, you damn fool. It’s your own fault you’re here. I warned you. You did not listen, and now, you are here to serve my needs in whatever way I fancy.” Taunting him was just so easy.

His lips pulled back, revealing his sharpened incisors. Balthazar, who never took kindly to his mama getting accosted—even if done by a harmless male trapped in a cage like a rat—came suddenly to alertness. He sped down the arm she held out toward the cage, wrapped his glowing tail around the bar, and hissed malevolently.

The goblin, smart beast that he was, gulped, snatched the cup out of her hand, and swallowed the contents in two heaving swallows. He tossed the cup to the floor, no doubt expecting to shatter it.

But one could not simply shatter Scarpathian bone by throwing a tantrum.

Lifting a brow, Baba crossed her arms and waited. She didn’t have to wait long. He gave a bellow, clutched his middle, and fainted to the ground, head thwacking the concrete so hard she did not doubt that he had probably broken his skull.

The glow of magick encased him, pouring from out of his pores so brightly that it brought tears to her eyes. She squinted. A second later, the light dimmed.

For such a lot of magick, the effects of the potion were rather simple. Lying inside the cage was a squalling, mewling newborn with dusky-green skin and a shock of black hair standing up around his adorable little head.

“Hm.” She pursed her lips. “I would have sworn you’d have been older than that, goblin, or I’d not have given you such a high dose. Oh, well.” She shrugged. Slipping the key from around her neck, she unlocked the cage door and grinned.

With his smooth skin and pretty, starlit eyes, the Under Goblin was far more attractive as a child than he’d been as a malevolent, evil old man.

“Balthazar.” She looked at her golden adder, whose tongue was flicking in and out as he tasted the essence of the babe in the air. She read the confusion in her familiar’s ruby eyes. “I do believe we find ourselves in a bit of a conundrum here.”

Even Balthazar was often astonished her magickal skill. An adorable, little frown marred his scaly hide.

She shrugged. “I didn’t do it on purpose. He said he was tens of thousands of years old. How was I to know he’d lied?” She tossed out her hands. “And no, before you ask, this is not reversible. He’ll simply have to grow up all over again.”

A sound awfully like a groan spilled from her adder’s mouth. Balthazar wasn’t overly fond of squawking children. He tended to want to eat them, not care for them. His tongue flicked out grumpily, and Baba rolled her eyes.

“No, you may not eat him. Bloody damn me. I should have trusted my gut. I knew I hadn’t heard of the Under Goblin during the Dark Ages, but that’s what I get for being so gullible. Ach, well, my beloved. We’ve no choice now. We’re parents. Maybe this time we can raise that green bastard better. What do you say?”

Balthazar curled his lip, and she smiled proudly down at him.

“Yes, I love you too, you slippery eel.”

His tongue flicked violently. Her pet was always so touchy when she called him that, which was exactly why did it. She smiled sweetly, which made her look like a mummified zombie stretching atrophied lips. She truly was hideous in this form.

“I do so hate to do this, B, but they will soon arrive, and I’ll have to go. Manage him. Feed him—”

His tongue flicked out in a question.

“How should I know?” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve never been a parent before. Give him beets or something. Chicken bones. Worms?” She imagined that would taste foul, but he was a goblin. What did they eat anyway? She shook her head to clear the marbles. No sense in falling down that rabbit hole. Time was of the essence.

Turning, she grabbed the fallen cup. Scarpathian bones were the only things strong enough to hold dragon’s tears and not disintegrate. It was why she drank most potions from these bones. Holding the cup by its handle, she dipped it into the cauldron of brew and ladled out a good half cup. Too much and she’d run into the same problem as the goblin.

“You know, we really do need to give him a name. The goblin just sounds silly. What should we call him, B?”

She glanced at her adder with brow raised. Balthazar, who was accustoming himself to the Goblin’s new scent, slithered up his face. His tongue flicked out.

“Balthazar,” she grumped, “I do hope you can contain your excitement and not eat the boy. You know we’ve turned over a new leaf.”

His coils shuddered as he hung his head in shame.

Moving off the babe, B was the epitome of kindness and fatherly kindness until he flicked the end of his tail at the child’s cheek with a stinging crack, causing the goblin to squall and raise his tiny fists up in the air.

“Oh, dear.” She sighed. “I’m not sure I can trust you with him. You’ve quite the nasty temper this morning.”

Of course, she also understood that it would take Balthazar some time get used to the fact that the hateful Under Goblin was now nothing more than a harmless babe, not the man who’d very nearly ruined the happiness of tens of thousands of inhabitants of Kingdom.

Not that B cared about the inhabitants of Kingdom. Balthazar only truly loved her. But the goblin had been almost directly responsible for the destruction of B’s family nest, and that was a hard sin to forget and forgive.

“He is not the same man. In fact, he is not a man at all. We can raise him better this time, beloved. Does that not mollify you at least a little?”

Balthazar’s deadly ruby tongue flickered, but it no longer pointed at the boy’s head. Her familiar had acquiesced, which was good. The goblin could become a powerful ally someday. No sense in killing him now.

The child still hadn’t stopped crying. The potion had given him back his tongue. She shuddered. She really did hate the sound of children crying. In the good ol’ days—or at least that’s how the stories went—there had been ways to make them stop. The stories typically involved a fire, a hearth, and well...maybe there was something to the stories after all because she was pretty sure that method would work wonderfully right about now.

She sighed and shook her head regretfully. Killing the babe was not the answer.

She needed to finalize things, but she could hardly leave B with that squawking thing all by himself.