Heart of the Moors

Chapter 15

Maleficent wasn’t sure what had woken her. She turned to one side on the divan, her gaze going automatically to check on Aurora.

Except the girl wasn’t in her bed.

The embroidered blankets were piled up where Aurora ought to have been, one of them trailing on the floor as though she’d kicked her way free of it. Maleficent sat up and looked around. The wind blew through the trees on the balcony, sending down a shower of silvery leaves.

Maleficent walked until she spotted footprints in the moss. They looked leisurely, unrushed. No doubt the girl would be back in a moment.

But a moment passed, and then another, and Maleficent couldn’t help worrying. She began to walk along the path of the footprints, her worry deepening as she realized that they went farther than could have been explained by the needs of a body.

Her wings flexed, opening and closing restlessly with her desire to fly and survey the landscape for Aurora, but her view of the ground would be obscured by thick vines and flowering trees, and she worried she might not be able to pick up the trail easily again once she abandoned it.

Then Maleficent heard a voice. Not Aurora’s—a deeper voice, one that might belong to a man. She rushed forward, moving swiftly between trees. She stopped at the sight of Phillip walking at Aurora’s side with his hands clasped behind his back.

Phillip, here, after she’d warned him. Phillip, defying her.

Maleficent felt a wash of rage so overwhelming that it staggered her, overwhelming even her relief at finding Aurora unharmed. When she looked at Prince Phillip, all she could see was Stefan, and when she looked at Aurora, all she could see was heartbreak.

“You really came here for our walk?” the girl asked him.

Maleficent stepped behind a tree, hiding herself from view.

“I hoped to arrive a bit earlier, but—” He broke off and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I got lost again. Did you know there are faeries that lead you around in circles? But I spoke to them kindly, and they brought me to you when they were done with their game.”

Aurora smiled at him with shining eyes, as though his being a fool were somehow to his credit.

Maleficent ought to have told those faeries who’d been leading Phillip in circles to take him to a swamp it would take weeks to escape. Months, even.

Angrily, she watched as Phillip took Aurora’s hand. “I had to see you. I—”

“You’re going to say that you must return to Ulstead,” Aurora told him, her gaze on their joined hands.

He raised his brows in surprise.

“Lady Fiora told me that a messenger had come from your family.” She took a breath and then spoke quickly, as though she’d rehearsed the words and now was just trying to get them out. “I know you must go, but I—I hoped you might be willing to stay a few more days. I am holding a festival, and if you will come and dance with the Fair Folk, surely it will help the people of Perceforest be less afraid of them.”

“And if I dance with you?” he asked.

Aurora laughed. “Then I am likely to step on your feet.”

“I will wear my heaviest boots,” Prince Phillip said.

She looked up into his face. “So you agree to stay a little longer?”

Maleficent began to hope that perhaps she’d convinced Phillip to withdraw after all. Perhaps he really was returning to Ulstead, and he only intended to bid her farewell. Another day or two didn’t matter, so long as he was gone.

“There is something more I would say to you,” Phillip said. “Before I go, I wanted to tell you—”

No, absolutely not.

She ought to have known better. Of course that feckless boy would attempt to take her heart and then swan off to Ulstead, never to return. Of course he wanted Aurora to believe that his love for her would make him less of all the things that all greedy princes are—selfish and power hungry and cruel. But it would be a lie. All of it, lies.

Well, Maleficent would not allow that to happen.

She stepped out of the shadows and walked across the grass, her wings like a cloak spread behind her. She pointed her index finger at Phillip, the nail clawlike in the moonlight. Magic sparked green around her hands. “You disobeyed me, little prince.”

Aurora sucked in a breath in surprise. “Godmother! What are you doing here?”

“Interrupting him before he makes a terrible mistake,” Maleficent said.

Aurora moved between her and the prince, looking mutinous. “Stop trying to frighten Phillip! What mistake could you possibly mean?”

Maleficent found herself powerless to answer. She couldn’t reveal to Aurora she’d overheard his confessions of love; that was the exact thing she didn’t want her to know.

“He does not have my permission to be here in the Moors,” she said instead. “I have warned him already and do not like disobedience.”

“He wished to speak with me,” Aurora said. “And he’s my friend. And he doesn’t need your permission so long as he has mine, since you made me the queen here.”

Maleficent ignored that, too angry to be reasonable. “If his mistake is coming here, yours is to trust so easily. What do you know of him?”

“I never intended to harm Aurora,” Phillip said, “or anyone in the Moors. I would swear to it, on my life.”

“Rash words.” They were a temptation spread out before her like a banquet. Curse him, she thought. Make his promise a living thing. Curse him so that if he causes Aurora the slightest pain, he will feel it three times over. Curse him so that if he raises a hand to a faerie, he will drop dead on the spot.

“Stop looking at him like that!” Aurora was trembling with rage. Aurora, who hated to get angry. The last time she had shouted at Maleficent, it was because she’d discovered how many secrets were being kept from her. She’d discovered that Maleficent wasn’t her protector, wasn’t her godmother, but her enemy.

Maleficent never wanted to be thought of as her enemy again.

She took a breath and then another, letting the green magic fade away from her fingers.

No, she would find another way.

“Perhaps it would behoove me to get to know Phillip a little better,” she said, although she could barely bring herself to look at him with anything other than hostility. But it was Aurora who needed to know him better, to see through his deceptions. And perhaps there was a way to trick the prince into behaving like the person he doubtless was back in Ulstead. “Come dine here in the Moors with us, tomorrow evening. Before Aurora’s festival and your departure.”

“It would be a pleasure,” Prince Phillip said, as though the invitation were a perfectly normal one and not a gauntlet of challenge thrown down between them.

Good. Let him come to the Moors. Let him sit at her table and eat from her plates. He had no more love for the faeries than any of the rest of the humans. He would be frightened, and once he was, he would show Aurora his true nature.

“You need not,” Aurora said, her voice holding a clear desire to warn him off more firmly.

“If he wishes for my approval, he will accept my invitation.”

“Oh,” said Phillip with a bow, “I never thought to refuse it.”

Aurora’s eyebrows knitted, but all she said was “Good night, then. It was very good of you to come all the way here to give me your news. I am sorry we didn’t get to finish our walk.”

“After dinner tomorrow, perhaps,” he said.

Aurora’s smile bloomed, bright as any star. Maleficent refrained from rolling her eyes.

With a careless wave, Prince Phillip departed the Moors, followed only by Maleficent’s steady scowl.

“Why are you determined not to like him?” Aurora asked, whirling on her, a fresh light of anger in her eyes. “He has been a kind friend to me since I was crowned queen. You can’t believe he’s here to win my hand like Lord Ortolan presumes. And even if you did, you must know that I am uninterested in any courtship!”

“I only wish for you not to make the mistakes I made,” Maleficent said, putting a hand on Aurora’s shoulder. Perhaps she had acted too much in haste. “You know little of the world, as I once did. I suffered for that lack. I would not for anything wish you to suffer. I would not wish for you to be betrayed, your heart broken—even by a kind friend.”

Aurora pulled away. “What am I to do instead? Surround it with thorns, as you did?”

“You are my heart,” Maleficent said softly. “And you are right that I guard it fiercely.”