And even if the Dark Fae did come, partly because each of them would be very busy looking for any possible chink in the armor of his or her rival and partly because the Rules had been obeyed, there would be nothing they could do unless they were somehow offended by someone doing something they could take as an insult or a challenge. But the odds were that they’d be too busy glaring at one another, making brief alliances, or finding a new nemesis to take any notice of the humans around them.
It would make for a somewhat uneasy event… but that was better than the alternative, which would be for every Dark Fae in the kingdom to take offense. Which they would no matter what you did, because if you thought to escape retribution by simply not having the event in the first place, they’d take offense at that.
I ran up to my room and changed for a third time, back into my everyday gown, a lovely soft thing the color of bark. I sat on a stool for a few minutes and let Belinda take down the braids I had wound around my head to work in the bakery and wrap them in matching bark-colored cloth and embroidered ribbons. Then before I went to the library, where the replies to the invitations were sent as they arrived, I ducked into the nursery, gave my baby sister a kiss under Melalee’s disapproving glare, and hurried off.
The library, which was where virtually all of the kingdom’s paperwork was done, was the brightest room in the palace, with floor-to-ceiling windows and additional lanterns in case of bad weather. I got a fat handful of envelopes; joined the group of ladies-in-waiting, clerks, secretaries, and a couple of novices at the big table; and began my work. And even with all of us, if there were others who could have been spared, they’d have been crowded in here too.
It was pretty boring except when I got a reply from one of the Fae. They had this habit of embellishing their replies. When you opened the envelope from one of the Light Fae, illusory birds might fly out and sing, or vines covered in flowers would grow out of it and vanish, or miniature fireworks could shoot all the way to the ceiling. And as you might imagine, the replies from the Dark Fae needed someone who wasn’t easily frightened—spiders would pop out and run over your hands, or the envelope would drip blood on the table, or you’d open the seal and be treated to several minutes of nerve-racking screams. I suppose that every time we opened one of those, the corresponding Fae got a little pinch of extra power, but it seemed to me that it could hardly be enough to make up for the effort that was put into the reply in the first place.
But maybe I was just thinking too logically.
None of these scare tactics counted as “harming” us because the effect was purely emotional and temporary. The Dark Fae were masters at skirting as close as they could to the edge of the Rules without violating them. They lurked in their creepy cottages or lonely swamp towers or fog-shrouded castles or arcane manors under a perpetual night, and I suppose that they fed off the fear of those living nearby. And when they were forgotten, they’d make village appearances, complete with dramatic entrances, to dispense vague threats and remind everyone of their presence. All things considered, if you were a peasant and didn’t have the money to move and knew there was a Dark Fae living nearby… you’d be terrified most of the time too, and maybe that sated their appetites.
But, oh, big events like a royal christening would bring them all out if only to remind everyone in the entire kingdom that we were never really safe. You never knew, you see, if they’d found another loophole to exploit. The last time that had happened, a piper was going to lure an entire village full of children into a swamp until a heroic goose girl pointed out that the Dark Fae in question had arranged for the piper to be paid in counterfeit coin.
And, of course, the Dark Fae enjoyed reminding us of just that because it kept the unease going even during the happiest of days.
We worked away diligently, underlining the corresponding name on the list of invitees, with a check on the left for “not coming” and one on the right for “coming.” And there was a pair of clerks going through the replies we had already opened, making sure we had ticked off the correct side. Then a set of ladies-in-waiting made several lists of “coming” and “not coming” to be distributed to the heralds who could read, so we’d have yet another check at the gates of the castle, at the front door, and at the door of the Great Hall. Because, when it comes to Fae, there is no such thing as too much caution. It was nearly suppertime when we finished the last of the replies, and I was glad of it. Being reminded of Father had put a shadow on my day that not even Aurora could lift, and having illusory blood dripping over my hands twice hadn’t helped.
In the hour or so I had before suppertime, I needed to purge my melancholy. Before we moved to the palace, the place where I could do that had always been the woods on the doorstep of our manor. On the rare occasions when I wasn’t happy, the peace and solitude of the forest had always put my heart at ease again.
Now that I was living in the palace, I couldn’t get to the woods, but we had the next-best thing: a woodland garden, a piece of actual wild land that had been left to itself. According to Mama’s ladies, you almost never saw that sort of thing in a formal garden like the palace had, and I think that someone in the past, a king or a queen, must have shared my love of wild spaces. The gardeners were forbidden to tend it, and at the heart of it was a tree older than any other I had ever seen. While the others hurried away to take care of personal tasks before dinner, I took the stairs down to the garden door, and since no one was there, I threw dignity to the winds and ran. Soon, I was winding my way through the tangle of vines and bushes on a little path I had found until I reached the ancient forest giant.
From here, I could neither see nor hear the palace and all the people in it. I might have been alone. I sat on one of the enormous roots that stuck up out of the soil and leaned against the trunk. I then pulled my handkerchief out of my sleeve and let go.
I never cried where Mama and Papa could see me if I could help it. It wasn’t fair to them. Papa had made me a Court Baroness, given me our old manor and a separate country estate with enough land to make certain that I had my own independent income—even though he already supplied me with everything I could possibly want. I could be cynical and say that this made me an attractive marriage prospect, but I don’t think he really had that in mind. It would have been unspeakably ungrateful to go about with a sad face, as if I didn’t approve of his marrying Mama. So whenever missing Father got to be too much for me, I’d go to the one place almost no one else ever came to so Papa wouldn’t be told about it. I never wanted him to think that crying for Father meant I hadn’t come to love him.
So here, or with Giles, I could let down the walls and allow the tears to come.
I was so immersed in my own crying that I didn’t hear Papa; I didn’t even know he was there until he sat down beside me, took my shoulders, and turned me so I was crying into his chest instead of the tree trunk. By then, of course, it was too late to stop crying and pretend I hadn’t been drowning in tears.
He didn’t say anything at first, just let me sob. Then he pulled out a handkerchief of his own, took my soggy one away from me, and pushed his into my hands. “I miss him too, Miri,” he said, one arm around my shoulders, as he began to stroke my hair with his free hand. “Every day. He was my best friend. We were squires together, did you know that? We both served Sir Delacar, the fattest knight in the kingdom. All Delacar wanted out of us was to serve him at meals and run errands for him. But Geniver used all the spare time he had to train; he probably did more work than any two of the other squires put together. He was determined to prove that he deserved to be among the squires and that he would grow up to be as good a knight as any of them. He used to tell me that when I was King, he’d be my Champion. And I used to laugh at him because, of course, my brother, Aethan, was going to be King, and who would ever make a landless boy whose mother had wheedled him into the squires a knight much less the King’s Champion? But Delacar did make him a knight, and Aethan died in the wars, and I was made King, and…” He sighed and hugged me. “And now, every time I look at you, it’s as if I were looking at him, my fellow squire. You have his black hair, his green eyes, and his way of sticking your chin out when you are about to be stubborn about something.”