The Rise of the Fairy Queen (The Fairy Queen Trilogy Book 1)

by Gemma Perfect

  Hardy steeples his fingers, and Elsie knows he’s thinking about her idea, trying to come up with a reason it won’t work.

  Malachi sits down with a thud.

  “It’s so simple. It’s genius.”

  “You think it’ll work?” Elsie asks.

  “I know so,” Malachi says, and they all turn to Hardy.

  “Is it too simple?”

  “Is there such a thing?” Ajo sounds excited.

  They pick the idea apart for an age, turning it this way and that, questioning what if this happens, or what if that happens, but they all know the same thing. It’ll work.

  We rarely see the royal family outside the confines of the castle. The place is ridiculously heavily guarded. The guards are prepped to look for signs of trouble or unrest.

  Elsie walking up to the castle, alone and unarmed, won’t raise any suspicions. But it will raise curiosity. They’ll open the doors and the battle will begin.

  Hardy kisses her, despite everybody watching, and Elsie blushes.

  “You, my dear, are a genius.”

  Elsie shrugs and then laughs.

  With a firmer understanding of what was always the most troublesome part of their plan – where to begin – it’s easy to make further plans, more detailed plans, of exactly who will be where, doing what.

  The aim is to kill clippers and guards and capture everyone else. They want all of their fairies inside the castle walls, closing in, until the castle is overrun and under their control.

  They’ll free Isla and her handmaiden, Lacey, and lock up any servant who cannot come quietly.

  Elsie wants everyone locked up, not murdered, but eventually gives into everyone else. Clippers and guards will be killed automatically, no questions asked, and everyone else will state their case for survival.

  It feels very real to Elsie, and now and then it hits her what they are about to do, and what she has agreed to. This is what she came home for. To stop her step parents doing what they are doing. She’s so close.

  They spend the rest of the day giving out weapons and organising a last meet up of the fairies who are prepared to fight later that evening at Apple Valley. Hardy wants to rally them: Elsie wants to thank them.

  Final weapons are given out and a tonic for every fighter, so they are full of energy and ready to go.

  The hours are rushing by, and it overwhelms Elsie. She slips out of the war room and flies down the corridor and outside. She needs fresh air. She knows they won’t, but now and then she panics that the guards at the castle will kill her when they see her. She worries that the clippers who killed Meg might spot her and know something is going on. She worries that the clippers who killed Meg didn’t believe she was the princess, so the other guards might not know who she is. Hardy has an answer for each of her concerns and she feels better. Just overwhelmed.

  She breathes in deep gulps of fresh air. It’s almost too late to worry. She will walk up to the castle and then the battle will begin. She hopes to survive. They will pass her her weapon when the first wave of fairies swarms the castle. If she doesn’t make it, at least she will have started the entire thing off. They will win because of her help.

  “Anya told me your idea about tomorrow” Bella says, coming from behind a tree. She uncrosses her arms, smiles. “It’s an excellent idea. Clever.”

  Elsie shivers. “Thank you.”

  Bella runs her finger along the bark on the tree trunk. She looks everywhere but at Elsie.

  “I want to fight tomorrow, if it’s not too late.”

  “Of course it’s not too late. And it’s not up to me, anyway. You don’t need my permission.”

  “I suppose I need Hardy’s?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant it’s up to you. You’re a fairy and an amazing fighter. None of us would stop you, none of us would want to. I’ll be glad you’re on our side.”

  “Really? Even though I’ve been horrible.”

  Elsie shrugs. “We can all be horrible.”

  “Even you?”

  “I’m not some perfect princess. I’m petrified of tomorrow. I’m a rubbish fighter – still. I have no idea how I’ll rule a Kingdom.”

  “You’ll do all right. You’ll have help.”

  “I know – Hardy-who-would-be-king.”

  “He told you?”

  “He said he’d have done it if I hadn’t come back. He also told me that the other fairies wouldn’t have liked it.”

  “It’s true. There would have been another battle, another uprising, another usurper.”

  “But I’m not a usurper.”

  “Exactly. It’s the best outcome for everyone. I don’t care that you’re with Hardy. And if his intentions are honourable, then I wish you well. I just wasn’t sure...”

  “Neither was I.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m a little surer, but taking my time, thinking before I speak. It’s hard without Meg. I feel like I’m on my own.”

  “You’re not. You have the entire Kingdom behind you.”

  “Thank you. It’s still pretty daunting.”

  “I can’t do much, but I can fight tomorrow. As long as you’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’d be honoured to have you there.”

  They go inside together and even though Bella holds back, Elsie tucks her arm through hers.

  “I’m not coming in there,” Bella says when they reach the door to the war room. “No way.”

  “You don’t have to, but you can if you want to.”

  Bella shakes her head. “It’s too much. I’ll be at Apple Valley later.”

  They hug and Elsie goes back into the war room. Hardy lifts a hand in greeting and mouths, you all right?

  Elsie nods and takes a seat, letting all the kerfuffle wash over her.

  One day left.

  After several arguments back and fore they have decided on Elsie going to the castle at first light. They can get their troops into place while it’s dark and be ready to attack as soon as the door is open.

  They are all nervous, and they all handle it in distinct ways. Elsie feels sick. Hardy is giddy. Norah is even more talkative than usual. None of them are unaffected. By the time they all gather at Apple Valley, the air is electric.

  Hardy addresses the crowd first.

  “Tomorrow!”

  A cheer goes up, and Elsie smiles. He is very good at what he does. People look to him for guidance and leadership. Every time. Even she does it; though she’s determined to keep him in check.

  “Tomorrow we change our lives. We change our futures. We change the entire Kingdom. We won’t have to cower in our houses anymore. We won’t watch our children go hungry because nothing grows. We get our pride back. We get our dignity back. We get our home back.”

  The applause is enormous. The excitement and fear palpable. They are on the brink of something.

  Elsie takes Hardy’s place and smiles at the cheers. She bows her head slightly.

  “I want to thank every single one of you. Those of us who fight, those of us who clean up the injuries. Those of us who use the weapons, those of us who made them. Tomorrow is for all of us, every man, woman and child. The clipped and those in fear of the clippings. Tomorrow!”

  It feels like a celebration before anything has even happened. The fairies are mingling, laughing, talking, getting pumped up. Some are angry and some are fearful. Elsie veers from one to the other and just wishes she had Meg with her to talk some calm into her.

  Everyone feels good.

  And then a shadow falls over them. Elsie peers up to the sky, unable to make out what’s going on. Murmurs break out and then silence as they realise what they can see.

  At least a thousand fairies, dressed in royal livery, are flying overhead, in formation, as one black mass, blocking the sky and blocking the light.

  The mass comes to a stop and a single fairy drops, with something in his arms. Fear snakes through the crowd of fairies and snuffs out the excitement they had all been
feeling.

  The mass of fairies is still, but the single fairy flies lower and lower and lower until they can see what he is holding.

  Who he is holding.

  He drops the body to the floor, and then the mass of royal fairies flies away.

  The valley is lit up with the evening light again, but a dark heaviness has descended on all of them. Elsie flies over to the body and turns it.

  Her sister.

  She screams an unholy sound. She hasn’t seen her for six years, but it’s like time has spun backwards. Her little sister is dead, dropped from the sky like a dead rat from a bird’s mouth.

  She gathers her into her arms, sobbing. The other fairies stand around helpless and frightened.

  Hardy hunkers beside Elsie. He reaches over to Isla. There is a piece of paper pinned to her dress.

  “Looking forward to tomorrow.” He reads the message and swears, ripping the paper into pieces and throwing them to the ground.

  Elsie doesn’t look up, just holds onto her sister.

  The fairies press closer, muttering and murmuring. What do they do now? Is the rebellion off? How did the royal family know about it? What do they do next?

  Hardy flies away from Elsie and hovers in the air so everyone can hear him.

  “This is the royal princess, Elsie’s sister. They have killed her. It’s a message to us. A simple message. And what I say to their message is screw you. They think they will stop us. This will spur us on. They think this will make us cower like pathetic losers. This will rally us.”

  Elsie sets her sister down gently on the floor and asks Aster to stay by her side. She joins Hardy. “They think this will scare us off. I say we don’t wait a second longer. We had a plan to storm the castle, but I changed it. Now we go back to the original plan. Right now. We storm the castle. If you are too scared you don’t have to come, but look at what they’ve done, look at how worthless they deemed my sister to be. I’m ready. Are you?”

  There is a rallying cry from most of the fairies in the valley, and they allow the ones who do not want to help to slink away with no repercussions. Elsie barely notices them leave. Her mind is focussed on only two things; Meg’s dead body and now Isla’s.

  She feels sick with a fury so intense it frightens her.

  The mass of fairies leaves Apple Valley as one, and head to the castle. Their weapons aloft, their bellies full of rage. As they march the streets, other fairies join them, fairies who had been reluctant to fight, fairies who had been frightened and unsure. Word spreads of what happened to Isla and the anger mounts.

  The mob is armed and ready to go, repression finally replaced with fury; helplessness finally replaced with anger; hopelessness finally replaced with a white-hot anger which feels like a physical thing, coursing through the crowd, igniting each person it meets with a passion to end this and end it now.

  When they arrive at the pathway that winds up to the castle, the throng is twice the size that they expected it to be. It appears almost every fairy who lives in Allaire has finally come out in its defence.

  Despite knowing that some of them may die, the fairies don’t miss a step. They continue their march, weapons aloft, up the hill to the castle.

  The first wave of armoured guards swarm out of the castle to meet them, and they are dealt with swiftly. The guard’s skill is nothing against the fairy’s anger, and they all die.

  The band of fairies pounds onward. More guards pour out of the castle, and the fairies automatically make a barrier around Elsie and Hardy, so Elsie doesn’t get hurt. She has her sword but won’t need it if they can help it.

  They fly easily over the walls and into the courtyard, smashing windows and swarming inside the castle. At this point they disband, and every fairy has to fight for themselves. Elsie is still by Hardy’s side, heading for the throne room. She thinks the king and queen will have hidden at the first sign of trouble. And she knows exactly where they’ll be.

  Hardy is a force; every guard or clipper who comes near them is murdered without hesitation. They shove any servant behind them; some other fairies have the job of mopping them up – either killing the ones who cause trouble or rounding them up and locking them in the dungeon until Elsie and Hardy have taken control of the castle.

  They can hear the sounds of battle behind them, but Elsie is focussed on one thing only. Her step parents. The ones who made the call to have Isla murdered.

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Hardy asks, slicing through the neck of another guard. He’s barely broken a sweat.

  Elsie nods. “I’m sure. Off the throne room.”

  They enter the throne room and Elsie pauses. She’s taken back to when her parents were alive, when they would sit in here as a family and talk and laugh and their father would chase them and their mother would tell them stories, such stories. She swallows down her upset and nods. “This way.”

  Behind the thrones a wall of gold hides a door which nobody would know about. Unless they had ever played hide and seek in the castle. She hid in here every time, and every time her father would find her and gather her up despite her squeals. “If you don’t want me to find you, you should hide somewhere else.” And she would answer every time. “I want you to find me. I love you.” And every time he would laugh, and together they would find Isla, who was always better at hiding.

  It’s a smaller throne room, for esteemed guests only.

  Elsie pushes open the door.

  25

  SHE WAS RIGHT. THE king and queen of Allaire, who are brave enough to order the clipping of tiny baby fairies, are cowering in the corner, hands clasped, faces pale.

  Hardy holds up his sword.

  Elsie touches his arm, holding him back. She shuts the door. Nobody will find them.

  The king stands up, hands up, trying to placate Elsie, but trembling.

  She shakes her head and scoffs. “You’re not so brave now, are you?”

  The queen stands up, takes the king’s hand. “Elsie.” It sounds like there’s a plea in her voice and Elsie shakes her head, closes her eyes for just a second, picturing Isla’s dead body falling from the sky.

  “No. There’s nothing you can say to me, no way you can justify all you’ve done. It’s over.”

  “We’ve stormed the castle,” Hardy says. “Most of your guards are dead. Most of your clippers are dead. You have nobody left to support you or fight on your behalf. It’s just you two.”

  “Will you fight?” Elsie asks, looking at the panic on their faces. She already knows the answer. “I wanted to ask you so many questions. I Wanted to understand why you locked me up, why you locked Isla up, why you wanted to hurt us. I wanted to know what compelled you to hurt the fairies you should have been protecting. Why clip them? Why abuse them? I had this burning need to find out why.”

  She sits on the throne her mother always sat on.

  “Stop cowering in the corner. Stand before me.”

  They obey her and Hardy stands behind them, sword ready.

  “I had so many questions until you killed Isla. Then I realised you were monsters. Soulless. Evil. And I realised I didn’t want to hear anything you said because I don’t care. You might justify your actions in your own heads, and maybe even to each other. I don’t know and I don’t care. Hardy, don’t kill them.”

  “Don’t?”

  “No. We’ll clip them. I want to hang their wings on a pole in the village square so everyone can see what happened to the king and queen of Allaire. The royal family who betrayed their own subjects.”

  The king and queen throw themselves onto the floor, sobbing and begging for their lives.

  Their words don’t sink in for Elsie, her head is full of white noise. She can hear the echoes of the cries of every fairy who has ever been hurt by these two, ever been clipped by these two. She can see her prison walls, and Meg’s dead body. She can see her sister drop to the floor like a stone. She can hear the fight go on outside these walls, and she has no feelings for the two o
f them. Not hatred. Not sympathy. Just nothing.

  She stands up, gripping onto her sword.

  “If you try to fight back, I will hurt you harder.”

  She grabs hold of the queen by her arm and pushes her to the ground, to her knees.

  “I can do this,” Hardy says.

  “I have to do this,” Elsie says.

  “You clip him, and I’ll clip her.”

  Hardy pushes the king to his knees and readies his sword.

  “Elsie, it’s not pleasant.”

  “I know.”

  Without letting herself hesitate, she holds up her sword, and slices through her step mother’s wings. Hardy does the same to the king. The screams don’t sound human; the sword feels too heavy; the struggle too difficult, but she does it. She slices the wings off, leaving bloody stumps, just the way the clippers did to so many other fairies.

  Then she throws the wings onto the floor.

  She turns to Hardy. “Now I kill them.”

  She stabs her step father in the heart, watching the life fade quickly from his eyes. Then she does the same to her step mother, before she can change her mind.

  Then she drops to the floor, exhausted and amazed by what she’s done.

  “Hardy?” Her voice is thin, and he drops beside her, taking her in his arms.

  They can still hear the sounds of the battle going on in the other rooms, and they know they should help, but they just need a minute. Elsie needs a minute to breathe, a minute to accept what she has done and by doing so, who she has become.

  She’s a murderer.

  She has no regret. She looks at their bodies and she’s glad. She looks at their wings and she feels vindicated.

  But it’s not a light feeling. It’s an immense responsibility. And she knows this feeling will only grow. Now she’s queen of Allaire. Queen of the Kingdom. Hardy’s queen.

  “That was easier than I thought,” she says, her voice shaking.

  “None of this has been easy. What you just did wasn’t easy. I’m so proud of you, though.”