I Do Believe in Faeries (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 3) (6 page)

So many reasons to feel guilty.

Robin didn’t say anything as he watched me, his green eyes glittering. “Mortals have fascinated me for a long time,” he said softly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You are very…conflicting creatures,” he admitted. “You don’t take care of your environment, yet you leap at the slim possibility of saving a baby that isn’t even your own. It’s like you mean well, but you are so misguided.”

I nodded. “That’s putting it lightly.”

“But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about mortals, it’s that you can
be
guided.”

“Like guiding me through Faerieland?”

“Yeah.” He looked amused. “Like guiding you through Faerieland.”

Chapter 6

I sensed the change in the air as soon as we stepped out into a meadow. The grassy field led up to a tranquil castle nestled among some rocks at the mouth of a babbling creek. The air here was lazy. Breathing it in made me want to lay down in the grass and sigh happily, curl up and fall asleep. The sun in this part of the faerie world was stronger than the rest of the island, like it was perpetually helping daffodils and daisies shake off winter.

Although winter hadn’t been here in a long time.

“Spring always was the nicest Court,” Robin muttered. He stuffed his hands in his pockets as he nodded at the castle. “Everything’s always perfect.” He looked none too happy about that.

“Spring is my favorite season,” I said offhandedly.

“Of course it is.”

“Well, it’s when winter is finally done. Everything’s blooming and pretty. The weather is perfect…”

“…and the ruler here is crazy,” Robin finished for me. In fact, he looked miserable.

“Who is it?” I asked.

He scoffed, as if the name tasted bad on his tongue. “Queen Titania.”

“That sounds familiar,” I said, although I couldn’t pick up where I’d gotten it from.

Robin patted my shoulder. “When all this is done, do yourself a favor, Tinkerbell, and read
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Old Will got a lot of things wrong, but you’d at least have an inkling of what’s about to happen.”

Who knew that high school reading could have been helpful in a situation like this?

“Okay,” I said quietly.

“Oh, and I forgot to say…” He looked down at me. “Don’t eat or drink anything here.”

As if right on cue, my stomach rumbled unhappily. We’d been in Tir na nÓg for hours, it seemed, and I’d thrown up what I had for dinner. My stomach was empty and the very thought of food made my mouth water.

“Here? As in Tir na nÓg? Why?”

Robin groaned. “Because if a mortal like you ever wanted to leave Tir na nÓg, you can’t have any sort of sustenance here. It creates a bond and it won’t let you leave.”

I gulped nervously through a dry throat. “Okay.”

Robin looked back towards the castle. “Let’s get this over with. I’m sure her Highness is going to be
so
happy to see me.”

So they had a history. Well this was going to be fun.

“Why’d we come here first then?” I asked.

“Because it was the most likely place,” Robin answered. “Titania loves her changelings.”

“What’s a changeling?”

“A child stolen by faeries. Sound familiar?” His eyes glittered as he said that.

“Oh.”

He grinned and started walking through the meadow, tiny faeries leaping out of the way of our feet. They floated like little tiny multicolored fireflies, and I watched them, transfixed. I blinked and the spell was broken, and I hurried to match Robin’s pace.

He seemed amused.

“You have no idea what you’ve gotten into, you realize that, right?”

“I’m realizing that now,” I replied honestly. “How is it so different than the human world?” I was familiar with the foundations of magick in my world, but this was an entirely new ballgame for me.

“Because this is where anything is possible. Always remember that, Tinkerbell. You could get into big trouble if you don’t pay attention.”

We walked for a few minutes as I mulled over his words. The castle seemed to grow in size the closer we got to it, and I felt panicked at the possibility of the baby being there. Or, even worse, if the baby wasn’t there. I had to fill the silence, otherwise I would go crazy.

I tried to make conversation. “Can I ask you something?”

“You’re asking a lot of questions already, Tinkerbell, so shoot.” He sounded amused.

“Why do you always call me ‘Tinkerbell’?”

He looked at me, his green eyes raking over my face and I could feel my cheeks deepen in a blush. “You remind me of her,” he said finally.

“Is she real?”

“No.” He laughed mockingly. “She’s a fairy tale.”

I frowned, feeling let down by that. “Well, you’re like a Peter Pan, who’s a villain,” I retorted.

“What makes me a villain?”

“You frighten me.”

The words popped out before I could stop them, but it stopped Robin in his tracks. His face was unreadable as he gazed at me, and I swallowed, feeling self-conscious again.

“Listen, Tinkerbell—
Abby
,” he corrected himself and licked his lips. “I—”

“Why, if it isn’t Robin Goodfellow!” an impossibly high-pitched voice screeched, interrupting whatever he was going to say. Disappointment fluttered in my stomach.

“Hello, Mustardseed,” Robin said, his voice now bored.

“You have a lot of nerve showing your face here after everything you did!” I still couldn’t see who or what Mustardseed was, as the voice seemed to be coming from every direction.

“I was working for my king,” Robin answered. “You’d do the same for Titania.”

“Yes, but she is better than Oberon,” Mustardseed’s voice quipped, sounding highly offended.

Robin snorted, letting the voice know exactly what he thought of Titania. “I’m sure any loyal subject thinks that way about their ruler.” He nodded to me. “Now, if you’re done trying to posture, would you mind showing your ugly face so that the little lady could see you?”

“What little lady—
Oh!
”

From out of nowhere, a young child’s face popped into existence two inches from my nose, like it was inspecting me. I shrieked and stumbled backwards. The faerie in front of me was persistent, inspecting me, and watching me like I was a unicorn. Then I wondered if there were any unicorns in Tir na nÓg and I thought that if there were, they probably wouldn’t be as magickal to faeries as they are to humans.

“You brought a mortal here?” Mustardseed fretted. “Oh, Titania isn’t going to like this.”

“Why wouldn’t Titania like me here?” I asked. I tried stepping out of the faerie’s way, but it kept coming in closer to inspect me.

“And the mortal talks too!” Mustardseed bemoaned. “Oh no.”

I couldn’t tell if Mustardseed was a boy or a girl. It was only the length of my hand and green-skinned with a loin cloth made up of lilies and a shirt made up of leaves. Gossamer wings allowed it to fly around my head like some sort of satellite in orbit.

It got old really quick.

“Relax,” Robin said. As if noticing that I was unhappy being inspected like this, he plucked the faerie out of the air and held it aloft. “The mortal is just here to ask Titania a question, and we’ll be on our merry way soon after that.”

“There is no ‘merry way’ with you, Robin,” Mustardseed lamented. “You always find ways of mucking things up.”

Robin shrugged and released the little guy. “It’s in my nature. Now, are you going to take us to your wise and kind ruler or are we going to have to get the bug spray out to shut you up?”

“Why, I never!” Mustardseed protested.

Robin rolled his eyes. “C’mon Tinkerbell. And once we get to the Spring Court, let me do the talking.”

I was actually very impressed with how he had handled things, so I suppressed a giggle as I sidestepped the little faerie and caught up with Robin, who didn’t even look back once as we walked to the castle. Mustardseed let his unhappiness be known the entire time, but it was far more fun to ignore the faerie and ruffle some feathers, than anything else.

The castle was more of an open-air building. Columns entwined with ivy delineated the castle grounds, and trees wove together to make some semblance of a structure. For the most part, it was like flowers and ferns made up the castle.

In a word, it was breathtaking, unlike anything I had ever seen before. I went to a botanical garden once. The flowers had been in full bloom, gorgeous, and immaculately displayed. It was enough to make a huge impression on my then-five-year-old mind.

But it was nothing like this.

I remembered that Jordyn had made that trip a little more special by using a little bit of her earth magick to create a doll entirely made out of flowers. I cherished that doll and even dried it to preserve it as much as possible. I still kept it underneath my bed, although it wasn’t as pretty as that one day.

I missed Jordyn. I wondered if she was worried about me or if she had noticed I was missing. Would she think that I had been kidnapped? Or that something had happened to me?

Was human time the same as Faerie time?

I chewed on my bottom lip. Robin noticed my somber mood, but didn’t say anything. For once, I was glad that he didn’t quip or make fun of me.

A guard stood at the door, glaring down at us. I could only describe him as a troll, as he was about twelve feet tall with warty skin and a bad odor that made my eyes water.

There were apparently a lot of different kinds of faeries.

“Robin Goodfellow,” the troll rumbled in a voice that was almost too low for me to hear. He suspiciously eyed my companion. “What brings you here?”

Robin crossed his arms and cocked his head. “We’re here to see Titania.”

“It’s
Queen
Titania to you!” Mustardseed cried in his high-pitched voice, panicked that Robin hadn’t addressed the queen correctly. “I’m so sorry, Gigamarth. I tried stopping them and—”

“Tried and failed, Mustardseed,” said a lovely voice that wasn’t the troll’s.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, a sparkle of faerie dust appeared in the space between us and the troll. A heart-breakingly beautiful woman stepped out from the dust and crossed her arms as she shrewdly looked at Robin.

“I suspected as much,” she said. Her voice lilted with each word, like a harp had married with vocal chords, pretty while sounding unimpressed with Robin in front of her. “Robin Goodfellow, I haven’t seen your carcass in these parts for a long time.”

That beautiful voice sounded angry. I was so transfixed, my mind panicked about disappointing her, rather than worrying about what effect that would have on me in the end.

“Just doing my own thing, your grace,” Robin said, unaffected by her.

Her gaze landed on me, and her upper lip twitched in a sneer. “Well, well, well,” she said. “What do we have here?”

Chapter 7

The luster of Titania’s beauty wore off after about five minutes.

Sure, she was taller than me with a waterfall of blond hair that would make a Pantene Pro-V model jealous. Her eyes were icy blue and her skin flawless. She wore a dress made out of blue flowers that looked like it had been woven by a thousand tiny faerie hands.

She was beautiful. But I quickly found out that she was a bitch.

And that she did
not
like me one bit.

I still had to shake my head and remind myself every once in a while that she was a faerie queen who did not want me here. Her manner was at odds with her beauty, giving me a headache the entire time we talked to her.

We were in a courtyard inside the castle which acted as her throne room. The sun here warmed our skin and it felt peaceful the entire time. There were many different kinds of spring faeries here, from ones that were smaller than Mustardseed to those that were bigger than the troll out front. They all looked at me like I was some sort of alien. I guess, in a way, I was, but that was no excuse for how Titania was treating me.

She massaged her temples as she looked down at us from her ornate, natural throne.

Another thing I picked up on very quickly: she
hated
Robin.

“Why would I be interested in an unborn baby?” she asked in a bored voice. “I’d have to magickally incubate it until it’s done, and you know I have no time for that.”

“You’ve wanted stranger things,” Robin countered. “You remember that changeling you wanted, but Oberon wanted for his knight?”

“That boy was mine,” Titania snarled, her face twisting into a mask that looked nothing like her beautiful self. The transformation happened so quickly, I blinked, taken aback. Titania took a few moments to compose herself, her long nails drumming on the arm rest of her throne. “And if Oberon had just agreed, none of this would have happened.”

“What happened with the changeling?” I asked. Robin shot me a glare, but I didn’t care. As I figured, I was already pretty deep here in the Spring Court.

Titania watched me as her fingers incessantly drummed on the armrest. “Oberon,” she said, “my
ex
-husband, sought to steal a mortal child that was rightfully mine. I never forgave him for that. Which is why there is now a Spring and Summer Court.”

“Hail, the Spring Court and its benevolent ruler, Queen Titania,” the faeries around me chanted in unison. I jumped at the unexpected cacophony.

Robin rolled his eyes. “So you have no idea where this new human baby is?” he asked for the seventeenth time since we arrived. He asked it in a different way every time, as if he was trying to catch Titania in a lie.

This time, she picked up on his tactic and she shot daggers at him with her eyes. “Of course I have no idea where this unborn baby is!” she sneered.

“You keep talking to her like you expect she’s lying,” I whispered to Robin, “but I thought that faeries can’t lie.” Somewhere in a fairy tale, I’d read that.

He raised an amused eyebrow. “You’ve got another thing coming to you if you think faeries can’t lie,” he whispered back. “They do.” He turned back to the faerie queen. “A lot.”

“What reason would I have to lie?” Titania thundered, angry that he would suggest such a thing. “Besides, I have no room in my court for another bunch of pixies. You know how they swarm you when they panic, and ruin your clothing and scratch your skin.”