I Do Believe in Faeries (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 3) (7 page)

A few of the smaller faeries in the courtyard stopped flitting around so much, and I thought they were frowning at Titania. Apparently she had just insulted them with that comment.

She’d fit right in with American politicians.

Robin glanced at me. “Sorry Tinkerbell,” he said, shrugging. “I guess we’ll have to head over to the Summer Court.”

Titania sat a little straighter at his comment, narrowing her eyes. “You’re going to go see Oberon?”

“Next stop on our rescue mission.”

Deliberately, she rose from her throne and stalked towards us. Robin didn’t seem bothered by her advance, but I found myself cowering away from her. Her anger was palpable as she closed in on us.

“Tell him to stop sending me gifts and trying to win me back,” Titania told Robin.

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?” Robin asked. “I’m not your messenger boy.”

“But you’re
his
,” Titania said.

“Look, your ladyship, no one tells me what to do.”

“Then why are you leading a mortal into our lands?” Titania gestured to me, as if I couldn’t hear them speaking.

Robin gave me a sidelong glance. “I’m doing it in exchange for a favor,” he said simply.

While I knew it was the truth, the way he put it hurt deep in my chest. I knew that he was a faerie, and a trickster faerie at that, but I’d hoped that he was doing it for more reasons than just my owing him something at the end of all of this.

But that was how things were here. It was the law of the land.

Titania considered this for a moment before allowing a small smile to creep onto her features. It was not a kind smile and it chilled me to the bone.

“I see,” she said. She turned her attention to me, fully taking my appearance in. “I can sense that you have a bit of magick in you, human girl.”

“It’s Abby,” I corrected, although my voice didn’t sound as strong as I would have liked. Still, it had the effect of making Titania pause and behind her, Robin gave me an approving look.

“Fire magick, isn’t it?” Titania asked.

I nodded.

Titania touched a finger to her chin, deep in thought. “I could always use a little bit of fire in my court in case I need to light a fire under Oberon’s ass.” She extended a hand to me, and for a moment, I had no idea what she meant by it, but she gave me the warmest smile ever and beckoned with her fingers. “Join my court, human child, and stay in a land of eternal spring where you will never grow old and your powers will be appreciated for all eternity.”

The warm, inviting way she said it caught me off guard, and my hand was already reaching out to take hers in a handshake before I stopped myself.

What the hell was I thinking?

I blinked the confusion away from my brain and shook my head. “I’m…good…” It was incredibly hard to say that, like I was saying it through a hoarse throat.

I heard a sigh of relief, that I first thought was me, but then I saw that Robin looked immensely satisfied. The sigh had come from him.

Meanwhile, Titania frowned at me, obviously not happy with my answer. “Girl,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re turning down.”

“Probably,” I agreed, “but once I find Alaina’s baby, I want to return to the human world.”

“You won’t ever die,” she hissed. “You’ll be treated as a hero. A wonderful servant that the people of my court can rely on.”

Yeah, exactly why I don’t want to take you up on that.

“I understand, but I have my own duties to perform. Mainly finishing up high school, which is probably harder than defending your court, your Highness.”

Robin snorted in amusement. Titania schooled her face into a sugary-sweet expression that made my teeth ache.

“Well, if you insist on leaving my court,” she said, “you should probably pack some provisions for your journey. I know Tir na nÓg may seem small to a new traveler, but it’s far bigger than you could ever imagine. You’ll need sustenance in order to make it.”

Again, as if on cue, my traitorous stomach growled again. I felt the entire court chuckle amusedly, even though Robin’s face spelled doom.

“We don’t need anything, your Grace,” he said quickly, trying to step in between Titania and me.

“Nonsense, Robin,” she chided, shooing him away. “This is a human girl who needs to eat. Isn’t that right, child?”

I opened my mouth to say that I was fine and that I wasn’t a child, but Titania held up her hand and conjured up a red, juicy apple that made my mouth water. I never understood how, in the fairy tales, Snow White would take a random apple from a stranger and eat it, but now I did. This magickal fruit was like a black hole that sucked me in.

My mouth instantly watered, and I lost myself.

As if knowing the effect it had on me, Titania pushed the apple towards me. Towards my mouth, where I could just taste the fruit and the juice filling my mouth. Just one bite, and I’d be fine.

One bite…

What are you doing?
my subconscious screamed at me.
What did Robin tell you? Don’t eat it. Stop it!

Stop it!

I heaved a quick breath and stepped away, tearing my gaze from the apple. I pushed a bit of magick towards it to remove the fruit from my sight, and it exploded in Titania’s hand with a burst of fire. The faerie queen shrieked in surprise as juice and apple bits got all over her.

At least now, it looked far less appetizing.

“I’m good,” I said throatily. I was going to be all right, even if my stomach told me I wasn’t. “I think Robin and I should go. Thank you for the offer, but we have places to be.”

I grabbed his arm and we rushed out of the throne room. The court went into a frenzy as we left, some faeries chattering about what just happened, and others moving to help their queen. Titania herself shrieked in anger, but I shut it out as we kept moving. Luckily no one moved to stop us, or else we would have had no hope of getting out of there.

Once out of the glade and into the main part of the castle, Robin took over and ushered me out, turning at all the right places and not getting lost, which I surely would have done as my mind wasn’t working correctly.

When we spilled out into the meadow in front of the castle, he let go of my arm and I collapsed on the ground, glad to be out of there.

“I guess that’s one way your magick has helped us,” Robin said amusedly. “That’s the second time you’ve listened to me, which saved your life.”

“She was trying to put a spell on me,” I croaked, holding my empty midsection. Every sensation was coming back to me. I was tired, hungry, and shivering even though the temperature here was a nice seventy degrees. “I thought she didn’t like humans.”

“She doesn’t.”

“So why was she trying to keep me there?”

Robin fell silent, watching me for a few heartbeats before sighing and shaking his head. “She’s trying to get back at me.”

“What does that have to do with you?”

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked away, his cheeks reddening as if he was embarrassed. “Beats me.”

Except I could guess that it didn’t beat him. That he knew why. Or at least, that’s what I thought. Everything seemed so fuzzy right now.

“I don’t know if I can do this another three times,” I murmured.

“If you want to find that baby, you might have to,” Robin said pointedly.

He held a hand out to me, and I took it. He pulled me to my feet and I stumbled as I my legs were shaky. He held onto me longer than was necessary, making sure that I’d be able to handle myself. But being this close to him was just as intoxicating as that apple was, and I was sure he could hear my heart pounding in my chest.

No, dammit. You are
not
experiencing insta-love, Abby,
I firmly told myself. I just wished I would listen.

“Thanks,” I whispered, stepping away. “I don’t think I like Spring anymore.”

Robin offered me a small smile, but otherwise his face was unreadable.

“So, Tinkerbell, are you ready to take on the Summer Court?”

I had to be, didn’t I?

Chapter 8

There was at least one thing that Titania had been right about. For being a floating island, Tir na nÓg was immense. We were lucky that our entry point to the faerie world had been close to the Spring Court. From there, the trek to the Summer Court seemed to take forever, which was made worse by the fact that my stomach seemed to be eating itself. Seeing that apple in Titania’s hand had set my body off on a rebellious streak to make me want to eat anything within my grasp.

And the faerie world had plenty of things that looked edible. Like
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,
I could see things hanging in the trees that resembled fruit, or berries on bushes. Aside from the shock of how different this world was than ours, I was overwhelmed by things beckoning me to eat them.

Luckily Robin knew the way and kept talking to me to take my mind off the emptiness in my stomach. At least it was working a little bit.

“How much further?” I asked for what seemed like the thousandth time. “I would have thought that the Spring and Summer Courts would have been closer to each other.”

“You need to learn patience, Tinkerbell,” he said. “We’re basically walking across the entire faerie world on this little quest of yours, and you saw how much Titania hates Oberon. You think she would have put her kingdom close to his?”

He had a point there, but that didn’t help make this seem any better.

“Is this kind of like going home for you then?” I asked. “Going to the Summer Court?”

Robin blinked at me curiously. “What makes you say that?”

Now I was confused. “Well, they were all acting like Oberon was your master or something like that.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Trust me, Tinkerbell, no one is Robin Goodfellow’s master. Not a faerie king or queen. Not even a wee mortal girl that he made a bargain with. So you’d better remember that.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek as we walked. Rather than risk having my empty stomach make another embarrassing noise, I decided to fill the silence. “So, what court are you a part of, then?”

“My own,” Robin said darkly.

“Your own?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I don’t like being told what to do.”

After meeting Titania and seeing how she did things, I was hoping that the Summer Court would be more welcoming. Not only that, but if Alaina’s baby wasn’t in the Summer Court, then we’d have to go to the Autumn and Winter Courts, where Robin had said things were even worse. I didn’t know if I’d be able to survive that, especially with the long walks between places.

If I did survive all of these different courts and I still couldn’t find the baby, I…

Well, I had no idea what I’d do.

As if Robin could read my thoughts on my face, he said, “Hey, we’ll figure this out.”

I blinked, feeling tears stream down my face. I hadn’t even noticed them there until I blinked. I wiped at them furiously.

I wished Jordyn was here. She’d know what to do, and she’d know how to deal with faerie queens like Titania. She knew how to deal with heavy stuff like this, because she’d done it before. I shook my head. No, Jordyn had messed up badly before and fixed it. This was my mess to fix. It had to be me.

Even though I could fail.

“Mortals cry far more than faeries do,” Robin observed curiously. To my utter surprise, he reached out and brushed another tear off my cheek. His touch sent shivers down my spine, and I watched, amazed, as the droplet hung on Robin’s finger as he inspected it like it was some new species of beetle.

“What good does crying do?” he asked quietly.

“Nothing,” I whispered. “But sometimes I can’t stop it.”

“Hey, Tinkerbell,” he started. His eyes flicked to me and then his expression immediately changed. “Aw hell,” he muttered, wiping the hand that held my tear on his pants.

“What—?” I started to ask, but a loud rumbling from above cut me off.

“WHY, IF IT ISN’T ROBIN GOODFELLOW.”

I looked up and screamed.

So far, I’d met pixies, faeries like Mustardseed and others that I’ve nearly stepped on, Queen Titania and even Robin surprised me by popping out of nowhere. But none of them, not even the troll at the gates to the castle of the Spring Court had been as tall as a building.

This faerie was, if he actually was a faerie. I didn’t know if there was a difference between faeries and giants, but this being fell squarely into the “giant” category regardless.

He was terrifying.

His head and face towered above the treetops overhead, so I luckily couldn’t see his face, but that did nothing for the lower half. He was gnarled with leathery skin that resembled an elephant’s, and he was the same gray color too. His feet, which smelled like rotting flesh, were wrapped in different animal hides with a thick cord holding them in place. Chains cuffed his ankles and wrapped around his legs. He held a club that was the size of my car at the end. One hit with that and I was a goner.

But that wasn’t the worst part. He wore
heads
around his waist, like they were some sort of chain mail that he had hoped to cover up his nether regions with. The heads ranged from humanoid to purely animals, and were
all sorts of different sizes, from the size of my thumb to the size of the troll’s head from earlier. And they were all just hanging together, dead.

“Hey! Tinkerbell!” Robin hissed. “Hush, or you’re going to get yourself killed.”

I clamped my hand to my mouth and staggered backward. Robin stepped in front of me to address the giant. Should I hide? Maybe it hadn’t seen me. Maybe—

“Hey, Jack!” he shouted up at the giant. “What brings you outside of the Winter Court?”

“IT GOT BORING THERE,” the giant rumbled back. “EVERYONE KNOWS ME IN THE WINTER COURT.”

So this was one of the faeries that really hated humans. Great. If this was a sample of them, then I was doomed.

The ground shook when he spoke, like he was an earthquake all by himself. How the heck did he appear out of nowhere like that? Surely I would have seen him before then. Right?