To Catch a Queen

by Shanna Swendson

  “Oops, right.” She pulled the crown off and shoved it into her bag. “I don’t think I can pass for Duchess Kate.”

  “And I don’t think she wears a crown except for special occasions. Or ever takes public transportation.”

  She didn’t bother looking to see if their foes were still pursuing them as they headed into the station. It would be the rare fairy who could handle even the escalator ride. Eamon would love it, but he’d need fortification, and she wouldn’t put him on a train even with a basket of cookies.

  A wave of her hand got them through the turnstiles. “We’ll only need to go one stop,” she told Michael once they were on the platform. “There’s another park, and there I can get us elsewhere in the Realm. It’s an easy walk, but I figured we’d lose them in here.”

  “I still can’t believe I’m in London,” he said, gazing around with a dazed expression.

  “Barely. You’ll have to come back sometime and see the sights. This time, though, I want to minimize the amount of time we spend outside the Realm so we have more flexibility for our return time when all this is over.” She sighed. “But I would have loved to have a proper cup of tea.”

  She still hadn’t spotted any fae in the station by the time a train arrived, so she felt somewhat less harried when they got off at the Green Park station and went aboveground. Her main concern was finding where to go within the Realm. She was running out of places she knew, and she’d had no luck getting to the one place she really wanted to go.

  “I guess I might as well give it another shot,” she muttered as she started to open a portal in the park.

  “Getting to the fake palace?”

  “Yeah. Every time I’ve tried, I end up somewhere else.”

  “What are you picturing when you’re navigating?”

  “The fake palace.”

  “Maybe that’s why it’s not working. You have to go someplace real.”

  “Could be, but I’m not sure how much of the Realm is real. Fiontan and Niamh’s castle may be no more real than that palace. The only thing more fake about it than any other place may be the fact that it’s said to be the home of the true queen.”

  “If it’s new, then maybe it hasn’t settled into the fabric of the Realm. Maybe you should picture somewhere nearby, like that rise overlooking the valley.”

  “Hmm,” she said, nodding to herself. “That could be it. How did you suddenly become an expert on the fairy world?”

  “I was a geeky kid who read too many fantasy novels, and I’ve been doing my homework since our last adventures. Of course, applying fantasy-novel logic to the real fairyland may not work, but it’s not like we have a lot to go on.”

  “Let’s give it a shot,” she said. When she’d completed the portal, she took his hand, and together they walked back into the Realm.

  And right into an ambush.

  Or was it? The armed men facing her wore the uniforms of the queen’s guard. Sophie didn’t know how much time might have passed in the Realm while she and Michael had been in London or how long it would take the message to spread, but there was a good chance that she had allies among this bunch. She pulled herself up into a regal, defiant posture and let her royal glory show. “The tales you have heard are true,” she said. “I am your rightful queen, not that impostor in the fake palace.”

  When they didn’t react, she remembered that she’d put the crown away. She took it out of her bag and placed it on her head. They didn’t respond in quite the way she expected, though. A few of the men in the back ranks fell to their knees, then quickly rose again when they noticed that no one else had knelt. A moment later, the leader knelt, glancing at his men with a clear signal. They all dropped to their knees, almost in unison.

  “My queen,” the leader said, bowing his head. “Allow us to escort you to your palace.”

  “I don’t really want to go to my palace,” Sophie said. “But I would appreciate an escort to the impostor’s palace.” Under her breath, she added, “Maybe you can get me there.”

  “I don’t like this,” Michael whispered.

  She glanced up at him. “Why?” It wasn’t a challenge, but rather an earnest request for information. His instincts were good, and sometimes he had even clearer sight in the Realm than she had.

  “Let’s just say that I wouldn’t holster my weapon even after these guys put their hands in the air. I think their reaction was more calculated than spontaneous.”

  “So, trap?”

  “Mm hmm.”

  The leader of the guards stood and said, “Now, if you will come with us, my lady.”

  Sophie grabbed Michael’s hand and said, “Run.”

  Considering that her Realm navigation skills had been failing her lately and that she kept stumbling into yet another ambush, she decided against trying to make great strides across the Realm. Instead, she threw up a barrier behind them as they ran. She wasn’t sure how long it would hold the guards, but it might keep their backs free from arrows.

  But she wasn’t the only one using magic. A thicket of thorns sprang up ahead of them. Sophie didn’t break stride as she blasted a path through them. “Seriously?” she remarked. If the guards believed she was the real queen who needed to be kept away from the impostor, they didn’t seem to appreciate the power she had over the Realm.

  She and Michael made it through the thorns, which she allowed to grow back in her wake. Let their pursuers get caught in their own trap, she thought.

  She pulled up short, though, when they reached the edge of a great canyon. There was no bridge in sight, no obvious way across. They were cornered, unless she could think of something. She wasn’t sure she had enough faith in her magical powers to create a bridge or fly the two of them across.

  “It’s not real,” Michael said. “It’s illusion.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look at it out of the corner of your eye.” She tried that, and there was the faintest image of ground over the chasm, but it didn’t look solid to her. “I think it’s a trick,” she said, shaking her head.

  He squeezed her hand. “Close your eyes and trust me.”

  She looked up at him, meeting his eyes. He looked utterly sincere, and she knew he wasn’t suicidal. But still …

  The guards were closing in on them, her barrier having dissipated and the thorns having been obliterated. She nodded at Michael, but she didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she focused on him as he stepped out onto what appeared to be nothing. It still looked to her like they were walking on thin air, but her feet were striking solid ground. Soon, she developed the confidence to run, but she didn’t release Michael’s hand. A mad part of her brain felt like he was the one giving them something to walk on, and if she released him, she’d fall.

  In spite of the feeling of something beneath her feet, she couldn’t hold back a sigh of relief when they reached ground she could see. “Hold on a second,” she told Michael. When he stopped, she released his hand and held her arms out in front of her. She controlled the Realm, and the impostor’s people had best not forget it. The canyon may have been an illusion to her, but she reshaped the landscape so that it became real.

  “That might slow them down a little,” she said as she and Michael resumed walking. She wasn’t quite sure what to do now. She’d failed in every attempt to reach the fake palace. Maybe she could go back to the real one and find a way to make a big splash there.

  She’d just reached for Michael’s hand to take them there when he stumbled and said, “Ow!”

  “Are you hit?”

  “By something. It stings. It’s not like the last time, though. I can still move.”

  She looked over her shoulder and found that they were still being pursued. Of course a canyon wouldn’t be much of an obstacle to magical beings. “Can you run?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  He actually kept up pretty well, which gave her hope that any injury was superficial. Obstacle after obstacle arose, all of which she dealt with so easily that
she couldn’t help but wonder why they bothered.

  “You know, I think I’ve had this nightmare,” Michael said between pants.

  “You too?”

  “Yeah, and in the dream, I never got where I wanted to go.”

  “This is real, though.”

  It took her a few minutes before she noticed that it was getting darker. The Realm didn’t have day and night in the traditional sense, just a constant state of semi-twilight. If the light was changing, something was wrong.

  The trees around them were different, no longer really trees, just twisted shapes. There was something familiar about it, but it was Michael who recognized it first. “We’re in the Borderlands,” he said.

  “You know about the Borderlands?”

  “That’s how we got into the Realm the last time, since we didn’t have a fairy queen to make a portal for us. We crawled through a hole.”

  The Borderlands were the places where the Realm was physically joined to the human world. It was a kind of no-man’s land, and neither human nor fae were truly safe from its denizens.

  “We need to get out of here,” she said. “Most of the things that live here don’t answer to me.”

  That was when the soldiers leapt out from behind the twisted tree trunks. This was the trap, and they’d let the other soldiers chase them right into it.

  She tried every magical trick she knew, but her powers were weaker here on the edge of the Realm, which was probably why she’d been herded here. She switched to her enchantress magic, but she knew less about it, so it was less reliable. The fae magic that came with her crown was pure instinct. Enchantress magic took training and practice to use for anything on this level.

  Michael was doing his part, scattering iron, which kept the attacking fae at a distance, but the two of them were badly outnumbered. To make matters worse, something was dropping out of the sky at them, little things that clutched at her clothes and hair and nipped her skin with tiny, sharp teeth. Next to her, Michael brushed them off himself while muttering, “I hate these things.”

  Just when Sophie was starting to despair, the area grew lighter, not because of anything shining from above, but because of a glow rising from below and taking to the air. The little creatures had arrived, and they were swarming against the Borderlands dwellers. That freed Sophie and Michael to concentrate on the soldiers. They couldn’t get close enough to the humans to use swords, thanks to Michael’s iron, but some of them had spears. She threw up the best barrier she could, but it didn’t seem to hold up well unless she concentrated on it, and concentration was difficult with so much going on around her.

  “Sophie!” Michael called out, and she whirled just in time to see a spear flying straight at her. He pushed her aside, but didn’t quite get out of the way in time, so it grazed his arm.

  She rushed to see if he was injured, but something held her back—a silver chain that had wrapped itself around her waist. She couldn’t free herself from it, and it was drawing her back toward whoever held the other end. She’d encountered something like this before, so she quit fighting and instead turned to run at the person holding it, creating slack in the line. She was readying herself to leap at the soldier on the other end when another chain caught her, bringing her to the ground.

  As she fell, the crown came off her head and rolled along the ground. She reached for it with both her hands and her magic, but one of the soldiers swooped in and grabbed it. A split second later, all the soldiers disappeared, along with the crown and the silver chains.

  Thirty-one

  Inside the Fake Throne Room

  Meanwhile

  Emily had to admit that this throne room was far more impressive than Sophie’s. Sophie’s had potential, but it was mostly empty and lifeless. This was more what a royal throne room should look like, which, she supposed, was the point.

  It actually looked a lot like Sophie’s palace, she decided as she studied her surroundings. The impossible proportions of the room were similar, and the tall arched windows were almost identical.

  “Whoever created this has seen the real palace,” Amelia said, confirming Emily’s suspicions.

  “Look at the throne,” Athena said.

  It was far away, so Emily couldn’t see much more than a glint of silver. But it did look a lot like Sophie’s throne.

  “I believe it may be an illusion,” Eamon said, squinting at it.

  “Yes, it is,” Amelia confirmed.

  The big difference between this room and the real one was the celebration taking place in it. Bright banners hung from the ceiling beams, sprightly music played, long banquet tables were loaded with festive food and drink, and flowers were on display everywhere, spilling from vases and spiraling in garlands down every pillar. Sophie would say it was too much, but really, was it possible for there to be “too much” at a royal occasion in fairyland?

  The other big difference from Sophie’s palace was the number of people present. Granted, Emily had only been at the real palace immediately after it was reawakened by Sophie taking the throne and in the aftermath of a war, so she’d hardly seen it at its best, but she couldn’t imagine that a palace occupied by an absentee queen would ever be the site of such a revel.

  Every court in the Realm appeared to be represented. There were a few fairies in the midcentury Doris Day attire that had been favored in Maeve’s old court. A lot of fairies were dressed in medieval finery right out of a fairy-tale book. There were also some dressed in 1930s glamour, in Regency attire similar to the costumes in Emily’s show, in Victorian finery, and in elaborate Georgian confections. About the only thing missing was the austere look of the Puritans. Emily allowed herself a moment of amusement from imagining that as the look for Sophie’s court, but then there wouldn’t be nearly enough pastels or floral prints for her.

  All of these people were talking, dancing, or availing themselves of the food tables. Even if they’d been brought there against their will, they didn’t seem to mind too much now. They’d forgotten whatever protest they might have made while indulging in the party.

  “I don’t see anyone who might have been at the real palace,” Amelia said as she craned her neck to scan the crowd.

  “They would have locked them up,” Emily said. “They wouldn’t want them giving up the game.” She searched the crowd for a familiar strawberry blond head, but the throngs were too dense for her to spot any one person who would have been shorter than anyone here. Where was Sophie? She needed to have those rulers free and able to denounce the false queen.

  “Do you think something happened to Sophie?” Emily asked Eamon. “You’d think there’d have been a sign of her by now. Like an explosion or a riot.” A thought popped into her head. “We should go looking for her now that we’re inside the palace.”

  “Is this that compulsion again?” he asked.

  “No. It’s different.” Actually, it came from the same place in her head, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and if she told him it was at all like the compulsion, he wouldn’t let her go. Could she help it if she was being forced to do something she’d want to do anyway?

  She started to head off to the other end of the throne room, but something held her back. The resistance was linked to her hand, and she looked down to see that she was holding Beau’s leash, and the dog had stubbornly planted himself on the floor. “Come on, boy,” she said, but Beau just glared at her. She tried handing the leash over to Amelia and Athena, but they shook their heads.

  “I believe your dog is sending you a message,” Athena said with a smile.

  “But we need to find Sophie!”

  “What good would you be able to do for your sister, who is an enchantress with the power of the entire Realm at her beck and call?” Amelia asked.

  “Whatever drew her into the palace is drawing her in deeper,” Eamon said.

  She shot him a glare to let him know she thought he was a traitor, but he was looking at her with such tender concern that it stunned her. He rea
lly did care. For a moment, she forgot about the urge pulling her elsewhere in the palace. “Do you really think I might be in danger?” she asked him softly.

  “You’re in the Realm. Anything you can’t explain is a potential danger.” She started to protest, but he distracted her by putting his arm around her shoulders. He was probably trying to keep her from going anywhere, but it made her feel cherished. She wasn’t sure what to make of all this. Maybe it was part of whatever spell was being cast on her.

  Just as suddenly as the compulsion had come upon her, it was gone. The feeling was so surprising that she might have lost her balance if Eamon hadn’t been holding her. “Wow, that’s weird,” she said. “It’s gone, like that, just like the last time.”

  “Do you still think it’s a good idea to head deeper into the palace to look for Sophie?” Amelia asked, a slight smirk on her lips.

  “No, not really. But I do wonder where she is.”

  “She knows what she’s doing,” Athena said with a reassuring pat on her arm.

  “But we should be doing something. If Sophie hasn’t freed the other rulers to come discredit the impostor, maybe we can.”

  “What do you mean?” Eamon asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe a whisper campaign? See if we can raise some doubts, get people to question the situation?”

  Athena grinned and clapped her hands with great enthusiasm. “Oh, that would be fun!”

  “But we should be careful,” Amelia put in with a tiny glare at her sister. “We don’t want to get hauled away as subversives.”

  “Keep moving,” Emily suggested. “Don’t hang around in one place too long.”

  “You and I should join the dancing,” Eamon said. He sounded very sincere, but there was a glint in his silvery eyes. Without a word, she handed Beau’s leash and her bag over to Athena and let him sweep her onto the dance floor.

  The dancing reminded her of the Regency dances in her show, which meant the pattern wasn’t too hard for her to figure out. Even better, it allowed her to interact with every man in the line, and Eamon could do likewise with the women. In the first section, while they were still dancing together, she said, “You know what to do, right?”