Happily Ever Awkward (The H.E.A. Files Book 1) Read online

  HAPPILY EVER AWKWARD

  THE H.E.A. FILES - BOOK ONE

  T. L. CALLIES

  Get a bonus short story

  FOR FREE

  Sign up for my no-spam newsletter and receive “The Seeboth Affair,” a short story that takes place immediately following the events of this book.

  Details can be found at the end of HAPPILY EVER AWKWARD.

  See you there!

  © 2017 Midnight Show Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

  Image featured on cover courtesy of Carruth Studio.

  Copyright © 1999 Carruth Studio. All rights reserved.

  CarruthStudio.com

  For my mother.

  Because… everything.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1 Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

  2 The Ballad Of King Hofnar

  3 Beyond The Troll Booth

  4 The Poxie Post

  5 Crossing Paths

  6 The Outhouse Of Evil

  7 Netherhell 3412

  8 The Champion Lottery

  9 The Curse

  10 Date Night

  11 The Spell Of Unmaking

  12 The Questionable Quest

  13 Netherhell 1,000,001

  14 The Scene Of The Crime

  15 Red Carnations

  16 The Moody Sea

  17 One Happy Barbarian

  18 Smile Number 33

  19 So You Wanna Be A Prince Charming

  20 Treasury Island

  21 The Not-So-Great Escape

  22 One Buckle

  23 A Knight Of The Oblong Shield

  24 Limbo

  25 The Shadowkeep

  26 Frolic Like A Flitterling

  27 Irrevocable Faux Pas

  28 The Bad Part Of The Forest

  29 Flitter Nectar

  30 The Princess In The Wheelbarrow

  31 New York City

  32 Hero Time

  33 Pair-A-Dice

  34 The Devil You Know

  35 Kitten Cannons

  36 Damsels Under Duress

  37 Bloody Vengeance

  38 The Spell Of The Blue Iris

  39 URRRs AND ARRRs

  40 Exquisite Tension

  41 3… 2… 1…

  42 …Boom!

  43 The Logic Of Asteroids

  44 Convergence

  45 Not Again

  46 A Helping Hand

  47 The Shortest Chapter In The Book

  48 Facing The Face Of The Face Of Fear

  49 Chains Of Love

  50 The Lone Archer

  51 Just A Scratch

  52 Better Than Nothing

  53 The Sacrifice

  54 The Pentagram Of Love

  55 The End

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  “Marauding pirates, rampaging zombies,

  malevolent wizards…

  First dates really sucketh.”

  —Anonymous Prince Charming

  WAIT!

  STOP READING ME!

  I’M NOT READY YET!

  WELL, YOU’RE AN IMPATIENT ONE, AREN’T YOU.

  FINE.

  JUST GIVE ME ONE MORE PAGE TO STRETCH MY BINDING…

  All right, I’ve slipped into a nice, comfortable set of italics. Now we can begin.

  Allow me to introduce myself.

  I am The Book.

  You may call me The Book.

  Please do not call me “Your Book” yet because we hardly know each other. Only time will tell what becomes of our relationship.

  You should also know that I am an enchanted book. I can summon anything ever written to fill my magic pages. That means I am able to regale you with all manner of amazing tales seasoned with fantastic tidbits of arcane lore.

  Please do not compare what I do with the far more pedestrian work of the Story Gnomes. Those relentlessly cheerful and incredibly annoying beasts claim to have seen every story that was and is and will be, simply because they have no eyelids and never blink. Aside from being terribly disturbing to look at, I assure you unblinking eyes do not good storytellers make. Story Gnomes have a limited focus, and their craft is wanting.

  I do not like them.

  Let us not speak of Story Gnomes again.

  However, if you seek professional storytelling that will not drive you mad with endless gibbering and sickening sweetness, simply turn my pages. With me, you comfortably hold a library the size of the entire universe in something the size of your hand.

  But I’m not here to talk to you about the universe. Well, not really. I’m here to tell you a story.

  A very specific story about a very specific young prince in search of a very specific Happily Ever After.

  From time to time, I may feel the need to interrupt this story so I might speak with you directly or to present some relevant fact or bit of backstory. You will know I am doing so whenever I slip into italics.

  Now, without further ado, let us begin our tale as all of them must.

  Once upon a time…

  PROLOGUE

  The Enchanted Castle of Slumbering Beautiful

  1:32 A.M.

  A wall of mist surrounded a murky moat.

  The murky moat surrounded an ugly fortress.

  The ugly fortress surrounded a series of traps.

  And the series of traps surrounded a beautiful princess.

  Needless to say, the beautiful princess did not get many visitors.

  A lone guard, whose duty it was to ensure the princess did not get any visitors, paused along the base of the castle wall to work a pebble from his boot. He hated patrolling outside the castle. The moat reeked, mosquitoes constantly nibbled on him, and nothing exciting ever happened.

  Behind the guard, a black-cloaked intruder oozed from the depths of the moat and silently drew his sword.

  But not silently enough.

  The guard spun toward the faint sloshing sound — a sound that constituted the first interesting thing to happen to him in his entire career of patrolling — and he found himself facing a rather intimidating silhouette. He had to admit this silhouette might have been a tad bit more exciting than he had hoped for all this time. Ripping out his sword, the guard slashed wildly, but the intruder swatted the blow aside. A blinding flurry of steel and sparks exploded between the two until the intruder finally smashed the guard unconscious with a sweeping roundhouse kick.

  As the guard slumped to the ground, one final thought accompanied his descent into unconsciousness: “Excitement certainly isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  After hiding the guard’s body in some reeds at the edge of the moat, the intruder shrugged off his wet cloak and revealed himself to be ruggedly handsome with strong arms, a square jaw, and skin that glistened in the moonlight.

  With a twist of his wrist, specially designed climbing hooks popped from his gauntlets and boots. In another place and another time, he might have been called a ninja, but here he was just called a Prince Charming.

  Leaping upon the wall, he sank his hooks into the cracked stone and spider-scurried up and into the castle.

  The Bedchamber of Slumbering Beautiful

  1:37 A.M.

  Slumbering Beautiful reclined upon a luxurious bed in the center of a pristine marble vault. She was, quite possibly, the most beautiful sleeping woman in the entire world. As she continued to sleep her endlessly gorgeous sleep, a length of rope uncoiled from a vent in the ceiling and the Prince Charming lowered himself inside.

  He hung above the princess, suspended from a harness attached to his rope, and gazed upon her with reverent awe. Carefully balancing himself, he leaned forward, puckered up…r />
  …and the vault door slammed open. A second Prince Charming entered, slightly charred around the edges. He froze when he saw the dangling prince hanging mid-pucker above the bed.

  Needless to say, this was a bit awkward for all concerned.

  “Excuse me,” said the charred prince, coughing as smoke wafted from his singed tunic and scorched hair. “That’s my princess.”

  “Sorry, I was here first,” said the dangler, suddenly diving in for his kiss. Before he could make contact, however, the charred prince grabbed him by the boot and yanked him back.

  “She’s mine!” grunted the rope-bound prince as he struggled to break free. “Let me go!”

  “I didn’t hack my way past a fire-breathing Dragon just to let you kiss my date!” cried the extra-crispy prince.

  “You can kiss my scepter!” declared the dangling prince.

  The two suitors became so busy grappling with each other that they failed to notice a grate in the floor as it scraped open. A third, slime-covered Prince Charming emerged from the sewer tunnels beneath the castle and sneaked toward Slumbering Beautiful.

  The charred prince stopped and sniffed the air, his nose wrinkled in disgust. “Wait, do you smell something?” Looking toward the bed, he spotted the interloper at the last second and hurled the dangling prince at him. Suspended from the rope as he was, the dangler sailed across the room like a battering ram, but the slimy prince dodged aside and the swinging, swaying prince went ricocheting about the vault.

  The charred prince and the slimy prince locked eyes across the chamber. Then, without a word, they simultaneously dove at the princess and collided in a flying tackle above the bed. Down they crashed and the bed collapsed beneath them. Because of the noise, no one heard the vault door creak open again, nor did they see the dashing figure of yet another Prince Charming as he stepped inside and struck a heroic pose.

  “Fear not, sweet maiden! ’Tis I, come to rescue—” was all the most recently arrived prince managed to say before the dangling prince, still swinging wildly out of control, arced back across the room and slammed him into the wall.

  “Oof!” said the dashed dashing prince.

  This goes on for a bit, so I’m going to stop right there.

  The Slumbering Beautiful Incident. Not a happy ending to that story.

  Ultimately, seventeen Prince Charmings arrived to wake the same princess. The matter went to court where the princess slumbers to this day, pending appeal.

  Everyone agreed — there had to be a better way to fall in love.

  NOW upon a time…

  1

  LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

  A woman’s perfect ivory hand spread a sheet of cream-colored parchment across a desk of polished mahogany. Dipping a peacock-quill pen into a jar of black ink, she began to scratch flawless script across the page.

  Beautiful Princess…

  Her words took shape in a luxurious sitting room awash in the light of a thousand candles. One could not imagine a more ideal habitat for the most perfect woman in the world.

  And there she sat, at a table facing an open balcony, her golden hair and silken gown cascading around her in perfect waves. Her name was Princess Luscious. She was eighteen years old, and she shone like a perfectly radiant sun.

  When she finished writing, she lifted the page to her perfect red lips so she might blow on the ink with her perfect breath to ensure it was perfectly dry.

  “Perfect,” she said with a perfect white smile.

  She settled the page back down on the table, but something unexpectedly rustled beneath it.

  A whiskered nose popped into view.

  “Oh my,” Princess Luscious said.

  Squeaker the Mouse crawled from beneath the parchment and dusted himself off. He wore a miniature blue jacket and a floppy little hat. Giving a tiny bow, he snatched the hat from his head, swept a bouquet of clover from behind his back, and looked up at Princess Luscious with pure love in his eyes.

  The princess stared at her admirer for a moment, and then she screamed.

  This was not perfect. This was not perfect at all!

  She hurled herself away from the table. Whirling into her bedchamber, she stumbled through ten more mice scattered about the floor, all of them wearing little jackets and dresses and boots and caps. They frolicked about her feet and seemed to be singing and dancing.

  Princess Luscious leaped onto her magnificent four-poster bed while the infestation of mice continued to caper on the floor.

  “Laura! Laura, get in here! Laura!” Princess Luscious squealed.

  As the princess cowered on the bed, pulling her satin sheets around her to armor herself against the rodents’ music, several cheerful sparrows swooped in from the balcony to add to the horror. They crisscrossed above her, draping streamers of ivy upon the frantic girl.

  “Get away! Get away! Shoo! Lauraaaa!”

  The bedroom’s heavy oaken doors groaned inward, allowing an eighteen-year-old force of nature to streak inside. Laura the Handmaiden had thick dark hair, brown eyes, and, some would say, too many opinions. If any person could be described as “extra-crunchy granola” that would certainly be Laura. The girl was all-natural with more than a few rough edges that often proved hard to swallow.

  “All right, all right! I heard you the first time you screamed. What is it this—” Laura saw the mice. “Oh no. Not again.”

  Without batting an eye, Laura grabbed a vase and started scooping the tiny creatures into it.

  “Get down, Luscious,” she said as she chased down a pair of the waltzing rodents. “They’re not going to hurt you. They’re just mice.” She held one up. “And see, they’re wearing cute little suits.”

  “They’re filthy, savage beasts!” Princess Luscious cried. “There’s another one. Get it!”

  “It’s not really their fault, you know,” Laura said with a sigh.

  Princess Luscious checked the floor and carefully crawled down the far side of the bed, keeping it positioned between her and the mouse-filled vase. “I don’t care! Just because animals can’t resist my innocent beauty, that’s no excuse for them to keep stalking me.”

  “Fine,” Laura said.

  She plunked the last mouse into the vase then gave a twittering whistle. The sparrows swooped down and landed on her shoulders with a confused chorus of chirps.

  “Will there be anything else?” Laura asked, rolling her eyes wearily.

  Princess Luscious cautiously checked every corner of the room. When she was certain nothing with a tail lurked anywhere, she gave Laura a girlish smile. “As a matter of fact…” She crossed to the table and whisked up the parchment. “I want you to mail this for me.”

  “What is it?” Laura asked.

  Princess Luscious could barely contain her glee as Laura read the message.

  Beautiful Princess seeks Evil Wizard.

  I tire of waiting for my Prince Charming,

  so come kidnap me if you think you’re wicked enough — I dare you!

  P.S. NO Shadow Wizards considered!

  Not surprisingly, Laura was stunned. “You’re not serious.”

  “Absolutely,” Princess Luscious said. “I can’t stand Shadow Wizards.”

  “Not that!” Laura snapped. “You’re advertising for an evil wizard to kidnap you?!”

  “Why not?” Princess Luscious said with a pout. “You know I can’t date until a Prince Charming rescues me, but it could be ages before I’m finally in distress! I’m eighteen. I have needs right now.”

  Laura shook her head. “This is crazy.”

  Princess Luscious wheeled toward the balcony. “I should think you’d be pleased.”

  Before Laura could protest, she noticed something very small and very furry scaling the back of Princess Luscious’ gown. Squeaker the Mouse, still desperately clutching his bouquet of clover, slowly ascended the silken mountain on his way to proclaim his love upon the peak.

  Princess Luscious continued, completely unaw
are of her little visitor. “You’re the one always telling me I should take control of my destiny as a woman, so now I am. I’m choosing who kidnaps me and when the Lottery sends my Prince Charming to rescue me.”

  Laura set the vase and parchment on the table then eased forward, silently trying to shoo Squeaker away.

  The mouse ignored her, for love had blinded him to all but the gargantuan object of his desire.

  “While I can appreciate your initiative, princess, I think you’re missing my bigger point,” Laura said, trying to keep Princess Luscious distracted as she stretched out her hand. “You shouldn’t have to be rescued in the first place.”

  Squeaker pulled himself atop Princess Luscious’ shoulder and immediately began rubbing his face in her hair. Even for a mouse, that seemed slightly creepy.

  Laura inched closer.

  Princess Luscious kept her back toward Laura, staring from the balcony across the winking lights of the spectacular city spread out below her.

  The city in question was known as Theandrea, and it was the capital of something called the Empire of Bridges.

  Theandrea served as a prime example of the five rules of empire-building:

  1. Subjugation

  2. Taxation

  3. Location

  4. Location

  5. Location

  The city covered an island that happened to sit in the very center of a vast archipelago. Networks of ancient stone bridges connected all the islands of this archipelago, and every one of these bridges began — or ended, depending on your perspective — at Theandrea.