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“Apologies, your highnesses,” he says. “A great pity.”
“What the hell is happening?” I ask the question in demanding, displeased tones.
“Exactly,” Charming says. “Day and night, heaven and hell.”
“Why is the dragon back?”
“I don’t know,” he says, his voice breaking just a fraction. “I thought surely it would be banished by true love.”
“It feels to me like dragons probably don’t go away just because two dudes fall in love.”
“Did you just refer to yourself as a dude?”
“I am a dude. A girl dude. You’re a dude dude.”
“Right. Excellent. Very well.”
He is distracted and concerned, though he remains very much a commanding presence. The dining hall is now as dark as the rest of the castle and lands. Walls are adorned with antlers and the heads of fearsome beasts not known in my world, but after the vague concept of wolves, bears, hyenas, and for some reason, quilled creatures. Everything has a quill bristle pelt ending in needle-sharp points. Wolf heads with brilliant eyes of dead fury, lips raised in an eternal snarl, and no fur but rather a dense coat of needles.
“I wouldn’t want to meet one of those if it were alive.”
“No,” Charming agrees. “You would not. They weigh three hundred pounds, and it is all bone, muscle, and hatred.”
“And what are they when the happy world returns?”
“Happy world?” He looks momentarily confused. “Oh. I see. Yes, the Happily Ever After. Then they are great guardian beasts, still dangerous, but much more likely to defend than attack. We have several in the kennels.”
“We have several of…” I point to the great snarling dead thing on the wall. “We have several of those down there right now?”
“Yes.”
“I have to see them.”
“Not until we reassert the Happily Ever After. It should have returned by now. I feel as though something is broken. Something is wrong. Our love should have slain the dragon, and our marriage should have created a state of eternal bliss. How could things be wrong?”
“Well, I don’t know, but in my world, just falling in love doesn’t really actually solve anything. And marriage is, well, not always all it’s cracked up to be. Not going to save any worlds, put it that way.”
King Charming looks at me with an expression of handsome horror.
“In the place you come from, a king marrying his princess does not forever cement a state of good fortune, good will, and general goodness?”
“No. In my world, a prince married his love, and most people talked about how her sister’s ass looked in a dress. And then there was, well, I’m not saying the two were related, because it was years later, but there was a bit of a plague, and a decent war, and…”
King Charming holds his hand up. “You come from a polluted realm.”
I hope he is not about to blame me for his dragon problems, but it feels like that is where this is going, so I open my mouth to cut him off.
“Your dragon problems were pre-existing, buddy.”
“Buddy,” he says. “Dude, and now buddy. This beastly informality must be part of the All Gone Wrong.”
“Is that what we call this state of affairs? The All Gone Wrong? I like that.”
“You like that?”
I shrug a little. “I guess it’s closer to the world I came from, in some respects. We don’t have whatever those prickly wolves are…”
“Pricklewolves,” he says.
“Yes. Good name. I like it when the name for things matches the appearance of the thing. It’s just an economy of language that I really appreciate.”
King Charming gives me what I can only describe as a suspicious glare.
“You should be heartbroken that our marriage was not able to be formalized. You should be in streams of tears, wailing at your misfortune.”
“Why? Did you stop loving me?”
“No.”
“Well, who really cares, then? Marriage is just a piece of paper anyway.”
“Just a piece of paper?”
Of all the outrageous things I have said to this king, he finds that most outrageous of all. His eyes widen, and his shoulders square, and I see him take a deep breath to steady himself and perhaps even calm down so he does not begin to yell.
“The entirety of civilization, whole worlds, histories, the very existence of humanity and every other species of sentient being, has depended entirely on pieces of paper,” he says. “Documentation is the only way we have of proving anything. By inscribing paper, we make what was intangible, tangible. Pieces of paper with writing upon them are some of the deepest magics known in all realms. And here you are, dismissing a marriage certificate as if it is nothing.”
He speaks in a kind of shocked wonderment, halfway between outrage and pity, beholding me with a wide-eyed gaze which I feel is unfair, given all I have recently endured. I could be petty and tell him I did not ask to be abducted for marriage, but that seems like kicking a giant alien king while he’s down.
