Phleg’s heart beat hard enough to hurt.
“Fallen in love with her?” Leopold thundered before Gabriella could answer. “You haven’t even seen her real face!”
“I haven’t needed to,” Fred said. He let go of Gabriella’s hands and returned to Phleg, taking hers.
Phleg took a deep breath. She might well lose everything, but she let the enchantment that made her look like Gabriella slip away. The lavender princess gown shifted into the form and color of the dress she’d been wearing on the day she cast the spell, the dress Mumsy had made from a sunflower. Her wings were revealed to all, as was her short, iridescent silver hair, and the fact that her height brought her to only halfway up Fred’s chest.
“Oh,” Fred said, sounding—could it be? Phleg wondered—sounding delighted. “Oh, Phleg, you are truly beautiful.”
She needed to respond to this romantic moment. “And I don’t think anymore that your hair makes you look like a sheep.”
“Well, there we go!” Fred said.
“I forbid this!” If the dishes hadn’t already been broken, the sheer volume of Leopold’s objection would have shattered them.
“Father,” Fred said. “Please forgive me for challenging you. I don’t mean to defy you. But since I love … Phleg … and since I am willing to marry her—in fact want to marry her—in fact would be devastated if I didn’t marry her—given all that, I don’t see the problem. We can have an alliance between our kingdom and the fairy realm.”
Apparently coming to the judgment that in comparison Princess Gabriella wasn’t all that unacceptable after all, Leopold said, “But what about our alliance with Humphrey? Humphrey! Say something!”
Humphrey looked at his daughter.
Gabriella said, “I think that if Prince Frederic of Rosenmark and Renphlegena of the woods fairies love each other, that is an excellent start to an alliance.”
Phleg tightened her hold on Fred, and he on her.
Unexpectedly—well certainly Phleg found it unexpected—Parf moved to stand by Gabriella.
“What?” Gabriella asked him.
“Nothing,” he mumbled, sounding—her brother!—shy and awkward. “Just … you know … in case alliances are being made … It would give my father the excuse he needs to visit the human world.”
Gabriella smiled at him. At Parf! “We’ll see,” she told him.
Meanwhile, Miss-mot had sat down on the ground and was about to scoop some of the spilled food into her mouth.
Phleg stepped forward at the same time Princess Gabriella did. They both leaned in—and clunked heads.
Of all who were there, it was King Leopold who swept the child up into his arms. “No,” he said to her, firmly but not unkindly.
“You’re loud,” Miss-mot told him.
“Humph!” he said, but he didn’t put her down.
It is said that once there was a fairy girl and a human prince who met and fell in love, and then lived happily ever after.
It is also said that there was a human princess and a fairy boy who met, and they eventually fell in love, and then they lived happily ever after, too. But that one took a little more work.
Vivian Vande Velde is the Edgar Award–winning author of Never Trust a Dead Man. She has also written Heir Apparent, Dragon’s Bait, and dozens of other fantasy and mystery novels for young readers. She lives in Rochester, New York, with her husband, Jim.
Copyright © 2017 by Vande Velde, Vivian
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used ficticiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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First edition, October 2017
Jacket illustration © 2017 by Erwin Madrid
Jacket design by Yaffa Jaskoll
Author photo by Jim Vande Velde
e-ISBN 978-1-338-12150-6
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