Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,72
If you don't even like me? What is there keeping you here? You're not even doing magic anymore, are you? I haven't seen
you conjure any spells or do any magic smce we've been together smce the initial one you cast over me and my kmgdom."
Vanessa looked up at him sharply.
Huh, Eric thought, noticing her reaction. She hasn't because she can't. Maybe in human form she couldn't do magic. He decided to file that thought away for later.
"Well," she said. "You're not quite the dumb, handsome prmce you look like. Here's the truth, then, if we are speaking plainly. I find I rather like you humans—I didn't expect that at all! You're so venal and shortsighted and power hungry and imaginative and... such a mess of wants and desires. And so short-lived! Hardly any of you has the wisdom that a century or two of living endows one with. Such fun to play with... And there's so many more of you than merfolk. The possibilities are endless."
She gave him a winning smile.
Doctor Faustus s Mephistopheles has nothing on Vanessa, Eric thought. Toying with souls and bodies like it s all a child's game for her.
"And here's the thing," she said, changing her tone. She stabbed five mussels m a row with her knife and shoveled them into her mouth but continued to talk. Like the hungriest, most brutish old sailor in a pub after months at sea. "True, I was a powerful sea witch. But can anyone really have enough power? Even with Triton gone there are seven sisters defendmg his crown, and a mer army, and countless other soldiers, guardians, priests, and allies who would effectively keep me from running the show. Here? I am running the show. And all it took was a marriage! Not a drop of blood spilled. Or a person transmogrified."
"Not a drop of blood spilled?" Eric demanded, leaning forward. "We lost twenty at the Siege of Arlendad and three m the attack north of the Veralean Mountams when you were trying to 'send a message' to Alamber. That's twenty-three young men who will never give their mothers a grandchild, who will never see another spring, who will turn into dirt before they reach twenty!"
"My, you really are quite the poet," Vanessa said, perhaps really impressed. "But those were the result of empire expansion. My ascension to power, in itself, was bloodless. Also, I don't remember your being quite so eloquent on behalf of Tirulia's young male population at the time I first proposed these ventures...."
"I was under your bloody spellV Eric shouted, standing up.
"Dear, the staff," Vanessa said primly. "Let's not let the help know about our marital issues. They're all terrible gossips."
Eric made a strangled cry and pounded his fists on the table.
"Just be a good boy and let mummy Vanessa run things. Soon Tirulia will be a power among powers, to rival Druvest or Etrulio. Then you'll be grateful for what I've done. And what will you have had to do, to get all these new lands and resources? Nothing. It's just me, sweetie. You go and write your plays and operas and let the people love you.
"Actually, we make quite a good team together, when you think about it. You're the spiritual side of the operation. I'm the tactics. And the... body"'
Eric looked at her blackly.
And that was when the chef chose to come back in.
"How waz everything?" he asked, clasping his hands together.
Vanessa hurried to pick up her fox and wrap it around her neck. "Quite good, " she whispered.
"Oh! Zat is wonderful. I will attend to ze palate cleanser now...."
The idea of spending another half hour: another ten minutes, another course with Vanessa, made Eric sick.
As soon as the chef was gone Vanessa gave him a nastily patronizing smile. "Don't fret, darling. I really do have Tirulia's best interests at heart." "I highly doubt that you have Tirulia's best interests anywhere near what passes for a heart on you."
"Well, I suppose hearts are a mostly human condition, aren't they? Especially yours. You're so full of love and feeling for everyone around you. Your country, your little mermaid, your dumb dog, your butler.... Say, speaking of hearts, his is rather old, isn't it?"
Her words chilled Eric to his bones.
"Hate for anything to happen to it. A man at his age probably wouldn't recover from an attack," she said thoughtfully.
"I...I'm not sure how you could arrange that," the prmce stuttered. "Since we just established you don't perform your witchery anymore."