The mood stone dangling from the gold chain around Aislin’s neck glowed blue-gray against her sun-bronzed skin, but no one needed to look at it to know that the princess was worried. Only an hour before, the messenger had arrived with a summons from her grandparents, the king and queen of the fairies. King Carrigan and his warriors were about to leave for Fairengar, but Aislin still didn’t know why. She’d returned to her room to fetch her good luck charm so her father could take it with him, but so far her search had been fruitless.
“Where is it?” Aislin cried, riffling through the clothes in the trunk by her door. The mirror on the stone mantel rattled as her agitation grew.
“What are you looking for, Princess?” asked a voice from the shadows. A doll, about ten inches tall, slipped off a small chair and pattered across the floor to tug at Aislin’s hem. “Is there anything I can do?”
“A messenger told Father his parents have summoned him and that he must leave right away,” Aislin told her. “He’s never received an urgent summons before, and I’m afraid something bad might be happening. I want to give Father my good luck charm to take with him, but he’s leaving in a few minutes and I can’t find it.”
“I’m sure he’ll be all right,” the doll said, gazing up at the princess with amethyst eyes. A gift from the fairy queen, Twinket had quickly become one of Aislin’s closest friends and was always there for her.
“I wish I could be sure!” Aislin cried. A tremor ran through the stone floor.
“Your father is a very powerful fairy,” said the doll. “He can handle anything.”
“So are my grandparents,” said Aislin. “Which means there must be something terribly wrong if they need my father’s help.”
Twinket was startled when the floor began to shake in earnest, and she had to grab hold of a chair leg so that she wouldn’t fall down.
There was one fairy quality that Aislin wished she didn’t have—her temper. When combined with her pedrasi strength, her emotional reactions could be dangerous to others. This was the reason her two grandmothers had worked together to create the mood stone. When Aislin was an infant, the stone had helped her parents know why she was crying; even now, it was useful to warn people about her moods. No one wanted to be near Aislin when she was truly upset. She was so in tune with the rock that had been used to construct the castle that even the walls and floor shook in sympathy.
As hot tears stung her eyes, Aislin wiped them away with the back of her hand. Red eyes just wouldn’t do! She had to say goodbye to her father, and he would see that she had been crying. The king had enough to worry about without worrying about her, too. Even a fairy as powerful as King Carrigan had to keep his wits about him when traveling all the way to Fairengar.
Aislin walked to a table, taking shuddering breaths and clenching her hands into fists while the floor continued to vibrate. “Are you all right?” Twinket asked, still holding on to the chair leg.
“I will be in a minute,” Aislin replied as she poured water from a pitcher into a crystal bowl.
When Aislin was first old enough to understand her power, her grandparents had tried to teach her to control her emotions. When she turned four, she was still prone to lose her temper, so her pedrasi grandmother gave her the crystal bowl and showed her how to focus her energy and use it to calm herself. She learned that washing her face in the water from the bowl could soothe her anger. Everyone in the royal household was delighted when it worked.
The water felt cold as Aislin scooped it up with her hands, but it was just what she needed. Her agitation faded as she splashed water onto her face.
Twinket sighed with relief when the floor stopped shaking. “Let me help you find your good luck charm. It’s small and green, isn’t it?”
Aislin nodded. “The leprechauns gave it to me. It’s a charmed emerald and—wait, I think I know where it is!”
Running over to a table beside her bed, she opened the lid of a small box. “I found it!” she declared, and stuck the oval stone in her pocket.
There was a knock on the door. Aislin turned toward the sound. “Yes?” she called as the door opened.
“Your father is about to leave,” an ogre footman named Skarly told her.
Aislin started running. “Thank you!” she called as she dashed past him out of the room and down the stairs. Passing a window, she heard the sound of the fairy knights’ horses stomping impatiently in the courtyard. When she threw open the door, light from the torches lining the walls reflected off the silver armor of the fairy knights lined up behind her father’s stallion, Wind Racer, nearly blinding her. She blinked, waiting for her eyes to recover. When she could see again, she spotted her mother, Queen Maylin, kissing her father while Timzy waited for his turn. Not wanting to miss saying goodbye, Aislin hurried down the stairs.
She had just reached her father’s side when Wind Racer stomped his feet, forcing her to take a step back. She had been brought up riding the gentle ponies bred in the pedrasi mines, and while she admired the fairies’ fiery-tempered horses, she had no desire to ride one herself.
Her father saw her and drew her in for a warm hug and a kiss on her cheek. Taking the charm from her pocket, she handed it to him, saying, “Please keep this with you for luck.”
He smiled and patted her cheek. “I will,” he vowed, tucking the stone into his own pocket.
A moment later, he’d mounted his horse and was raising his fist to signal that the troop was moving out. Aislin stepped aside as Wind Racer led the way over the cobblestones. Joining her mother and Timzy on the steps, she watched the fairy knights leave. Aislin counted them as they rode under the portcullis. Her father was taking all the knights stationed at the castle with him. That fact alone was enough to make her worry.
“Did you learn why Father was summoned?” Aislin asked when the last knight was out of sight and her mother had turned to go inside.
Queen Maylin nodded. “The messenger told us. Join me in my solar and we’ll talk. It’s time for Timzy to go to bed.”
“But Mother …,” Timzy began.
“I let you stay up this late so you could say goodbye to your father,” said the queen. “You are not staying up any later.”
By the time they’d sent Timzy to his room and had reached the queen’s solar, Aislin was bursting with questions. A bright, cheery space with more windows than most rooms in the castle, the solar was the princess’s favorite. There was no one there when they arrived, no ladies-in-waiting ready to cluster around the queen or minstrels ready to entertain her. Unlike the fairy royalty, pedrasi like Aislin’s mother (and her maternal grandmother, Queen Amethyst) didn’t believe in royal formality in their everyday lives. Thankfully, this meant the solar was one place where they wouldn’t be interrupted; it was a good place to speak in private.
Mother and daughter headed toward the window seat, where they could see out over the forest. “You must tell me what the messenger said!” Aislin began.
“He told us that someone has been trying to open the northern passes and that humans had been spotted near the Magic Gate,” said the queen.
“They can’t open the gate, can they?” asked Aislin, alarmed. “I was always told that Grandmother and Grandfather used the very best spells on it.”
“It’s true that humans can’t open it, but the fact that anyone is there means something unusual is going on in the human lands.”
“Please tell me all you know about the gate again,” said Aislin.
Her mother gave her a tired smile. “When the fairies decided that it was time to leave the human lands, they came here to see my father. Once he gave them permission to make their home in the great forest, he helped your fairy grandparents, King Darinar and Queen Surinen, create the gate using enormous boulders and powerful warding spells. No one has been able to pass through that gate since. Only the eagles that fly high between the mountains are able to go to the human lands to report back to the fairy king and queen. Perhaps the eagles have seen something, but we won’t know anything more until your father comes home to tell us.”
“I hope he comes back soon,” Aislin said, turning to look out the window at the darkened forest.
“So do I,” said her mother. “More than I can say.”