Then he let the arrow fly.
One of the large vine-covered trees moved. It towered twenty feet in the air, looming over Count Alain. It had enormous mossy horns of bark and a face like a skull made of wood. A tree sentry, a guardian of the Moors.
The sentry backhanded Count Alain off his horse, sending him flying into one of the shallow pools.
The humans behind Aurora screamed.
The tree man lifted Count Alain into the air. Count Alain’s legs kicked wildly.
“No!” Aurora shouted, sliding off her horse and running toward them. She was the queen of the Moors as much as she was the queen of Perceforest. Maleficent had put the crown on her head, and the faeries had to listen to her commands as surely as her human subjects did. “Let him go!”
Too late, she realized her mistake.
The sentry heard her, and its fingers opened immediately, letting Count Alain fall.
Now Aurora was screaming.
Wings beating at the air and mouth curved in a bright, malicious smile, Maleficent caught Count Alain and held him high above the hunting party.
She looked as terrifying as any legend and twice as beautiful.
Diaval, in raven form, circled above her head. He let out a caw.
“Is this yours?” Maleficent asked Aurora. “You seem to have misplaced it.”
“Put me down!” Count Alain shouted, ignoring how she’d saved him from a nasty fall.
“Please,” Lady Fiora said, taking Aurora’s arm, “my brother was only protecting me.”
“That creature attacked first,” Lord Ortolan protested.
“The wallerbog?” Prince Phillip asked incredulously.
Lord Ortolan went on. “You saw it. My queen, you must order your—your godmother to put him down.”
“Human,” Maleficent said to Count Alain, her fangs flashing as she spoke, “you shot an arrow in the Moors. There was a time I would have crushed your skull for such an offense. I would have put a curse on you so that if you ever shot another, it would come back and strike you through the heart.”
Aurora hated it when her godmother talked about curses. But Alain seemed to realize finally that he was in danger.
“Your pardon, my queen,” he said, gritting his teeth. “And your pardon, too, winged lady. Fiora is my only sister, and I am overly protective of her.”
“Put him down,” Aurora said. “Please.”
Maleficent swooped low, making the hunting party cry out in surprise. Then she dropped Count Alain, sending him tumbling a short distance into the ferns and vines of the wood. He looked wet, miserable, and furious.
Aurora had thought it would be a simple thing to make peace between the humans and the faeries. She thought it was only a matter of making them see that they were wrong about each other. But thinking of Simon’s family and seeing the look on Count Alain’s face, she was no longer sure that the peace her treaty promised was possible.
Nor was she certain anyone wanted it.
“Go back to the castle,” Aurora told the hunting party.
“Surely you don’t mean to remain in the woods alone,” said Lord Ortolan.
She looked up at the winged figure hovering above them. “No, not alone.”
Chapter 9
Aurora was nearly her height, Maleficent noted as they made their way through the Moors. She remembered the tiny flaxen-haired child who had grabbed hold of both of her horns and refused to let go.
The willful girl who had giggled at her scowls.
Who had transmuted her anger into love.
But Aurora was not smiling now.
“Tell me about this wall of flowers,” she said, hands on her hips. “Spiky flowers. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
Maleficent gestured airily. “Oh, my dear, it was too big to be a secret to keep for long. I thought of it as a gift—one I could always magic away if you didn’t like it.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Aurora said.
“Only consider,” said Maleficent, “your borders are protected with no expense to your treasury. No knights need to patrol. No neighboring kingdom can engage in raids. Even brigands and robbers will quail when they realize there is no great distance they can run without trying to pass through a sinister, yet beautiful, hedge.”
Aurora did not appear mollified. “You’re trying to protect the kingdom the way you protected the Moors,” she said. “You put the crown on my head. You have to talk to me before you do things like this. You may have been the protector of the Moors, but you made me the queen of them, remember?”
“I protected the Moors quite well.”
Aurora looked exasperated but changed tack. “What about the storyteller in the market? Is it true you turned him into a cat?”
“Well, it’s not not true,” Maleficent said, a mischievous grin growing despite her best attempts to suppress it. “And just think of the stories he will have to tell now! Why, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that I’ve done him a favor.”
“Turn him back,” Aurora told her.
“Just as soon as I can find him,” Maleficent promised, gesturing to the expanse of moorlands, the foggy pools and hollow trees in which a hundred cats could hide. “I am sure he’s around here somewhere.”
“And the missing groom?” Aurora asked.
Maleficent shrugged. “Really, I can’t be to blame for everything. You will have to look elsewhere for the boy. And I hope that after today you see that the humans aren’t going to come to love the Moors. They’re not like you.”
“They didn’t even have a chance to see—” Aurora began.
Maleficent snorted. “As though it would have helped.”
Aurora gave her a wry smile. “Well, since you will be looking for the cat anyway, you can keep an eye out for the boy, too. Maybe that will help.”
Maleficent was surprised—and insulted. “I told you we’re not to blame. Had one of the Fair Folk stolen him away, I would have heard of it,” Maleficent told her. “I hope the humans haven’t managed to make you distrustful of us.”
“Of course not,” Aurora said, hopping along a path of stones half sunk in the water with the ease that came from long practice. “But if you found him, it would do a lot to convince the people of Perceforest that we are all on the same side. What happened today showed the lack of understanding between humans and the faeries. Count Alain thought his sister was being insulted, and etiquette demanded he do something about it.”
Maleficent gave her a long look.
“He doesn’t see the wallerbogs as we do, as gentle and mischievous beings,” Aurora admitted. “But I couldn’t help pitying him a little, first to be knocked around by one of the sentinels and then to be saved by you. You had only to fail to intervene and he might have fallen to his death.”
“When you put it that way, I do see I made an error,” Maleficent drawled.
That made Aurora laugh, as though the words were said in jest. Maleficent had only intervened because she hadn’t wanted the tree warrior to be blamed for a human death. Personally, she wouldn’t have minded if he had fallen.
The more Maleficent thought about it, the more she was convinced that Aurora had learned all the wrong lessons from her.
Because Aurora had been wrong about Maleficent. She wasn’t a kindly faerie, no matter how many times Aurora insisted that she was. And at least in the beginning, she’d seen Aurora only as the means through which she would exact her revenge on King Stefan.