• The day the queen summoned her and began the wedding preparations she returned to her room with Lady Avril as animate as a doll. Her mind was trembling, dropping every thought that it touched. Even the normally effervescent Avril was subdued as she removed the princess’s doublet and skirts, loosened the stay strings then exchanged her chemise for a nightrail.

    “It will be a very grand affair,” Avril said, the bright note in her voice wavering. She patted the down-turned covers and turned to Aislynn, a smile as real as her chipper statement stretching her face.

    “I do not wish to speak of it.”

    The lady bowed her head silently and helped her into bed. “Sleep well, my lady. Tomorrow is a new day; ‘twill be a better one, I’m sure.” She took the oil lamp with her across the chamber, leaving Aislynn in darkness. Shadows flickered within her canopied bed until Avril lowered the wick and the tiny fire went out.

    Aislynn lay in darkness, her mind filled with menus and invitations—both public and private—and colors and flowers. They swarmed through her head like the bees whose hive one summer was crushed in the main gardens; the insects had gushed from the ruined mess and terrorized the palace denizens, inciting chaos and many a twisted ankle and overturned chair. The thoughts overwhelmed her mind until her brain felt like nothing more than an oozing sore filled with little black stingers.

    She waited long after she thought Avril must be asleep.

    She rolled her blankets down from her throat and past her waist, sat and rolled until they were in a lump over her ankles. She pulled them out and held her knees, hugging her thighs close. Her knees cuddled her face, holding her cheeks in a firm grip. Avril made not a sound.

    Eventually, Aislynn moved, twisting and putting her feet on the floor. She left Sookie cuddled on the corner of her bed. She hooked a shawl on a finger as she passed her dressing table’s chair. Carefully, she lifted the latch on her door and pulled the wooden barrier open.

    Every ten paces or so a sconce was lit along the corridor. Eight steps away from her door, Aislynn tugged her shawl to her shoulders. She drifted through the corridors in silent steps, the sole of her right foot half on the carpet, half on the marble or wood or limestone that was the corridor’s actual flooring. She climbed three staircases, one of them hardly worthy of the title being only four steps to another wing of the eclectic castle.

    She entered the drawing room with its mirror-opposite unicorn tapestries and antique furniture and closed the door behind her. She knew the room’s decoration by heart. The skirt of her nightrail caught momentarily on the low table’s corner as she passed, but it released the fine linen without hesitation. She stopped between the two chairs and pushed the thickly embroidered curtains aside to lay her hand flat against the wall, palm flat. Her fingers found the tiny crease that was the door in the wooden paneling behind the tapestries and she pushed.

    The slender door squawked as it opened. She left it open and stepped into the tower’s dark stairwell. As per habit, she turned to ascend the three steps to the highest room. A glimmer of light farther down distracted her. Farther down, she and Brendan had discovered a mostly dilapidated room with ruined couches and a broken table, a room with a great loom with a partially finished tapestry of a garden scene with a square pond, a frog, and lilies among the pads floating on the water. But above that, the door between the loom and bedchamber was locked.

    She had watched Brendan try time after time to pick the ancient lock, to no avail. Eventually, they had quit trying and ignored the locked door. Aislynn pondered the glimmer of light.

    * * *
    The woman sat on her bench padded with a cushion the color of moss. Her fingers twitched and golden thread sped through. It whirred and twirled around the great wheel. The pile of gold and wool in her lap never diminished. She twisted it in her fingers until the wheel pulled it out as a slender thread.

    Gold like the hair on her child’s head. It slipped through her fingers, chafing the skin. She watched it wind around the dark wheel, the color of her child’s eyes. Countless days, months, years she had sat on the cushion, spinning. She tried to remember her child’s face, his father’s face, but save the colors of thread and wheel, she could not. She saw the face of that horrible little faerie man. Gray hair sticking out in all directions as though he had never pushed a comb through it and a beard that reached his knees. She’d made her devil’s bargain with him. Anything for the security of husband and supper. Children died every year of diseases medics knew how to cure; her firstborn would be such a child. At least she knew.

    But he was such a beautiful baby. He had his father’s gentle smile; his golden hair, too. His deep brown eyes were the only feature he shared with his mother. As she shared them with hers. Such a perfect baby. She could not give such a perfect child to such a horrible little man.

    So she spun. Such was the price of cheating a faerie, especially one not governed by faerie law. She spun the gold and wool on her lap until it was gone; it went through the wheel and disappeared. None gathered to be used. She did not know where the thread went, only that the spindle remained sharp as it spun, waiting to collect the thread-of-gold her fingers pinched together.

    The wheel whirred, her eyes watched the ever half-burned candle’s light flicker over the metal in the thread. She thought of nothing as her life’s scenes played through her memory. Her fingers pinched and twisted. She shifted on her little bench and the door opened.

    She looked up, expecting the little man with the gray beard and the high, scratchy voice. She must have made enough gold. She was free to go. She would never know that perfect child, but he would never know this cruel, cruel creature.

    A woman, younger than her by some few years, stood in the doorway. She wore a fine white nightrail and had a silk shawl with painted roses folded over her chest. Her eyes were wide and green and her hair was light, golden curls that tried to escape the braid hanging over her right shoulder. Her feet were bare.

    The thread slipped through her fingers, but she didn’t look at it.

    * * *
    Aislynn was astonished to find a woman behind the door. The tower had been deserted, forgotten. Neither she nor Brendan had ever seen evidence of another person in any of the other rooms. She was dressed as though it were a winter day, in a gown of brown brocade over a striped doublet with an old-fashioned open collar, the ruff attached. She could see one foot peeking from beneath her brown skirt, three bows along the center. In her hands was … well, Aislynn didn’t know what she was doing with her hands.

    There was a great contraption in the center of the room, a wheel with spires coming from it. It whirred as it spun around and around, and there was a string. “I didn’t think anyone else knew about this tower. What are you doing?”

    The woman’s mouth moved, but as though she could not remember the feel and taste of words in her mouth, for a moment nothing came out. Then, in a low voice she said, “Spinning.”

    Aislynn moved closer. It wasn’t a whirr, she decided, it was a hum. The contraption was singing as it worked. “What’s it for?”

    “I don’t know. I spin until I am done.”

    Aislynn took her gaze from the fantastical contraption and peered at the woman. Not as old as her mother, but older than herself. She had never seen the woman before. Her nose was just a little too long, her eyes a little too small for her to be considered a beauty, and the queen demanded beauty even in the nobles who befriended her.

    “I don’t understand.”

    The strange woman moved her head from side to side. Her waist-length hair slid about, free from any restraining plait or ribbon. “I changed my mind. I was wrong.” Her fingers worked the thread coming from them, pinching and twisting. “Lot kept him. That evil little man took me when I wouldn’t let him have him.”

    The woman was speaking in tangles. Aislynn heard the words, understood their individual meanings, but could not comprehend what she was saying. “What evil little man?”

    “That evil little half-faerie. They meddle in our lives, offering us the chance for wondrous things, then curse us to the bowels of hell when we realize the price was too high. But I don’t care. He didn’t get him.”

    Aislynn wanted to ask who the half-fairy didn’t get, but she cautioned herself. A tear had fallen down the woman’s flat cheek. “No one but you can get what you want. You have to take it for yourself, by yourself, earn it for yourself. When someone gives it to you there is always a price and it is always too high. You feel obligated or excited or relieved when it is given to you, but they always come back. They always want their price, and it seems so fair when the deal is struck, so fair.” She pulled the string. “But when they come to collect, you realize it for the trap that it is. It is never fair. Never! They demand a piece of your soul for the glittering mortal scraps they offered.”

    Aislynn stared at the woman. She was bent forward, still tugging at her golden string. Her words slid beneath Aislynn’s skin and rubbed tremors through her body. She didn’t want to hear them, did not want to hear the clean, crystal ring of truth. Scenes of bright colors and a silent voice permeated her memory. Glittering jewels and thrones weighed against Brendan’s face, soft in the shadows, announcing she was a princess truly.

    Clarity, like the gleaming point of the needles her mother never let her touch returned to Aislynn like a flood. The queen was like the evil faerie-man, always giving her gifts, always demanding a heavy toll. She thought of her gala gown, remembering her disillusioned revelations once it encased her body; it had stolen her will, her self, and left her wandering through mist and carried away by cold, hard hands.

    “No!”

    Aislynn flung herself backward, toward the door, but her hand caught on something hard. The skin clung and tore, freeing ruby-colored blood along her left wrist. She looked down at her wrist, at the blood dripping down to her elbow, into her hair and falling to splatter her hem. Her eyes followed its path, but she had not the strength to raise them once more. The small room began to take on new dimensions, closer dimensions. Her heart beat faster.

    “I can’t—breathe—”

    Colors blended, forming splashed blurs across her vision like a child’s watercolor. They spun and reformed into three colors battling for supremacy—red, gold, white. Then there was nothing.

    * * *
    The dark-haired faerie flung the heavy wooden door open. The woman on the stool had stopped spinning, was staring at the girl on the floor. The princess’s golden braid was flung out, blood darkening the end, beginning to harden. The woman looked up. Her brown eyes grew wide and she tripped over the bench beneath her in her haste to scurry away. Wings their full, awesome size, there was little doubt that the woman recognized her for what she was.

    “I didn’t do it! I don’t know what happened, Excellency!”

    Del folded her arms and considered the unfortunate woman. “The princess was cursed,” she said.

    The woman looked down at the girl, murmured “Princess,” then looked back up. “It wasn’t my fault.”

    Del tapped one long finger against her elbow. “You had best leave.”

    The woman trembled, shook her head wildly. “No, no, I cannot do that. If that horrid little—he already knows I’m not spinning. He’ll find me.”

    “He’ll have to come to me. You have served your purpose. Consider your debt paid in full. Now get out.”

    The woman hesitated a moment before she managed to pull herself to her feet and, back against the wall, her trained but hoopless skirts dragging along the ground, she made her way into the stairwell.

    Del looked at the pretty little princess abandoned on the floor. She looked sad. “I’m sorry, little one. It’s not what I wanted.” On the wall there was a mirror, one that looked like a window—tall and arching and stained along the edges. Del muttered a simple spell in her own people’s tongue and beat her wings twice.

    She landed in a moonlit meadow. Faerie did not sleep; there were groups of them dancing about, conjuring butterflies and dragons in bright, glowing colors. Laughter rang out, a sweeter song than any human troubadour could coax from his lute. Men’s tunics and robes flowed and spun with similar draping effects as the women’s simply lined gowns.

    She found the one female she was looking for without trouble. Her blond hair, silvery in the moonlight, was all piled artfully on her head, only a strand or two curling about her face. The lime silk of the gown and the creamy lace of the sleeves glimmered in the moonlight, absorbed it and reflected it. Her butter-and-melon wings were small, barely visible over her shoulders.

    “Leth!” She called out the faerie’s human-name. Startled, she turned. She did not appear to be happy to see Del on the hillside, hands on her hips and lips pressed tightly together.

    “Go away, Adeltheia. There is another party closer to the human borders, at your son’s palace, I’m sure.”

    “You have a mess to clean up, Meletha. Come!”

    Her chin rose. “What mess? I do not leave messes.”

    Del stalked closer, the hem of her green gowns lost in the grass and shadows. “You gave a gift to an innocent little princess,” she reminded the other faerie. “Now you have to deal with it.”

    Meletha’s mouth opened into an O. “I altered the curse you put her under!”

    “Oh, alter it you did. Now you have to deal with the consequences. Perhaps it will teach you how to meddle with humans.”

    “You do it all the time.”

    Del sighed. Even their own language escaped this youngling. “I know how. Come, you must clean up your mess. Your gift has been opened at long last. She is asleep.”

    “You would have killed her. You should clean it up.”

    Del cocked her head. “There are many kinds of death. You put her into a true sleep, not I. Now. Clean. Up. Your. Mess.”

    Meletha lost the stare contest, lowering her sunny-colored eyes to the meadow. She sighed and brushed past Del. “You have a portal?”

    “It’s still open. It will take you there. Make your own to come back.”

    * * *
    Meletha arrived in the small room, the momentum of her travels brushing the few wispy curls hanging down about her face. Her gaze was drawn to the princess at once.

    “So this is your fault, whoever you are.”

    A little man, hair gray and unkempt, beard long, and clothing patchworked glared at her. He opened his little mouth and poured more of his high, scratchy voice into the room. “I come here to collect a debt, and instead of the woman I left here, I find a dead girl.”

    Meletha’s lip curled, her skin crawled. “It is none of your concern. If you have an issue, take it up with Del.”

    The little man’s eyes rounded and he began to fidget. “Oh, that’s ok. There’s really no problem here at all. I didn’t do nothin’ wrong, just collecting a long-owed debt is all.” The with a snap and a puff of foul-smelling smoke, he was gone.

    With sharp gestures, Meletha fanned the smoke away with her hand. She pondered the sleeping princess, wondering what to do with her. She had never seen sleep before. It didn’t look like much. What was she going to do with the princess?

    Delicately, with her lime-silk skirts raised to walk, she stepped around the princess and into the stairwell. With the light spilling out from the room, she saw another open door farther up, and blackness farther down. She conjured a butterfly of faerie-light and went up.

    This will never do, she thought, surveying the gathering-room the fluttering wings illuminated in orange and pink light. She returned to the stairwell and took the next three steps up to another open door. She saw the dressing table and the wide bed and smiled. Yes, this shall work nicely. She conjured two more butterflies and had them flit about the room. It was dusty and old and obviously had not been in recent use. She snapped her fingers and the dust was gone. She spun around, swirling sleeves and skirts, her right hand extended, muttering. The words left her mouth like a delicate stream skips down a mountainside; the furniture gleamed, the hangings brightened, the pillows fattened. She made a sharp gesture with her hand and the wooden panels fell from the windows. Pale light flooded the room in three long rectangles.

    Satisfied, she left two of the butterflies and returned with the third to fetch the princess.

    Levitation was not Meletha’s best spell. There were too many things to do at once, too much concentration on the goal at large. She pondered the princess, then finally knelt down and took the girl into her arms. She stood, carrying her half over her shoulder and half around her waist and started up the stairs.

    Meletha’s arms were trembling when she lay the princess on the bed. Humans, she decided, were far heavier than they looked, and while she had strength inborn, she had never had an opportunity to use it before. She sighed, proud of herself for a job well done and nodded. Then she noticed the blood, the scrape along her wrist. She was no healer. But she was rather gifted with clothes.

    With a thought, she released the pearl buttons from collar to hem and pulled the soiled gown from under the sleeping princess. The gown fell to the floor with a thud. Then she thought. Curious, she pushed one eyelid upward, revealing a deep green iris, the pupil nearly drowning the color. It fluttered closed as soon as Meletha’s finger moved.

    A picture began forming in her mind. Soft green, like moss beneath a flowing river in summer. Softer than velvet, heavier than silk, some combination of the two. Layers of lace the color of a creamy fall moon, tinted gold from opaque silk beneath. But humans adored their waistlines. The image altered slightly, then fermented. She whispered the words to make it real.

    The dress formed around Aislynn. The golden silk chemise, the layers of creamy lace, the high-waisted pale green silky velvet, beaded with seed pearls along the neckline. Meletha ran her fingers through the golden curls, willing away the braid and the blood at the ends and arranged it around the princess’s shoulders. At last, she conjured one more thing. She was a princess, after all. The diadem was gold and delicate, its peaks mimicking the lace, with a small pearl at the center of each.

    Her vision complete, Meletha stood back and admired her handiwork. She was as beautiful as a human could be; more so than most. She blinked and animated the coverings with a suggestion, and they slid upward and beneath the princess’s elbows, stopping when they reached her fingertips. Meletha smiled and nodded. Yes, her family could find her like this.

    She looked down, at the nightrail. The bloodstained hem faced her. She bent and lifted the garment from the floor, marveling at how heavy such a small garment was when made by human hands. She held it up, searching for the trick, and she found it. A little pouch buttoned to an opening in the garment’s side. It was filled with something. A three-pronged gold comb with rubies. A piece of age-softened wood, something metal through the center. A flower, tiny stem and a wide blue bell-like bloom. She smiled again, envisioning the bloom fresh, then placed the flower beneath the princess’s fingertips.

    She lay the now-lighter gown over the dressing table’s chair and scowled at the mirror. Polished bronze. She would have to go back down the stairs to return home. I’m sure Adeltheia planned all of this, she thought. Well there, she’s cleaned up. I’ve done my part; it is this human’s fault if she’s squandered my gift of happiness.

    * * *
    The queen was mildly annoyed when her daughter did not show up for breakfast as planned. Neither did Lady Avril, her maid, come to request a change of plans. Halfway through her buttered toast, the mild annoyance sharpened to temper and she demanded the footman send her daughter to her.

    The footman returned as she folded her lace-edged napkin beside her plate, finished with the meal. “Well?”
    The footman’s face was pale. “She is not there, Your Majesty.”

    “And why did you not find her?”

    He swallowed. “Lady Avril was still abed, Majesty. She has a fever. The princess’s covers were rolled back, and her pet on the pillow.”

    The queen sat back in her chair. “She takes that pig everywhere with her.” Worry tightened her stomach. “Did you check the library? The gardens?”

    “It is being done as we speak, Majesty.”

    The searchers did not find the princess in the library—they found the king and his steward there, but not his golden-haired daughter—nor in the gardens. Lady Avril was in hysterics. Finally, the medic gave her a potion and she slept. The king organized a search of the wider palace. When luncheon came and the princess was not found, the queen had taken to her bed, trembling and crying as her security crumbled like salad cheese before her eyes. The king ordered every servant whose duties were not vital to join the search.

    They found her just before luncheon the next day. The steward’s son, soon to take his father’s place, noticed the parted tapestries, the slender door and the stairs beyond. He went down and found the spinning wheel, empty of thread, but with a tiny splash of blood. He went up and found the princess asleep in the magnificent bed with coverings like her gala gown, a bluebell between her hands.

    She queen cried at the sight of her, legs folding beneath her, elbows supporting her on the mattress. The king stared at his daughter, asleep in an alien gown in a forgotten tower.

    “How was this missed?”

    The steward’s son looked around. “The tapestries covered the door. Even when they were down, no one noticed a door in the paneling, Majesty.”

    The king’s anger was evident in the tightening around his eyes, the twitch of his cheek. He pulled his wife to her feet and gripped her shoulders. “It is not the end,” he said, voice firm. “The fairy, Leth. She said Aislynn could be awakened. We will call Rann back and he will waken her. You will see, Chrysari.”

    * * *
    The princess slept through the winter. There were no parties, no entertainments about the vast palace as they waited for spring to bring Prince Rann so that he could waken Aislynn. No one uttered their darkest thoughts, though the words shuddered through the minds of every person in the great city and many throughout the country. What if the prince cannot waken her? ’Tis a faerie curse she’s under, she could sleep a thousand years like ’twere a night, was the echoing certainty.

    Brendan worked each day alongside his family, the only one of his brothers to remain when business slowed to almost nonexistent. His father and his uncle joined their two stores and hoped for better times. Who wanted jewels or headdresses or silks or lace when there were no parties? Elsewhere the mourning was not so deep; elsewhere there were cities who still had balls and gatherings where such things were worn, even if their number had decreased. When the holly bloomed he brought her some, adding it to the immortal bluebell in her hands. He left home at night as he was want to do throughout his entire life, made his way to the palace and crawled through the window, though now none were covered with wood any more.

    He would sit at the foot of her bed and watch her as she slept. The first time he had come, she had looked so sad. Her mouth turned down, some invisible tension holding her face.

    “I would find you sleeping, Lynn. You called this all a dream once, now all you see are dreams. I can’t give you a bobble to prove they’re real this time.” He pulled the thick chain with its knotted diamond from beneath his innermost shirt. “It’s all so dreary since you went to sleep, like you kept this world alive. You certainly kept it colorful. Now all anyone wears is black. That old brown dress you made me buy for you would be positively cheery these days!

    “But as morose as we’re all supposed to be, Father gave me a puppy for my last birthday. He said it could be a great hunter some day if I train him well. Perhaps. I think more likely he will be a guard for the door. He doesn’t seem to realize that he’s supposed to be sad. He’s like you, Lynn. He sees ribbons and laughter in everything. He wakes up before the sun and demands attention with yips and his slobbery tongue.”

    By the time he was done with his rambling speech, Aislynn’s face had lost the tight, sorrowful expression. She looked peaceful, really asleep now. Every time he came, he told her of his growing puppy, the trouble it got into at the stables, the tables it knocked over the day it ran through the store. She never laughed as she would have before, but her expression remained soft. Then he would add what flower he could—from a hothouse if there were no others. When the snowdrops rose their pale heads he brought those from the very edge of the gardens. As spring progressed, he brought more, the ones he knew she liked. He always left before the sun rose.

    * * *
    Aislynn knew she slept. Sometimes she tried to open her eyes, to see the world again, to shape her lips into words, but she couldn’t. Her body remained lifeless, floating in an ocean of nothing. Her lungs expanded and contracted, soaking in the scents of her surroundings. She smelled pine and holly and then flowers—lillies, angel’s trumpets, bleeding hearts.

    Sobs echoed through her darkness, bouncing off faraway walls. Hard voices like rocks striking granite silenced the crying, then they too were gone. Something touched her, circled her arm and pressed. Sounds slid through her ears without the clothing of meaning. High and pleading and incessant. They made her tired and weary, made her want to snuggle farther into her world of dark. But then that other voice would come. Low and soothing and laughing. It felt like a fire in the winter, a soft woolen blanket on her bed. That sound made her float content to be nothing in nothing.

    When she tried to think, she was conscious of her body, wrapped in silk, lying on something soft. She could feel the silence around her when she was alone. And she could hear movement when someone entered the room. She floated, waiting for the sounds of voices. It was harsh, jagged. Precise. The air felt colder. The silk felt lighter. The callous sound surrounded her again and she tried to hide in the darkness, but there was nothing there. Nothing but the darkness already surrounding her to hide in.

    Something pressed to her face, against her mouth. The sensation followed her into the dark. Suddenly she was caught, hard hands held her still within her nothing world, giving it dimension she could not escape. She could feel her body, limbs heavy and limp, but she could not move it. She could not pull away from the hardness that held her.

    The silk was gone. Her ribs ached, fear clung and pulled them inward. Then lower, pain blossomed. It tore and ripped through her body, pulsing like a boiling ocean through her. She wanted to scream but her voice was part of her sleeping body, she wanted to hide but there was nowhere to go, she wanted to feel nothing once more.

    When she did, nothing did not comfort her.

    * * *
    Brendan crawled through the window in the afternoon. He had lied to his father, told him he had other business he needed to attend to across town. Tension through the city was tighter than a gypsy’s tambourine now the northern prince had come. Soon the princess would wake and she would go away to become the prince’s bride. He had to see her one last time. Even if she weren’t awake yet to hear it, he had to say goodbye.

    The sailor’s pipe on the floor warned him something had changed. No one was in the room. She had already been taken away, mere flowers forgotten next to the weight of gold. He lifted the drooping flowers. Then he saw her.

    She was not gone. She still lay in the bed. The covers had been thrown back, her gown was tangled in its own layers. Her legs were still spread wide, blood drying on them. Her arms were tossed above her head, her face was framed by the frothy lace of the gown. She looked small and lost, like she should be crying but did not know how.

    Cold shock stilled his body. Lynn was too precious in look and speech and smile to be used in such a fashion.

    No one would dare do such a thing to the princess. She looked frightened and morose. He knew what her eyes would look like if they were opened; they would look as they had looked arcing through the air of the Volta, trapped in the hands of a prince.

    Brendan cleaned her as best he could with his handkerchief and moisture from his tongue. Then he smoothed her gown back down—such a delicate gown, surely from the faerie; no human would construct such a sleek, cloudlike costume—one filmy layer at a time. He smoothed it down her legs, pulled the cloth-of-gold cover back over her. His hands were trembling. They had survived childhood on dreams, then he had told her that such dreams were no more; she had to be a princess.

    “I’m sorry, little princess,” he whispered to her. “So sorry.” He pushed a lone curl out off her cheek, combed it back with his fingers. He heard the breeze shift about the room. “It’s not what I meant.”

    A tear leaked from the corner of her eye and fell toward the bed, lost in the curls of her hair. Before his own joined it, he leaned over and pressed a light kiss to her forehead. Then her nose and her cheeks, and finally her mouth. “I don’t know how to make you happy again.”

    He felt her sigh against his lips, her eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. When he opened his eyes, hers were already watching. She whispered his name, her mouth hardly moving. “What if you could?”

    “Is she awake?” The queen swept into the room, pushed Brendan aside and peered down at her daughter.

    He watched as Aislynn blinked, saw the confusion in her lowered brows, her parted mouth. But when the other man, the northern Prince Rann spoke, demanding to know what was going on, Aislynn panicked. Her eyes went wide, she pulled herself into a sitting position and pushed herself away. “Don’t let him near me,” she cried. Her voice was high and strained, a violin string too sharp.

    “Aislynn, calm yourself.” The queen pulled her daughter back. “You remember Prince Rann. You are to marry him in a few weeks.”

    Aislynn shook her head with short, jerking motions. “No, mother. No. He hurt me. That man. He hurt me.”

    “Nonsense, Aislynn. You were obviously dreaming while you slept. You are just confused. You’ve been asleep for a long time.”

    “No, mother. Make him go away.”

    Brendan felt his heart shrinking in his chest. Wealthy as they were, as covetous of position, when his older sister had begged, their father had not made her marry the baron who had offered for her. He had not been pleased, but she had not been forced.

    A hand landed heavily on his shoulder. The king appeared before him. Brendan’s breathing hitched.

    “Prince Rann informed me that he had not woken my daughter. Is this true?”

    The obvious lie slid through Brendan’s mind like molasses. “Yes, Majesty. She was asleep when I came. As always.”

    The king’s eyes, the same green as his daughter’s, narrowed. “You’ve been here before.”

    Ten more lies presented themselves to him, clamoring for attention. He felt his hands shake. “I brought her flowers.”

    Somewhere in the room, someone snorted.

    “Then it was as it appeared. You woke the princess.”

    The words solidified in Brendan’s mind. He knew the stories commoners told about the spells and the curse placed on the princess as an infant. He could see with plain sight the value love was given in the royal house. “Yes.”

    The king nodded. “You will be rewarded, of course.”

    Brendan sighed. His head, his entire body, felt stuffed with cotton. “Majesty, I, that is, the princess, well …. Iwishtomarryher.”

    The king scrutinized him. “I do not know you. Have you a title?”

    “No, Majesty.”

    “If you did, you would know that she is spoken for. She will marry our northern neighbors’ Prince Rann at midsummer. You will be paid handsomely for the privilege of tasting my daughter’s lips, be content with that.”

    “Money? Majesty, I already have more money than I know what to do with. My family is wealthier than most of the nobility, some of them combined. I could buy any title you might decide to offer up if you were so inclined. I know what I want, Majesty, and it is not gold.”

    The king’s face had gone slightly red by the end of Brendan’s speech. “The princess has been promised. The papers have been signed. King Liam is a personal friend of mine, and I will not insult him. Aislynn will marry as she is told. And you will content yourself with the gold. Take it or leave it.”

    The sovereign turned his back on Brendan and he looked to the floor. Sookie, Aislynn’s silly little pet, had a paw against his shin. He scooped the animal up. “I could have made her laugh, Sookie.”

    He brought the guinea pig over to the bed, where the queen was lecturing a crying Aislynn. Sookie squeaked and squirmed when she saw her mistress, and Aisling hugged the creature to her, cooing. Then she looked up at him. “Don’t leave me,” she said.

    “Aislynn!” The queen jerked her shoulder. “Mind yourself. Always be respectful to commoners for the work they do, but you are not one of them. Do not be so friendly.” The queen caressed her daughter’s chin. “Now chin up. We still have time to prepare. We shall reach the Middle Castle in time and you shall be married.”

    Aislynn shook her head wildly, sending her hair flying through the air like ribbons on May Day. “No.” She stood and backed a step, her arms crossed over her chest, holding Sookie, her hands clenched tightly together. Brendan could no longer see her face. He put his hand on her shoulder and felt delicate frame shaking.

    “You are a princess, and you shall do your duty to your king and your country.” The king glowered at his daughter. “The papers are signed and sealed. Rann will be king, and the kingdoms will once more be one.”

    She stilled. Her shoulders curled around her pet. “What if I hadn’t woken? What if I were still sleeping? What then?”

    “The papers are signed and sealed; Rann would be king when I am gone.”

    “So it doesn’t matter. What I think, what I want, it doesn’t matter. If I were dead, you have everything taken care of. I go, I put on my stays and my silk stockings and my wedding gown, I marry that … prince … and I lose myself somewhere down the isle of the chapel. I become nothing and lost in a world of mist, just a pretty doll to prop up by his side because he is King. Or I could be dead and he would be king, but I would at last have myself. You offer me the top of a glittering world that is a dream—but you want my soul in return. I won’t do it. I cannot.”

    The prince, brown wig gone, his clothes relaxed in their fit. “And where would you go? What would you do, Princess? There is a world out there you have never seen, kept coddled in your palace. A world of take and take. You will not go because you have nowhere to go to. Soulless or not, you will have your servants, your meals, your clothing, your home.”

    For every step the prince had advanced, Aislynn backed up, cringing until her back was against Brendan’s chest. He could hear the harsh breathing of her crying, feel it shake her body. “I don’t know,” she said.

    But she did. Brendan knew that she did, because he had taught her. She knew enough to make him sell her old jewelry to buy her brown dress. It wasn’t much, but it was more than she was expected to know after living in this fantasy world. He dipped his head and whispered her name. He could see the tears running down her cheeks.

    “Brendan will show me,” she said, her voice as forceful as a sparrow’s flight.

    The king’s temper soared and his voice followed. “Daughter, you will do your duty!”

    She shook her head. “The faerie gave me a gift, like you are handing me a throne. You are making me choose between them. Brendan woke me; there’s something important about that, I know there is. Something important that no one has told me. His family is very rich. Give him a title then. Make him a marquise or a duke. He is educated, he would be an asset. Why do I have to marry a prince? He lives in the same world as I, and he has told me it is not real; this man has lived in the world, has succeeded in the world. Why that man when I tell you he has hurt me? I hate him and I’m afraid of him, and you tell me I must marry him. Why join the two kingdoms? I don’t understand, and you won’t tell me!”

    “You need only understand this, Aislynn. The contract was signed sixteen years ago that the two of you would wed and the two greatest human kingdoms would become one. That man is nothing but a commoner, and he will remain such.”

    She shook her head and looked away, fingers stroking Sookie’s head. Brendan heard her muttering under her breath. “The choice isn’t just mortal and faerie gifts. The choice is life lived or life as a ghost. Trapped in a nightmare. I can’t do it.” Her head turned a little more and she glanced at him. “Would you really take me away?”

    “Yes.” His response was as quiet as hers.

    She turned back toward her family, back straight, head held proudly. “Prince Rann shall be king then, but I shall not be his queen.”

    “If you leave, you leave with nothing but what you have on your body now.”

    She gave a tiny, bobbing curtsy with her knees only. “Very well.”

    The queen cried out her daughter’s name, reached out her hand. The king caught her. “That is not our daughter. Our daughter is dead.”

    Brendan took Aislynn’s elbow in his hand and urged her toward the door. Her expression was serene, her jaw raised, the tears dried. The prince stood with his hands on his hips, his face screwed up in a narrow-eyed stare as he watched them go. No one moved to stop them.

    They proceeded down the narrow stone stairs until they reached the bottom, the heavy door with its cracked wood letting in dim rays of light. He released her arm on the landing, but before he could put his shoulder to the ancient door—it never opened easily—she threw herself—and Sookie—into his arms. They closed around her.

    “I’m scared,” she said.

    He smiled. The expression felt strange, like his skin was stretching in an expression it had never worn before. “That’s life for you, little princess. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of you. Father has been trying to push me out of the city for months now. We’ll go south. The family owns a villa where we can live. You’ll like it; it’s by the mountains. You’ve never seen the mountains.”

    She nodded and looked up at him. “This was never a dream, was it? Even when I took out your knife I couldn’t believe that it had really been real. But when I think, it was always more real than my life. Thank you.”

    Brendan rolled his eyes. “Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “My father is going to take this far worse than yours.”

    She shrugged. “Then tell him that I am Lynn and you rescued me from a nightmare.”

    “I’m sure that will please him immensely.” He released her and shoved his shoulder against the door. On the third try, it moaned its way open, into a side courtyard rarely used. He took her hand and led her out into the golden light of evening filtered through tall oak trees.

    * * *
    Prince Rann returned home and repeated carefully planned words to his father. By midsummer both the northern court and the southern court had adjourned to the wide section of land between the two great rivers and the grand palace in the center. Eventually, when the kings passed on to the next world of eternity, Rann was crowned Lord and King over both vast kingdoms. He ruled from the middle palace, dispatching stewards and lords to the others.

    It is said that the princess still sleeps in her gilded tower chamber in a gown of faerie creation. The queen’s heart broke when her daughter did not stir and the tower was once more boarded up and forgotten.