“Your majesties, the Great Skeeve gives you his congratulations on this happy event.”
The Queen was no fool. For one beat her eyes popped open and on the next she was staring at the King. You could almost hear her thoughts: “If the Magician is there, then the man I just married is…”
“That’s right, your majesty. As you yourself said in our earlier conversations, ‘Royalty has married royalty.'”
While it might have been nice dramatically to savor that moment, I noticed the Queen’s eyes were narrowing thoughtfully, so I hurried on.
“Before you decide how to express your joy,” I warned, “perhaps I should explain my gift to the throne.”
Now the thoughtful gaze was on me. I expressed my own joy by sweating profusely.
“My gift is the wedding rings now worn by both king and queen. I hope you like them, because they won’t come off.”
Queen Hemlock made one brief attempt to remove her ring, then her eyes were on me again. This time, the gaze wasn’t thoughtful.
“Just as the fate of the kingdom of Possiltum is linked to the throne, as of the moment you donned those rings, your fates are linked to each other. By the power of a spell so simple it cannot be broken or countered, when one of you dies, so does the other.”
The Queen didn’t like that at all, and even the King showed a small frown wrinkle on his forehead, as if contemplating something he had not previously considered. That was my signal to clarify things for him . . . that there was an implication to the rings that I hadn’t mentioned to him.