Page 39 of The Mage and His Stolen Prince
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 onpurpose, 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?”
