After a late night at the ball, Aislin had looked forward to sleeping in. She’d told her ladies about her plans, so she wasn’t expecting to have Poppy knock and walk into her bedchamber early the next morning.
“I hate to disturb you,” the fairy said, “but the guards want to know what they should do with Twinket and Kimble.”
Aislin opened her eyes to peer at her friend. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“The captain of the guards told me that Twinket and Kimble were caught painting pictures of fairies in the great hall. On the walls. Life-sized. I’ve seen them. The pictures are actually very well done; you can tell exactly who they’re supposed to be. The fairies they painted are furious.”
“Where are Twinket and Kimble now?” Aislin asked, suddenly awake.
“They’re under guard in the great hall,” said Poppy. “The captain won’t release them until he talks to you.”
“Then I guess I’m getting up,” Aislin said, and slid out of bed.
She was about to throw on an old dress until she remembered that there were visiting humans in the palace. Looking anything but her best wasn’t a good idea now. Although it took her longer than she would have liked, she washed her face and brushed her hair before putting on a jade green dress with vines embroidered on the sleeves that Sage and Parsley had left for her. Except for the two culprits, all her mestari were waiting in her sitting room. They followed her as she hurried down the corridor.
“I had a feeling Twinket and Kimble were planning some sort of mischief,” Aislin told Poppy. “All that whispering and giggling yesterday had to mean something. I ignored it though, because I was glad they’d become friends.”
“I’ve never seen Twinket this happy before,” Poppy replied.
“I know, but she’s never done anything like this before either. I’m starting to think that Kimble may not be a good influence on her.”
Aislin heard voices as she approached the great hall; the fairies who were gathered outside the door scattered as soon as they caught sight of the princess and her mestari. She found Twinket and Kimble seated at the side of the hall with three fairy guards watching over them. They were all laughing when she walked up and grew quiet when they saw her. Two of the guards stepped away from the wall, revealing the paintings.
Aislin knew she should be angry, but she couldn’t keep from laughing when she saw what Twinket and Kimble had done. The paintings were more caricatures of the fairies than realistic likenesses, emphasizing their more obvious traits. The fairy who smiled in response to everything wore an enormous grin. The tallest fairy had bean tendrils wrapped around her as if she were an actual beanpole. The quietest fairy had her finger in front of her lips, shushing everyone. The most boisterous fairy had her head thrown back and was laughing in a way that made anyone who saw it want to laugh, too.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you, Your Highness,” said Captain Larch, “but I wanted you to see this. The paintings were already here when my men came through before dawn and we’ve had complaints all morning. Your ladies shouldn’t have painted these and they need to be punished. They are your ladies, however, and you should be the one to decide how to handle this.”
“Are they in trouble because they painted these particular pictures, which I think are actually very nice,” Aislin said, “or was it because of where they painted the pictures?”
The captain glanced at the pictures again. He chuckled when his eyes fell on the laughing fairy. His eyes were still shining when he turned back to Aislin. “It’s the location, Your Highness. This isn’t an art gallery.”
“I see,” said Aislin. “Thank you, Captain. I’ll take care of it. If I might have a moment to speak to my mestari alone?”
“Of course,” he said. Gesturing to his guards, they all left the hall.
“Whatever were you thinking?” Aislin asked Twinket and Kimble.
“That it would be fun,” Twinket told her and grinned at Kimble. “And it was!”
Aislin sighed. “You should never paint pictures where it isn’t allowed. The great hall is definitely one of those places.”
“How were we supposed to know that?” asked Kimble. “I painted the walls in the cave where I lived with my parents and everybody liked it.”
“That’s different,” said Aislin. “This palace belongs to the fairy king and queen and you can paint only if you get permission first. Your paintings are very good, but you didn’t ask first, so you have to clean them off the walls.”
“But we put a lot of work into them!” wailed Twinket.
“And we stayed up all night to do them,” Kimble added.
“Even so, you should have asked before you started painting,” Aislin replied. “Poppy, can you give them soap and scrub brushes that will take this paint off and leave the walls as good as new?”
With a flick of her fingers, Poppy made everything they needed appear on the floor in front of them.
“If she can do that, why can’t Poppy just wiggle her fingers and clean the walls?” asked Kimble.
“Because Poppy didn’t paint the walls and it’s not up to her to clean them,” Aislin told her.
“Poppy, Lin, and I will stay to make sure Twinket and Kimble don’t miss anything,” said Deela.
“Good,” Aislin replied. “I have something to take care of now. Bring them to my chambers when they’re finished.”
Twinket and Kimble were already scrubbing the wall when Aislin hurried back to her rooms. She knew what she wanted to find; she just didn’t know where to start looking. Her fairy grandparents were aware that she loved to read, so they’d given her lots of books that they thought she might enjoy. Although the books were neatly stored in niches in her walls, they weren’t in any order, so it took her a while to find the ones she wanted.
Aislin’s arms were loaded down with books when she returned to her sitting room. She stacked the books on the table, then took out a leaf and a writing stick. She was still working on her notes when her ladies knocked and walked in.
“Are you finished?” she asked Twinket and Kimble.
“Yeah, although it was a real shame,” Kimble told her. “That was some of my best work!”
“It was very good,” said Aislin. “Which is why I want you to do some painting for me. These are my rooms, and my grandparents told me long ago that I can decorate them however I please. I’d love for you to paint murals on the walls. I have some books that might give you ideas of the scenes I’d like you to include.” She patted the stack of books on her table. Small leaves stuck out of the books to mark the places she wanted them to see. “I made notes of everything I want. It’s all right here.”
“Do you want us to start now?” asked Twinket.
“Not this minute,” Aislin said. “I thought we could all go outside for some fresh air and see how the fey are settling down. Maybe we’ll get more ideas for the murals, too.”
Her mestari were just as eager as she was to see how magic was changing the world around them. This time when they crossed the crystal bridge to the shore, they stayed by the lake instead of going into the forest. Kimble was excited about the murals and kept pointing out trees and water views that she’d like to include in her paintings. Twinket spotted a jack-in-the-pulpit that she wanted to paint.
The little doll was bending down to examine the plant when the rest of the mestari noticed that Selene and her ladies were only a short distance away. “Look at that!” Poppy exclaimed, pointing at Merrilee and Joselle who were both making jerky, hopping movements as they followed the human princess. “I told you that there might be side effects!”
“Once a toad, aways a toad,” said Deela.
Kimble started grinning when she saw Laneece. “She’s wearing gloves to cover her red fingers. I bet she wears them all the time now. Maybe that will teach her not to try to steal from the fey!”
“We’ll have to tell Sage and Parsley just how well their anti-theft spell worked!” said Lin.
Aislin laughed. “I’m sure this is one trip that none of them will ever forget.”
“Come on, Twinket,” Kimble told her friend. “You’ve looked at that jack-in-the-pulpit long enough. We have places to go and more plants to see.” Aislin and her mestari had walked partway around the palace when they suddenly heard the shrill shrieking of tiny fairies in distress coming from the forest. “Stay here, Your Highness,” Deela said, setting her hand on her sword. “I’ll go see what’s happening. Lin, protect the princess.”
The pedrasi girl nodded and took her war hammer from her belt. As the orc ran off, Lin scanned the forest on one side and the water on the other, looking for anything unusual.
“I found the problem!” Deela called from among the trees. “It’s safe to come here now.”
Aislin and the other ladies ran into the forest to join her. They found the orc bent over three tiny fairies on a moss-covered boulder. Buttercup was sitting down, Dandelion was kneeling, and Cornflower was crouched with one hand on the moss. All three of them were holding fragrant honeysuckle blossoms in their free hands, and their eyes were red from crying.
“Please help us,” cried the fairy named Buttercup. “We’re stuck and our magic isn’t working.”
“The moss is covered with sticky pine sap, even though there aren’t any pine trees in this part of the forest,” Deela explained. “We’ll have to pry the fairies off.”
Aislin was confused. There didn’t seem to be anything special about the boulder—certainly nothing that would attract a flower fairy.
“Why did you land here?” Aislin asked them.
“We followed the scent of these luscious honeysuckle blossoms,” said Cornflower. “They were lying right here on this rock.”
“There aren’t any honeysuckle vines near here though,” Aislin said as she looked around. “Someone must have done this purposefully to trap fairies.”
“What a horrid thing to do!” cried Poppy.
“Can’t you turn big and get free yourself?” Kimble asked the fairies.
Buttercup shook her head as tears trickled down her cheeks. “We tried, but our magic doesn’t work at all now.”
Poppy held out her hand. The air around it began to sparkle, but when she sent her magic to the tiny fairies, the sparkles died away as soon as they got close to the moss. She pursed her lips and concentrated. When nothing happened, she said, “We can’t use my magic to help them either.”
“We’ll have to find some way to free them before whoever did this comes back,” Aislin told her mestari.
“If you take a piece of bark, you can work it under the fairies into the moss and scrape them off the rock,” said Lin. “We use pieces of slate to scrape algae off the rocks back home.”
“Good idea,” said Aislin. “Then we can take them back to the palace and Queen Surinen can find out why the fairies’ magic doesn’t work. Just be careful, we don’t want to hurt them.”
They had all started looking for pieces of bark big enough to use when they heard the high, shrill scream of more tiny fairies. “I’ll go this time,” Lin announced, and took off deeper into the forest. Aislin watched her remaining friends for a moment, glad that she’d chosen ladies who really cared about others. She doubted that any of Selene’s ladies-in-waiting would have even tried to help the fairies.
They were still trying to free the original fairies when Lin came rushing back. “I found more fairies just like these,” the pedrasi girl told them. “Twinket, Kimble, come with me.”
The three of them ran off, leaving Deela and Poppy with Aislin. When they heard more screaming start in another direction, Poppy said, “I’ll go,” and hurried away, taking a piece of bark with her.
Only Deela and Aislin were left to take care of the first fairies they’d found. They were scraping away at the moss when even more fairies started screaming down by the lake. Deela looked up, then back at the princess. “I don’t want to leave you alone,” she said. “Maybe you should come with me.”
“Don’t abandon us!” Cornflower shouted at Aislin, and all three tiny fairies burst into tears again.
“Go!” Aislin told Deela. “I’ll be fine here. I almost have Dandelion free.”
“If you’re sure …” said the orc girl.
Aislin nodded. “We can’t leave the fairies alone and frightened.”
“Call me if you need me and I’ll come running,” Deela told her.
“I will,” Aislin said, and went back to work, determined to free the fairies by herself.
Aislin was trying so hard to free the fairies without hurting them that she didn’t hear the person who crept up behind her. And then he was opening a small green vial under her nose, letting gray mist curl out. The princess realized what was happening just before she and the three tiny fairies collapsed, senseless.
Aislin dreamed that she was floating through the forest, but the ride was bumpy and not very comfortable. Her arm was warm, which she thought was odd. She came to her senses enough to figure out that the fairy seamstresses had done what she’d asked and already started sewing the stones into her dresses. They had put a diamond in the sleeve, and it had worked just as she’d hoped—she was already drawing power from it.
Aislin kept her eyes closed even as she felt the blackness that had taken over her mind fade away and her body grow stronger. She felt the same way she had upon waking from the sleeping mist that the fairy Aghamonda had used on her and knew that it would take a few minutes before she felt normal again.
Someone was carrying her through the forest, pausing now and then as if to listen. She could hear her abductor’s heart pounding in his chest right behind her ear. His breath rasped as he ran. When he stopped again, she heard the sounds of a restless horse snapping a twig with its hooves and snorting as her abductor approached it.
Not knowing who was carrying her off, Aislin was reluctant to open her eyes. Her abductor had to be strong, but then a lot of fey were much stronger than they looked. She didn’t think it was the mysterious female who was spreading rumors about her, but what if it was? Who else could be doing this and why? If her abductor wanted to hurt her, wouldn’t it have happened already?
Aislin knew too much about the many kinds of fey to be naive about what they were capable of doing. Certain fey were even more bloodthirsty than the wildest of beasts. If the person who was spreading rumors had turned even one of them against Aislin, the princess would have a real fight on her hands.
Her abductor was laying her across the horse’s back when Aislin finally slitted her eyes open. It was Rory, which was a relief in a way. He was an ordinary human and not one of the nastier kinds of fey. And the fact that it was Rory didn’t surprise her at all once she thought about it—not after the way he had acted the night before.
Aislin didn’t want to let him know that she was awake until she was certain that no one else was working with him, so she let her head flop against his shoulder and looked around with her eyes barely open. Finally, seeing that he was alone, she twisted in his arms and elbowed him in the nose.
“Ow!” Rory shouted and dropped her.
Aislin was only partly on the horse’s back, so it was easy to slide to the ground. Turning around, she stomped on Rory’s instep.
“Ow!” he shouted again and lurched backward, only to trip over a stump and fall to the ground. Blood flowed between the fingers he held to his nose and he lay on the ground, looking up at her accusingly.
“You were kidnapping me?” she said, glaring at him.
“You didn’t leave me any choice,” said Rory. “My father will be so happy if I marry you, he won’t even think about having another son. He’s very impressed with you now that he knows who you are and what you’re capable of doing.”
Aislin was so mad she was shaking. “I don’t care what you or your father thinks. I’m never going to marry you.”
“Princess Aislin!” Deela shouted from back the way they’d come.
“Now see what you’ve done,” griped Rory. “We could have gotten away if you hadn’t punched me. I thought you were still asleep.”
Aislin shook her head. “I didn’t punch you; I used my elbow.”
She called out to Deela. “I’m over here!”
Rory started to get up, but Aislin set her foot on his chest and pushed him down. When he tried to shove her off, she pressed until he grunted and gave in. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just stay put!” she told him.
She was still standing like that when Poppy flew up, tiny and shaken. The fairy landed beside her and became big again only to glance from the princess to Rory. “I should have known Rory was behind this. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Aislin. “I think this whole thing wasn’t about the fairies. It was just Rory’s way of getting me alone so he could kidnap me.”
“I was only—” Rory began.
“Don’t say another word,” Aislin told him. “You’ll get your chance to explain yourself to my grandparents.”
Rory’s face turned pale under the blood still seeping from his nose.
Deela and Lin ran up, carrying the two little mestari. The moment Lin stopped, Twinket jumped out of her arms and darted over to hug Aislin’s leg.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone!” Deela exclaimed.
“It’s not your fault,” said Aislin. “I told you to go. We’re taking Prince Rory back to the palace. He’s going to talk to King Darinar and Queen Surinen, whether he wants to or not.”