Flying back toward the castle, he thought of what it would be to lose her. He recalled his last sight of Maleficent, caught in the iron web of netting, her horns pulling against it, her eyes wide and bright with fury.
He would save her. He must save her.
For the first time, he would have traded away his raven-ness forever to be a man who could speak. Who could fight. Who could do something more than circle in the sky, searching for the gleam of a gold crown and hoping that somehow Aurora would be able to understand him.
Chapter 22
Aurora hurried after Count Alain as he led her toward the palace, changing directions abruptly halfway there. When he’d told her that one of his people had overheard Simon’s family arguing with a group of faeries, she’d followed him without question.
“You ought to have told me before the dancing began,” Aurora said. “Who knows what’s happened without us intervening!”
He accepted her criticism without comment. And then there was nothing to say, because she saw two groups shouting at each other. Humans stood face to face with Fair Folk, both groups appearing to be frothingly angry.
“All we want is our child back!” Simon’s father yelled into the face of a tree warrior. The faerie’s features were seemingly carved out of bark, with moss hanging off the side of his head like oddly cut hair.
“We’ve told you a score of times, we don’t have your pup,” piped up a mushroom faerie.
“We’d prefer not to fight,” Simon’s father said, “but we will if we must. We know about your weakness when cut with cold iron.”
There came a hiss from the nearby faeries at this threat.
“We know about your weakness when enchanted,” said a pixie with green wings and sharp teeth.
Never had Aurora been so glad that she’d had the foresight to forbid weapons from the festival.
“No one wants violence of any kind,” said Count Alain, to Aurora’s surprise. The crowd turned to see him and, noticing their queen standing to his side, bowed hastily.
“You are mistaken. The faeries do not have your boy,” Aurora told Simon’s family. “My own soldiers have sworn to me there’s no sign that faeries took him, but rather that it was the work of brigands.”
Simon’s father looked surprised, but he didn’t seem ready to believe her words.
“We told you!” said a hedgehog faerie, wrinkling his nose. “What do we want with a poxy human boy?”
That seemed about to set off Simon’s father again when Nanny Stoat arrived. She moved to stand next to Aurora.
“You heard the queen,” she said, making a shooing motion. “Time to disperse.”
“But one of the soldiers told me it was them,” Simon’s father said. “He said that those faeries there were the ones who carried off my child.”
“Who told you that?” Aurora asked.
Simon’s father looked around the festival desperately but then seemed confused. “I don’t know. He was here a moment ago.”
“It’s not true,” Aurora said.
Simon’s father’s expression turned mulish. “But he said—”
“Is that a way to talk to your sovereign ruler?” Nanny Stoat asked him, emphasizing her point by poking him in the leg with the end of the walking stick she held.
He shook his head, looking more repentant after her reprimand than he had following anything Aurora said.
Gathering himself up, he raised his eyes to Aurora’s. “You will tell me if you hear more news of him, won’t you? And you won’t stop looking?”
“I won’t stop looking,” Aurora said, although from what her castellan had told her, she wasn’t sure that anything more they heard would be at all good.
After he left, she turned to Nanny Stoat. “Thank you,” she said. “Without your support, I am not sure they would have believed me half as readily.” She looked around. “I hope this festival wasn’t foolish.”
“No,” Nanny Stoat told her. “We ought to be like this, all together. Even if we squabble. And it does the people good to see their queen having fun.”
Aurora smiled at that. “I am not sure what my court makes of me, let alone my people.”
“They think you’re young and a little foolish,” she replied. “And entirely too comfortable with the common folk. Not to mention the Fair Folk.”
Aurora wrinkled her nose. “And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, either.”
The old woman laughed.
“I don’t know how to make any of them listen to me the way they listen to you,” Aurora said with a sigh.
“You will,” said Nanny Stoat. “But changing their minds is something else. You might see the beauty in magic, while some people will only ever see the power in it.”
With that, Nanny Stoat walked off, leaning on her walking stick for support. The crowd was still breaking up. Count Alain remained by Aurora’s side.
“Thank you for bringing me here and for knowing that I’d want to come,” she told him. “I didn’t think you understood.”
“Because of the necklace?” he asked her.
She thought of the arrow he’d shot into the Moors and the rage on his face. “For one thing.”
He took her hand. “My queen, I have lived my whole life thinking of the faeries as monsters. To see them differently isn’t easy for me, but you have made me want to try. I should have considered my gift to you more carefully, but as it is the metal mined in my lands, I have a special affinity for it.”
“I am glad you’re trying,” Aurora said, smiling up at Count Alain. She recalled how she’d thought that if she could convince him to see the benefits of allying with the Fair Folk, then it would be possible to convince the rest of her kingdom. She’d given up on that after the gift of the necklace, but it seemed she’d succeeded after all. She ought to be pleased.
But it was impossible for her to feel much of anything when she still needed to make things right with Phillip.
She’d spotted him during her dance with Alain. It had been all she could do not to rush from the dance to chase him down and explain things. She knew she shouldn’t have spoken so harshly to him after the banquet in the Moors. She owed him an apology.
But first she had to find him.
When she returned to the dancing area, a branle was being performed, the participants moving back and forth in a wide circle, up onto their toes and down again. Phillip was neither among the dancers nor among those watching. Her godmother was nowhere to be seen, either, but there was some time before the signing ceremony.
With a sinking heart, Aurora danced the gavotte, the saltarello, and several caroles. Her spirits lowered with each one, although a tree man spun her with such grace that she never lost her footing. And yet, she could see that her plan was working. She wasn’t the only human partnered with a faerie. Nor were all the dancers noble. For her last set, she was partnered with a sturdy farmer who clearly couldn’t believe his luck and guided her through the steps with aplomb.
When it was done, she excused herself from the floor. Phillip hadn’t returned. She meant to look for him in another area of the festival, but before she could, Lady Fiora brought her a cup of cider. Immediately, she began discussing the nobles who had come, and telling Aurora how beautiful she had looked on the floor.
“I shouldn’t say this, but my brother stared so while you danced,” Lady Fiora said with a giggle. “And you are beautifully flushed. Your eyes are positively sparkling.”