Goblin Ball (4 page)

She was never meant to be queen. Deep down, she knew she wasn’t very good at it. Every day all day it was the same thing: mitigate disputes. Keep the different fae folk from driving each other crazy. Leprechauns and pixies bickering. Brownies uninterested in tidying up messes or scribbling with scrolls. Goblins keeping more to their own kind than ever. Joyless sprites. Fairies driven more by desire than delight.

Despite Cissa’s penchant for giving orders and issuing edicts, the faewood was falling apart. She wanted desperately to drive the dark influence from the Dumnos court. Though there were small successes—today’s resolution with Horace and the pixies was one—she couldn’t deny the faewood was in a state of low-grade chaos.

Even Aubrey was going to rot, with an uncharacteristic disregard for his appearance. Cissa hadn’t seen the fairy in a shiny new outfit since… well, since his muse Idris had been imprisoned, now that she thought about it. And according to her minions’ reports, he was always lying about in some goblin byway, drinking jasmine stout.

And speaking of goblins, Max! Her friend was more grumbly than ever. His sister Boadicea had been freed of the magic mirror that had been her prison only to spread resentment and discontent throughout the Blue Vale—Cissa’s minions had told her that much—bemoaning the gobs’ ugly state and reminding them of their lost beauty.

The goblin bitch wouldn’t shut up about the curse being Max’s fault—and worse, that he’d turned down the chance to end it, because he wouldn’t offend Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Max had principles. Something Boadicea didn’t understand.

Poor sweet Max. Cissa ran her fingers over the cloisonné decoration on her carved rosewood puzzle box. He’d made it for her ages and ages ago, just after her parents had been ambushed and murdered by wyrders.

”Oh, Dandelion!” She cried out to her absent brother. “How could you have left us? And to marry a wyrding woman!”

Cissa had tried—truly—to get past her hatred of the wyrd who’d killed her mother and father, the fairy queen and her consort who, like all fae, were supposed to be immortal. Yet the wyrd had found a way to slay them, with enchanted quarrels delivered by crossbows.

Of course Beverly had had nothing to do with that, having been born in an entirely different millennium. Cissa had tried to like her for Dandelion’s sake. She had failed at that, just as she was failing at being queen.
I’m not like my mother at all. I’ll never be magnanimous.

She was so miserable.

She opened the box. When Max gave it to her all those years ago, he’d promised one day she would feel happiness again, that as the compartments filled with treasures, her heart would fill with eagerness for simply being alive in the world.

You’re a fairy princess,
he had said.
It’s in your nature to find delight in all that is pretty and sparkly and lovely.

She’d thought she heard
like you,
tagged on in barely a whisper at the end, but she had most likely imagined it. Over the years, the gob had given her little presents from time to time to put in the box. Breaking all fae tradition, he’d never asked for anything in return.

“Until this,” she said aloud.

She took the dewdrop bracelet from the top compartment. When she put it on, her heart felt lighter. A smile tugged at the side of her mouth, and the irritations of the day fell away somewhat. It was made of diamonds cut to look like the morning dew in sunlight. Not pretty at all. Oh, no. The bracelet was beyond beautiful. She wanted to wear it all the time.

But she didn’t dare. This was the one gift from Max that had come with an obligation.

“And what do I get in return?”
He’d said when she put it on.
Their exchange played over again in her head:

“But you never…”

“Yeah, I never. This time I do.”

“What… what do you want?”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

He hadn’t said a word about it since. Maybe he’d changed his mind. Maybe he’d forgotten. After all, he’d been in a terrible mood when he said it. Maybe he didn’t mean it. Even so, except for here alone in her bower, she didn’t wear the bracelet. She wouldn’t risk him seeing it and remembering that she owed him.

It was the fairy way. Give a present, get a present. Accept a favor, owe a favor. Cissa had lived over two thousand years owing no one, and she wasn’t going to start now.

Not even with Max.

She put away the diamonds and slid open another part of the box, the drawer at the bottom of the compartment. Without a sound, she held its secret up to the light, the one thing in the puzzle box Max hadn’t given her. Her favorite possession, more dear to her even than the dewdrop bracelet.

An emerald necklace.

It wasn’t her best pretty. Max had made her countless lovelier things. But this was her most treasured object. It contained more than the green fire of emeralds and sparked within her more than a bubbling tickle of delight.

She ran her tongue over her lips, lightly bit the upper lip, then the lower. Slowly. She clenched the muscles between her legs and grew warm there—and everywhere.

The memory of her first real kiss had never faded. It was so long ago… she was only a little more than two hundred years old. Her eyes had begun to change, and her curiosity was at the crazy, dangerous stage when a fairy enters young adulthood.

Every morning her explorations took her farther and farther from her mother’s court. She tested the very boundaries of Dumnos. One day she found a secret vale far, far beyond the faewood or any place she and Dandelion had ever known. It might have been in the realm of Edmos—or even the
Tuatha Dé Danaan
, though she hadn’t crossed any great waters to get there.

One morning like any other, she left the Dumnos court proper and flew lazily here and there, telling herself she had no destination in mind at all. At last she reached the far edge of the realm and flew beyond and on and on, to the cottage she’d discovered the first time she explored the foreign vale.

Whoever lived in the little house had the prettiest jewels she’d seen in her life. The cottage overflowed with loose diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires—everything sparkly you could imagine. And bright-cut gold and silver too! In the workshop, the bounty was in different stages of being made into bracelets, necklaces, tiaras, rings—so many things to make Cissa’s heart swoon.

So many pretties. Whoever lived there wouldn’t miss one or two. On her first few visits, she’d taken some loose cut jewels, then a gold and ruby ring, then a sapphire bracelet. After a while, she couldn’t help herself. As much as she loved the jewels, she loved the excitement of taking them even more.

She was a natural-born thief. So much fun!

She would wait on the roof until he was gone—she knew the jewel maker was a man because one time she heard him singing.

His voice was so lovely she was tempted to peek, to see what he looked like. But she was afraid that if she saw him he would see her. That wouldn’t do! So she contented herself with the sound of him, and she told herself that such a happy singer wouldn’t begrudge one fairy taking a few jewels here and there, especially when she enjoyed them so much.

That morning,
that momentous morning,
she’d waited on the roof for a long time. There was a lot of noise inside. She’d wondered if she’d missed the arrival of brownies come to clean house, but finally the noises stopped, the front door slammed shut, and the jewel maker left his cottage, singing the same tune as before:

Bathed in the mystic moonlight
On the night of a goblin ball
Look to the moon at midnight
When true love will free us all.

When his song had faded away, she had flown down from the roof and into the cottage through a window.

To her dismay, the house
had
been cleaned thoroughly. Everything was put away, even his tools and all the loose jewels and bits of silver and gold. Except…

She could feel it. Something was out, something in another room. She’d never gone past the workroom before, but whatever it was called to her. She flew to the hall and into the room at the end.

His bower. The bed was big and dark and heavy. She ran her fingers over the pretty enamel cloisonné flowers that decorated the polished cherry wood headboard and footboard.

And then she saw them. Emeralds peeking out from under a swatch of shimmering cloth on the dresser. The cloth tugged her interest, but when she picked it up she saw the entirety of the emerald necklace and bracelet below. She set the cloth aside, put on the necklace, and looked at herself in the mirror.

Ooh!
It was so pretty—and it made her eyes turn green! She knew it! She
knew
she was grown up now. She’d told Dandelion so, and this proved it. Green eyes! She couldn’t wait to get back to the faewood and show Dandelion her eyes.

She picked up the bracelet and held it in the sunlight coming through the window. Then something moved in the mirror and a voice behind her cried, “I’ve got you now, you little thief!”

A large, strong hand grabbed her wrist and swung her around, then another hand wrapped something around her. A binding cloth!

“Ooh!” A thrill shot through her. She’d been caught by the jewel maker, she was sure of it. So handsome. So noble-looking… and so angry with her!

No one was ever angry with her. It was exciting.

But it wasn’t just anger she felt coming off of him. She saw something else in his eyes. A hunger.
Desire.
And—sun and moon—desire had burst alive inside her too. And then his lips were close, so close—and found hers.

A thousand tingling prickles danced from his lips to hers. Shocks of desire flooded her senses in waves. He pushed his tongue between her lips, and she allowed it. In fact, her tongue encouraged his. She ran her hands over his broad, muscled chest, and he pushed her against the wall, pressed his chest against hers, his longing evident—and growing.

Was that how her mother and father felt about each other? More than delight. So much more…

His lips crashed down on hers again, and she felt transformed. With a kiss, the child Cissa had gone. She was a woman. When he pulled away, her body complained for more.

“Who are you?” he said, and his words broke the spell.

She sucked in air, trying to collect herself.

“Give me your name,” he said.

She was frozen by emotion and couldn’t speak, but she really looked at him then. He was as tall as Dandelion and had longish, wavy dark brown hair, and smooth, tanned skin. His deep brown eyes bore into her soul and made her lightheaded. He had broad shoulders and wore an embroidered leather vest but no shirt, and she ran her hand over his solid, muscled arm. His lips were soft and firm, and she wanted to kiss them again, but… but she was so confused.

In that moment, she’d known one thing: If she stayed any longer, she would never be able to leave him. It would never do! Fairies don’t love! They don’t!

She had touched the necklace then, and it was like a tether, recalling her to her fairy nature and reminding her who she was. Before she lost her wits entirely, she had popped out.

She never did know how she’d gotten back to the faewood, but she’d gone directly to her bower and stripped off the emerald necklace and hidden it under her pillow where it stayed for many years until much later, when Max the goblin gave her the puzzle box.

She had never seen her prince charming again—for that is how she thought of him—but she’d never forgotten him, or his kiss. She had no idea which court he belonged to, though she was fairly certain it wasn’t Brienne’s. She’d often fantasized that he would come to visit her parents with a delegation from Edmos or the
Tuatha Dé Danaan
, but that hope had died with her parents. Idris had never had visitors, though he’d toyed with the idea of courting Brienne.

Cissa sighed and returned the necklace to the bottom drawer, sliding it shut just as Morning Glory popped into the bower.

“Hello! Hello!” Her friend spun in the air. “I’m back!” She stopped midair and held out her hands, inviting Cissa to join her in a spin. It was tradition with them, but these days it seemed silly.

“Come on.” Morning Glory tilted her head and beckoned with her hands. “Who needs a spin?” Her grin was infectious, and she was right.

Cissa flew up and joined her, and they spun and spun and spun, higher and higher, above the trees, up through the misty gray clouds, and even higher until they could see all of the British Isles and Ireland too.

Without thinking, Cissa automatically searched the oceans below. As usual, the one place she longed to see was nowhere in sight. Why did she even try?

Morning Glory tossed an extended shower of exploding fairy dust and they descended with it back to the earth.

As Cissa’s feet touched down in the bower and she retracted her wings, Morning Glory said, “I did it. I found Cade at Mudcastle and told him they had to host a gifting ceremony, and he said yes.”

“That simple, huh?”

“Beverly might have helped. A little. And don’t scrunch your nose at Beverly. She’s not bad for a wyrd, and she truly loves Dandelion.”

“And Lily?”

“I found her at a shop in the village with Lexi. She said fine.”

“All right then,” Cissa said. “When is the party, as the pixies called it, going to be?”

“May Day, at the Temple of Joy and Wonder,” Morning Glory said. “A picnic! Isn’t that nice?”

“Sure.” Another detail dealt with. “Now I just have to figure out what to give my grandniece.”

“Wouldn’t the other courts be jealous if they knew we had a new baby?” Morning Glory pulled a sparkly scarf from her hidey bag and looked at herself in Cissa’s mirror. “Alexandra Lowenwyn Beverly Glory Marion Elyse Bausiney—and a future peer of the realm at that!”