Maleficent gave him a fierce look. “You mean for bringing Aurora straight into danger?”
Aurora left them bickering and knelt beside Phillip. “If you move onto your side,” she said, “it will elevate the wound and help slow the bleeding.”
As he turned, she pillowed his head onto her lap. He looked up at her and gave her a lazy smile. She stroked his hair back from his brow, her heart aching.
“I do love you,” she told him. “I was afraid to tell you that. I was afraid to admit it to myself. But I do.”
Afraid the way she was frightened to fall asleep at night, because it felt like giving in to something she couldn’t control.
Or the way humans were frightened of faeries. Love was as unpredictable and powerful as any magic. But maybe it was also as marvelous.
His smile grew. “Now I know I must be delirious, since the only time you say things like that is in my dreams.”
In the distance, there was the sound of horns.
Chapter 32
Smiling John arrived soon after, one of his scouts having discovered Aurora and Alain’s camp and tracked them from there. He found an exhausted group resting beneath a newly grown tree, its limbs shimmering with magic and some of its roots formed into a mossy, bark-covered cage that held an enormous scuttling black centipede. On the other side, the roots seemed to have grown over Lord Ortolan’s ankles, holding him in place.
“My queen,” Smiling John said, bowing stiffly, “your leaving your camp after dark had us in quite a panic. We came as soon as we got a signal from the raven, but—” He looked around and swallowed the rest of the lecture he had clearly been planning on giving. “I see you have everything well in hand.”
Maleficent eyed them with suspicion. “How do you come to be looking for her?”
“Queen Aurora ordered us to follow behind her with a large battalion and to await a summons from the bird. She said she thought she was going into a trap, but she couldn’t be certain who had set it. She suspected the count but believed that the only way to prove it was to go along with the scheme and see who the traitors were and what they were planning. I disagreed, as I thought it was too great a risk. But in the end, it seems she was correct.”
Maleficent eyed Aurora with an obvious desire to scold her. “So you knew you were going into danger—”
“I knew you were in danger,” Aurora reminded her.
Smiling John went on. “A rider came to tell us that Lady Fiora turned in packets of letters between her brother and Lord Ortolan. We were very worried for you, Your Majesty.”
Aurora recalled Lady Fiora trying to prevent her from traveling with Count Alain. At the time, she had just thought Lady Fiora didn’t want her to leave the party, not that she was trying to save her from her brother’s schemes. “I would not have thought it of her,” she remarked softly to herself.
Smiling John’s people bustled about, trying to make Phillip more comfortable and telling him how fortunate he was that the wound hadn’t been deeper or in a different spot.
Phillip, for his part, was trying to prevent Diaval from being the one to hold Simon.
“Give me the mouse,” Phillip called, “right now. Aurora, make a royal proclamation that the mouse is for me to hold until your godmother turns him back.”
“You don’t trust me not to eat him?” Diaval asked with a raised brow, letting the rodent run up one arm and onto the other, his gaze following the movement with a disturbing fixedness.
“I do not,” Prince Phillip said.
“You are the one who ate a mouse heart, I should remind you,” said Diaval, bringing his head eye level with a terrified Simon, who stopped running. “He did, you know. Gobbled it right up.”
“It was one time,” Phillip protested.
Maleficent allowed the royal guard to take Lord Ortolan from her tree prison into the cart. With a wave of her hand and a whorl of glittering golden magic, both he and the cage of roots that held Count Alain the centipede were loosed from the tree. The guards walked around the cage in confusion as to how to move it without getting close to the thing inside.
“Well, my queen, since we don’t have your carriage, may we offer up our humble carts?” asked Smiling John. “I wish we had something more fitting, but we were moving too quickly to bring more.”
“Oh, no,” said Maleficent. “I will return them to the castle.”
She gestured toward Diaval, and gold sparked at her fingertips.
He threw up his hands as though he could block the magic. “Wait, what exactly are you planning on turning me into this time? You ought to ask my permission for these things. It had better not be a dog!”
“I doubt you’ll mislike this so very much.” She waved her hand, and he grew longer and larger until a black horse stood in his place. From the sides of his back, enormous shimmering raven wings unfurled. And from his mane, a mouse peeped out.
The guards sucked in their breath, perhaps thinking of the dragon she’d once turned him into, perhaps just awed by such magic. Maleficent smiled her widest and most sinister smile.
“You should do something about Simon first,” Phillip said. “I don’t think he ought to be flying. Perhaps he can return with the guard.”
“Very well. Into a boy.” Maleficent gestured with a negligent wave of her hand, and in a wash of shimmering gold, Simon was human again.
He fell off the horse’s back, stumbling as he moved into a standing position. The poor boy was clearly getting used to not being on all fours. He looked around, then saw Aurora and bowed hastily.
“The missing lad!” Smiling John said. “So he was under a faerie curse.”
With so much attention on him, Simon sputtered a little. “No, sir,” he said. “Or at least, I was, but only for this past little while. The elf lady and Prince Phillip freed me from a cell where I’ve been locked for days and days. She thought I’d be safer traveling in a pocket and turned me into a mouse, which I’m sorry to say I didn’t like above half.” He paused with a look at Maleficent. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, though, for you’ve done me nothing but a good turn.”
Smiling John’s gaze went to the cage and the centipede inside, then to Maleficent. “I don’t suppose that you’ll turn him back.”
“Of course she will,” Aurora said over whatever Maleficent was about to say. “Centipedes can’t stand trial.”
“Can’t they?” Maleficent asked with a mischievous quirk of her mouth. “Are you sure?”
Aurora gave her a stern look.
“As soon as we’re back in the palace, then?” Maleficent said.
Aurora’s expression did not falter.
“Very well!” With an exasperated wave of her hand, the centipede grew larger and larger until its arms and legs broke through the cage and it returned to the shape of Count Alain. He looked ridiculous.
“John,” Alain shouted, trying to shuck off the remains of the cage. It was remarkably hard to remove from his head. “You can’t believe all this nonsense! She put a curse on me. You have to see that she’s the one you should be putting in chains!”
Smiling John shook his head and spoke to Maleficent. “You may have had the right of it. If you’d left him as he was, we wouldn’t have to hear his mouth all the way back to the palace.”