Page 62 of The Mage and His Stolen Prince
“Oh gods, I thought they were going to puke on us,” Angelica said. Then a new thought occurred to her. “Is it contagious?”
“They’re motion sick,” Delilah assured her.
“Wonderful, exactly what I need in quest companions.”
Delilah crouched next to me and rubbed my shoulder soothingly. Hiding her face from the others, she whispered, “You overexerted yourself, didn’t you?”
I nodded shakily, too afraid that if I opened my mouth, I’d vomit again.
She sighed. “I told you not to. And twice in a row! There was barely ten minutes between the two! Why would you do something so stupid?”
Fitz confessed his love, and Maximus tried to kill me.I tilted my face toward her. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of my breath, but she leaned incloser to listen. “Keep Maximus away from me.”
We glanced back at the carriage, where the others had stayed. Maximus had poked his head out the window. He looked, for once, concerned rather than angry. As if he’d used up all his murderous rage threatening me and had returned to being a sweet young man.
Dogs didn’t age backwards. Once their adult teeth came in, they would never be puppies again.
Delilah left me to check on Trey, then hopped to her feet. “The four of us will continue on,” she declared. “Trey and Wilde will rest here.”
“Hereis the side of the road!” Fitz protested.
“The carriage can drop us off, then come back for them, and return them to the castle.”
“Orwe could just not go shopping.”
“Excuse you,Istill have things to buy,” Angelica insisted. “Besides, we’re almost there! They can waitten minutesfor the carriage to come back for them.”
Fitz was outvoted by the girls, who hustled him back into the carriage. Within a few minutes, they were back on the road, leaving Trey and I alone.
Trey had moved away from his puddle of sick and stretched out in the grass, gazing up at the cloudy sky. I crawled over to join him and lay down close enough to touch if we reached toward each other. I stared at the clouds too, trying to understand why he seemed so captivated by them.
“So,” he drawled, “we’re stuck in a time-loop.”
Princess Delilah Takes Over the Narration
Twenty Minutes Later
Back at the Windermere Plaza
BecauseSomeoneKept Undoing Her Errands
Delilah never thought she would be so sick of shopping. First, she’d chosen the perfect outfits with Angelica, then she’d started in on her list with Fitz, and now she was marching toward an apothecary all because Wilde had reset timetwice. At first, she’d thought it’d been for selfish reasons. As she knelt next to him, she’d seen the fresh ring of bruises around his neck. Heard his whispered plea to keep Maximus away.
She’d given Angelica and Fitz their original assignments, then dragged Maximus with her, claiming that she needed someone to carry all their purchases. He was a quiet, unassuming presence next to her. The last person anyone would suspect of murderous impulses.
She stopped in the middle of the hall and demanded, “Why don’t you like Wilde?”
Maximus’ brow furrowed. People flowed around him, giving him a wide berth, but they barely noticed Delilah. They accidentally jostled her shoulders and pushed her out of their way, throwing her off balance and ruining her grandstanding.
This wouldn’t do at all.
She grabbed Maximus’ arm and dragged him into the shop, hiding between a row of bottles. “Well?”
A muscle ticked in Maximus’ jaw. He stared down at his hands, opening and closing his fists, as if he could still feel the slender throat clutched within them. “I don’t know how to explain it. Everything’s blurry and confusing, but … I think he’s evil.”
“And?”
Maximum’s head shot up, his expression confused and wounded, like a puppy shooed away from their meal.
