But there always came a point when she had to put on her smock and cap and blow out her candle. Then she huddled under her blankets and looked out her window at the stars, trying to convince herself that it was safe to close her eyes, that she would wake up in the morning.
She wasn’t going to sleep for a hundred years.
The enchantment was gone.
The curse was broken.
But most nights Aurora only fell asleep to the pink of dawn blushing on the horizon. Most days she woke up exhausted. Some days she could barely get up.
Yet when the next night came, the fear struck her anew. Falling asleep felt like falling down a deep well, one that she might never claw her way out of.
After tossing and turning for what felt like ages that evening, she got out of bed. Throwing on a heavy gold brocade robe over her smock, she padded through the silent, sleeping household to a fountain on the edge of the royal gardens.
Phillip looked up from where he was sitting, whittling a little flute in the moonlight. “Your Majesty,” he said. “I was hoping you’d come.”
The first time she’d stumbled on him during one of her evening walks, he’d told her that in Ulstead, court parties lasted all night, and he’d grown used to keeping late hours. That time, they’d skipped rocks on an ornamental pond.
“It’s the treaty keeping me up,” she told him with a sigh, although it wasn’t the whole truth. “I’m afraid that the humans and the faeries will never agree to anything. And if I force them, then what’s the use?”
“In Ulstead, the stories of faeries are even worse than those told here, and there are no Fair Folk to contradict them. The kinder tales are no longer told. The only place to even find them is in the Ulsteadian section of your royal library. The people of Perceforest are fortunate, even if they haven’t quite realized it yet.”
Aurora was surprised. “Did you believe those stories?”
Phillip glanced toward the woods. “Until I came here, I had stopped believing in faeries at all.” Then he turned back to her with a smile. “Everything new is hard. But you have a way of making people listen. You’ll convince them.”
She shook her head at his kind words, but they made her feel better. “I hope so. And since I am so convincing, maybe I can convince you not to cheat at a game of moonlight loggets.”
“It’s impossible to cheat at throwing sticks!” he exclaimed, although he was already looking around for the best fallen branch to grab.
“We shall see,” she promised, snatching the stick he’d been eyeing.
That led to a mad laughing scramble. Phillip tried to yank the stick out of Aurora’s hands. Aurora tugged back. But then the stick broke and she landed on the ground.
Phillip looked horrified. “Your pardon,” he said, reaching down a hand. “My behavior was most ungentlemanly.”
Standing, Aurora dusted off her brocade robe. She felt foolish.
She wanted to tease him. She wanted him to laugh again. She wanted to remind him that they were friends, and friends were allowed to be silly with each other, even if one of them was a queen and the other a prince.
But looking into his eyes, she couldn’t find the right words.
“Let me walk you back to the palace,” he said, offering her his arm and a slightly uncertain smile. “And as a sign of my contrition, I will attempt not to steer you into a ditch.”
“Perhaps I should be the one to steer,” Aurora said lightly.
“Without a doubt,” Phillip returned.
Too early, the curtains were parted and sunlight streamed in. Aurora groaned and tried to bury her head beneath her pillows.
Her chambermaid, Marjory, set down a tray on the end of the bed. Tea, bread and butter, and quince jam.
“Though it’s very improper, your advisor insisted I tell you he would like an audience as soon as you were up,” the girl said, turning to shake out a dress of celery green.
“What do you suppose he wants?” Aurora asked, pushing herself into a sitting position. She took the warm cup and brought it to her lips. Despite having lived in the castle for months, she refused to ignore her servants as the other nobles told her was proper. Her father had been a servant in the castle before he was king, and for all his faults, Aurora felt his rise ought to have proven that no one should be overlooked. “Sit with me. Eat some bread and jam.”
Marjory sat readily, but she didn’t appear to be her usual cheerful self. She was a redhead with very pale freckled skin that grew flushed and blotchy when something upset her, as it apparently had. “Some of the townsfolk have been waiting to see you. Lord Ortolan tried to send them away, but they refuse to go.”
“So you think that’s what he wants to discuss?” Aurora buttered two slices of the bread and pushed one toward Marjory.
The girl took a big bite. “Well, Nanny Stoat says that Lord Ortolan doesn’t want you to talk to any of your people but those who are in his pocket. Forgive me for repeating this, but she says he doesn’t want you to have any ideas that he didn’t give you.”
“Nanny Stoat?” Aurora asked.
“Everyone in the village listens to her,” Marjory said. “If there’s a problem, people say, ‘Take it to Nanny Stoat,’ because she’ll figure out how to make it right.”
“So you think Lord Ortolan doesn’t plan to tell me about the townsfolk?” Aurora asked. “And that he will continue to try to send them away?”
Marjory nodded, although she looked guilty as she did so.
Aurora downed the rest of her tea and got out of bed. She went to her dressing table and started brushing out her hair roughly. “I’d better get down there immediately if I want to speak with them. Tell me anything else you’ve heard—rumors, anything!”
“Wait!” said Marjory, jumping off the bed and forcibly taking the brush from Aurora’s hand. “I’ll braid up your hair as swiftly as I can if you stop doing that to it.”
“Do you know what they want?” Aurora asked, sitting and scowling at herself in the mirror.
The girl began to detangle her hair, separating it down the middle with a clean part. “I heard there was a missing boy. A servant here in the castle. He was one of the grooms, so I didn’t know him particularly.”
Aurora turned in her chair. “Missing? What do you mean?”
“He walked home to see his mother,” Marjory said, valiantly holding on to the sections of hair she’d been braiding, “but he never got there, and no one has seen him since.”
A few minutes later, Aurora ran down the stairs in silken slippers and the green gown.
Lord Ortolan tried to interrupt her as she marched toward the palace doors. “Your Majesty, I am so glad you’re up. If I could command your attention for a moment, there’s a matter of some magical flora along the border—”
“I would like to speak with the family of the missing boy,” she said.
His surprise was evident. “But how did you know?”
“That’s not important,” she said as pleasantly as she could, “since it saves you having to explain the matter to me, which I don’t doubt you were just about to do.”
“Certainly,” he said smoothly. “But we have more immediate important matters to discuss. The business of the boy can wait.”
“No,” Aurora said. “I don’t think it can.”
Lord Ortolan tutted and stalled, but since he couldn’t contradict her command, he eventually called for a footman to show the boy’s family into the solar, a more intimate space than the cavernous great hall.