To Catch a Queen

by Shanna Swendson

  She was ready to rush out of the maze and go to Nana and Sophie when a pair of legs came into view. Looking through the narrow portal through the hedge, she had to change her angle to move up from the figures on the ground to see a face, and then she had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting, “Maeve!” out loud. Instead, she whispered, “Maeve’s there, too. She must be in on this, that double-crosser.”

  “She must have been left behind to watch them,” Amelia said.

  “Which means Niall’s probably already on his way back to the stone,” Emily said. “There goes this contest. Good thing we’re already ahead. Or would this count as cheating? Is there a form of cheating so blatant that it would disqualify anyone in a fairy contest?”

  “I am afraid the contest is hardly our biggest worry at the moment,” Eamon said, “not if the queens have been incapacitated.” He frowned for a moment and said, “I will confront Maeve. That should serve as a distraction that will allow you to neutralize her.” He didn’t give them a chance to argue with his plan before he moved around the last hedge to exit the maze.

  Emily bit back an anxious cry of, “Eamon!” just before she ruined any element of surprise he might have had. It was almost as nerve-wracking watching him in danger as knowing her sister was in trouble, and that was a revelation. Those kisses had apparently not just been acting on her part. She had a lot to think about when all this was over.

  She heard Maeve’s voice say, “Eamon, what are you doing here?” and forced her attention back to the matters at hand.

  “I hadn’t seen you in your court,” Eamon said.

  “I have no more court,” Maeve spat.

  “Oh, that would explain why I couldn’t find it,” Eamon said, sounding remarkably casual, like he’d just bumped into Maeve while aimlessly wandering around. He was playing up his absentminded professor persona, as though he really had been so out of the loop that he’d lost track of her current situation. Emily had to reassess his acting ability once more—and what did that mean for those kisses?

  “I never should have had you find that girl for me,” Maeve said. “She brought me nothing but trouble.”

  “Didn’t you accomplish your goal in luring her sister?”

  “My goal was to win the throne,” Maeve snapped. “That did not go as I planned it. But I will have it soon anyway.”

  “Oh?” Emily couldn’t see him well through the bushes, but it looked like Eamon was standing with his hands in the pockets of his tweed jacket. Eamon wasn’t really a casual guy, ever, but Maeve didn’t seem to have noticed that he was acting out of character.

  “Yes. I’ve made plans and alliances, and as you can see, I’ve had my revenge on that usurper who took my rightful throne.”

  That sent Emily’s heart into her throat. Were Sophie and Nana lying there dead?

  “I was wondering about that,” Eamon said, still sounding way too nonchalant. “It seems an odd place to take a nap, but as much as I’ve read about humans, I still don’t understand them. So I suppose you did something to make them fall asleep here?”

  Emily glanced back at the enchantresses, hoping for some reassurance, but they were busy conferring with each other on a plan of attack. Emily didn’t want to interfere with that, so she returned her attention to the strange scene playing out between Maeve and Eamon.

  “Soon the court will come here, after Niall is named the rightful ruler, and I will be his consort as reward for my assistance in defeating his enemies,” Maeve gloated.

  “I thought Orla was his consort,” Eamon said.

  “She lacks the proper ambition to rule at his side.”

  “That would take a lot of ambition,” Eamon agreed amiably. “And with that much ambition, why stop at being a mere consort?”

  The enchantresses motioned for Emily to stay where she was, then they eased their way out of the maze, splitting up to come at Maeve from both sides. Eamon had managed to gradually shift position as he talked to Maeve so that she had to turn her back to the maze to continue facing him. That allowed the enchantresses to sneak up on her. Before she could react, they hit her with a spell that dropped her where she stood.

  Emily didn’t wait for Maeve to hit the ground before she rushed out of her hiding place and fell on her knees beside her sister and grandmother. Much to her relief, she found strong pulses in both of them. “I think they’re just under a sleeping spell,” Athena reassured Emily as she knelt beside her.

  “Then maybe we should have brought Beau with us,” Emily said, forcing a smile. Or Michael, she added mentally.

  “Oh, this isn’t a kissing kind of spell,” Athena said. She was already digging in her bag, searching for something. “This one?” she asked her sister, holding up a vial.

  “That’s probably the best to start with,” Amelia said after bending to peer at the vial.

  Athena uncorked the vial, and the scent of whatever was in there wrinkled Emily’s nose and brought tears to her eyes. The enchantress waved it in front of Sophie and Nana, then the two sisters held their hands out toward each other and murmured something under their voices. The air crackled with energy, like a summer storm was approaching.

  Sophie’s eyelids flickered first, and she stirred like she was having a bad nightmare. Nana moaned softly, but barely moved. Emily gripped her sister’s hand and urged, “Come on, Soph, wake up. That jerk’s probably stealing your throne even now.”

  That was when she noticed that Sophie was no longer wearing the crown. She had been wearing it when they left, hadn’t she? Nana wasn’t wearing it, either, but her Queen Elizabeth hat was gone. “Guys, we’ve got a problem: Niall must have the crown,” she said to the others.

  “We don’t have time to be delicate, then,” Athena said, her jaw set with determination. She pulled another vial out of her bag and added, “You might want to hold your nose for a second. This one can be rather pungent.”

  Considering what the last one had smelled like, Emily decided not to risk it. She took a deep breath, held it, and pinched her nose as Athena uncorked the bottle. This time, she barely had to wave it in front of Sophie before Sophie sat straight up, her eyes wild with the air of someone who’d awakened abruptly while in the throes of a nightmare.

  “Where is he?” she demanded.

  “He’s gone, probably back to the valley,” Emily told her, then winced as she added, “And it looks like he took the crown with him.”

  Nearby, Nana woke more gradually. “That potion is vile,” she remarked, rubbing her nose.

  “It never fails,” Athena said, returning the corked vial to her bag.

  “How big a head start does Niall have?” Sophie asked.

  “He was gone before we got here, so at least ten minutes,” Emily said. “But you can probably get back there soon enough, and you’re still ahead even if he wins this one.”

  Sophie started to get up, and Eamon gallantly offered her his hand to assist her. It was a sign of how rattled she was that she accepted it instead of just bouncing up on her own. Once Sophie was up, he helped Nana rise.

  Sophie was already on her way into the palace. Emily rose and rushed after her. “Don’t you need to get back there to finish the contest?”

  Without breaking stride, Sophie said, “If he wins mastery of the Realm, he wins, even if he did cheat. So I need to win this one definitively.”

  The others had entered the palace and were following them, but Emily kept up with Sophie. “And how do you plan to do that?”

  Sophie grinned. “I’m taking the contest to my turf.”

  Forty-three

  The Throne Stone

  Meanwhile

  No sooner had Emily and the others left when Niall returned, striding down the hill into the valley, a rose in one hand and the crown in the other. Michael noticed that he hadn’t tried to put on the crown yet, which meant there was still hope. If he’d truly defeated Sophie to take it from her, he wouldn’t have hesitated.

  “Oh, my opponent hasn’t returned yet?” h
e asked far too nonchalantly as he approached the stone. He handed the rose to Tallulah with a gallant bow. “I believe this was the object of the quest, and I seem to have won the race.” He acted as though he was surprised to find the crown in his other hand. “I also have brought this, which the queen seems to have misplaced. I can wait awhile before I put it on. Ceremony is important, after all.”

  A flash of anger and dismay crossed Tallulah’s face ever so briefly, but she very quickly schooled her features to act like she wasn’t worried at all. “We have yet to see the full outcome of this contest,” she said.

  “Wasn’t the contest to get to the palace and bring back a rose?” Niall asked, his eyes wide and innocent—unnaturally so. He looked like one of those paintings of kids with big eyes that were probably meant to be cute, but that gave Michael the creeps.

  “We have to determine the origins of this rose and what you did to obtain it,” Tallulah said. “You could have taken a rose from anywhere.”

  “But where did I get this?” he asked, brandishing the crown.

  “That is not proof of mastery over the Realm.”

  “It’s proof of mastery over the queen, which is the same thing.” He drew closer to Tallulah, standing so that he was almost nose to nose with her. She didn’t flinch in the slightest. “I know she’s your favorite, but you’re going to have to call this one for me.”

  Before Tallulah could answer, there was a strange wrenching sensation. For a long moment, Michael lost track of where he was. He couldn’t see or hear anything, and he felt detached from reality. It was similar to what happened when Sophie crossed the Realm in a step or two, but more disorienting because he wasn’t traveling. He knew he was standing still. His feet weren’t moving, and they never lost contact with the ground, but he felt like he was suddenly in a different place.

  When the blur of his surroundings resolved and came into focus, he found that they were back in the palace—the real one. It looked more like he’d expect a palace to look because now it was far from deserted. He, Jen, Tallulah, and the fae rulers were arranged around the dais steps. The throne room was full of the other attendees, and the doors and windows were all open, revealing the rest of the gathering on the palace grounds, where they could also look inside.

  At the head of the room, Sophie sat on the throne, her sister and the others arranged around her like courtiers. Sophie gave the little smile that Michael had learned meant someone was about to get eviscerated. “There, that’s better,” she said sweetly—too sweetly, her voice full of steel magnolia honey. “I realized that I designed this test badly. What does crossing the Realm really say about one’s mastery of it? So I brought the Realm to me.” She handed a rose to Emily, who took it to Tallulah. “Here’s my rose, and there’s a whole garden of them out there.”

  “This is an interesting development,” Tallulah said, barely concealing a smile. “While the test was presented in terms of a race, the point of it was to demonstrate mastery of the Realm. Niall won the race, but who can argue that transporting the residents of the Realm by rearranging the Realm itself demonstrates the kind of mastery none of us could achieve?” She turned to Niall. “Unless you would like to try?”

  Michael hadn’t seen a fairy redden with rage, but Niall showed that it was possible. “You’re bending the rules to suit your favorite,” he accused.

  “Then perhaps you should show us how you won the race,” Tallulah suggested.

  Sophie nodded ever so slightly to Eamon, and a moment later a blond fairy in a maid’s uniform rushed to Niall. “You won!” she cried out, throwing her arms around him. “Now we will rule side by side!” Only when she pulled back to see his reaction did Michael recognize Maeve. Next to him, Jen stiffened. Jen had been Maeve’s captive, and Maeve had kept her, even after realizing she wasn’t the woman she sought.

  Niall looked even more distressed than Jen at Maeve’s appearance, though probably because his consort was coming toward him with a glare that made everyone present take a step back. “You were going to rule with her at your side?” she asked, her voice icy in spite of the storm raging on her face.

  “No!” he cried out, trying to shrug his way out of Maeve’s embrace. “She must have misunderstood. I just needed her help to get into the palace.”

  Now Maeve was outraged. “You were using me? You promised.”

  All the while, Sophie leaned an elbow on the arm of her throne and watched as if she was enjoying a particularly juicy soap opera. She’d clearly engineered the situation for maximum dramatic impact. The fairies in attendance watched with equal relish. They knew a good scene when they saw it, and they laughed out loud. The laughter didn’t sit at all well with Niall, who tried to distance himself from both the women he’d wronged, even as he glared at the crowd.

  “The test was to manipulate the Realm, not a person,” Tallulah said with barely restrained glee. “You may have won the race, but you did not win the contest.” A cheer rose from the assembly, and Sophie allowed herself a slight smile of triumph.

  “But I have the crown!” Niall shouted, raising it over his head. “How did I get that, if not by besting the queen?”

  “If you believe you won that crown fairly enough that it and the Realm will accept your rule, feel free to put it on,” Sophie said, still with that honeyed tone that implied she was seriously pissed-off, but was too much of a Southern belle to let it show. The “bless your heart” was implied.

  Every eye in the throne room—and probably a lot of eyes from outside, as well—focused on Niall to see what he’d do. He studied the crown for a long time, as though trying to decide what would happen to him and whether he could really have been considered a winner. At last, he beckoned to one of the handmaidens and set the crown down on the floral pillow. “The Realm must choose the winner, so it would be inappropriate to crown myself prematurely,” he said with a slight bow to Tallulah.

  “Yes, there is the final vote,” the fairy woman said. “This will decide who wins the crown.” She raised her voice and addressed the crowd. “You have seen how the contestants, the crowned queens and the challenger, have fared in a series of tests. These tests measured the skills that are of value to the fae. But no ruler can lead without the acceptance of her—or his—people. The final test will be one of loyalty as the citizens of the Realm choose their new ruler based on what they’ve seen in this contest.”

  That sounded to Michael suspiciously like a democracy, which the free fae should like. But who would they choose? Had Sophie and her grandmother done enough to demonstrate that they were worthy of leading the Realm in spite of only having a trace of fae ancestry?

  “The two candidates may state their cases to those they would rule,” Tallulah declared. “The challenger first.”

  She gestured to Niall, who came to stand at the front of the dais, directly in front of Sophie’s throne, where he blocked her from view. “You’ve seen the contest and who has won fairly and who has benefited from some perhaps questionable calls.” Michael wondered if he even remembered that he’d benefited from at least one of those calls. “But the real key here is that I am fae. Should the Realm not be ruled by one of our own? The human influence on the Realm is already too great. Should we really have a human as a ruler? That would be most irregular. As your king, I would create a truly fae Realm and return us to our former glory.”

  There was polite applause, with a few who sounded slightly more enthusiastic. Tallulah waited for it to die down, and then waited a few moments more, until the silence grew uncomfortable, before she gestured to Sophie.

  Sophie rose from the throne, took her grandmother’s hand, and the two of them walked together, stopping halfway down the dais steps, still enough above the people to be seen, but far enough down to not appear overly distanced from them. “To be honest, I didn’t really want to take this crown,” Sophie said. “I did it out of duty to my ancestor, who thought she was leaving the Realm to flourish on its own. In case the Realm ever needed a queen again, sh
e left the knowledge of how to regain the throne with her descendants, and that is how my grandmother and I came to be here. I awoke the Realm when I took the throne and crown after winning them with my blood and success in the ancient trials. My grandmother has also passed the trials and won the right to wear the crown.”

  The crowd applauded, and when the applause died, Sophie continued. “The Realm only needs a ruler to keep the land awake and to settle disputes. I intend to change very little. Those of you who want courts may live among them. The free will only notice that they have a ruler if they need to resort to royal judgment. I ask only that all residents of the Realm deal fairly with each other, regardless of who they are—human, or any variety of fae.”

  That got even more applause. With a glance over her shoulder at Niall, Sophie added. “If I were you, I’d worry about a ruler who first attempted to gain power through trickery, putting an impostor under his control on the throne. Look at what he did in that impostor’s name. He used the Hunt to menace his subjects. Is that the kind of ruler you want?”

  There was shouting this time, mostly from the wilder fairies. Tallulah stepped in, motioning for the crowd to be silent, and Sophie and her grandmother moved aside. “Who among you choose Niall as ruler?” Tallulah called out.

  The more medieval-looking of the rulers came forward and knelt in front of Niall. His consort—probably now “former”—very pointedly did not. A few of the attendees dressed in his 1930s style, the mid-century style of Maeve’s old court, or the medieval fantasy-land style moved forward to kneel. Michael didn’t notice much action out on the grounds. There were one or two cheers.

  Tallulah nodded, then said, “And for the two ladies?”

  There was a long silence that made Michael nervous. It was like no one wanted to move first. Jen surprised him by releasing his arm and moving to kneel in front of the Drakes. “I apologize for allowing myself to be used as an impostor,” she said.