Heart of the Moors

Chapter 25

Moonlight allowed Aurora and Count Alain to ride over the familiar roads outside the castle until dawn broke. Then they rode through the day, Diaval making urgent circles above them. Toward night, the raven landed on the back of Aurora’s horse and rode there for a while before perching on her shoulder, his black feathers fluttering in the wind.

He led them to the west, and soon they were out of the boggy wet around the Moors and into deep pine forests. But as sunset fell over unfamiliar roads, the way became harder to pick out and exhaustion began to overtake them.

“Are we close yet?” Aurora asked Diaval. Though they’d stopped at intervals to let the horses drink and eat grass, she was sure that they had been pushed to their limit as well. “Caw once if we have much farther to go.”

The raven was silent, making Aurora blink herself alert.

“We ought to make camp for the night,” Count Alain said. “Whatever we must face, we need to be rested for it.”

“Just a little farther,” she insisted.

The moon was bright enough to light their path, Aurora thought. Their horses kept on.

“You’re very determined,” said Count Alain. “Many girls might not be so eager to save the murderer of their father.”

“You weren’t there,” Aurora said. “You don’t understand. She tried to save him, but he was beyond saving. He loved her once and then he hated her, but his hate was some malignant thing, fed by the love. He cut the wings off her back. Can you imagine doing that to the person you cared for?”

Count Alain looked at her with a strange expression on his face. “Ambition drives people to do many things.”

“King Stefan—my father—hung the wings up in his chambers, like some horrific trophy. He spoke to them, as though he was speaking to her—or to himself—I don’t know. The servants told me as much. I think betraying the person he loved most drove him mad.”

Count Alain shook his head. “Faeries have great powers of enchantment.”

“No. I don’t believe he was enchanted,” Aurora said. “I saw him torture her. He had become the monster he let people believe that she was. And yet she would not have killed him. No matter what people believe of her, I know who she really is.”

Alain was quiet, leading his horse on.

“She is kind,” Aurora said. “More than kind. She loved me, despite my being Stefan’s daughter. I don’t know what I would have become without that love.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe I would have made the same mistakes my father made,” said Aurora. “Love teaches us how to love.”

Count Alain was silent again for a long moment, as though he was contemplating that. “Although, in that tale, love brought her little but grief.”

Aurora frowned. “You’re right. But that was his fault, not hers. How could she have known? She did nothing wrong.”

Suddenly, the raven sprang from her shoulder into the sky, cawing.

The pine trees had thinned out, and a worn road cut through the terrain. “What is it, Diaval? Are we here?”

But as she looked around, she neither saw nor heard anything unusual.

The raven cawed, landing and pecking at the earth.

Aurora swung down from her horse’s back and walked to the spot where Diaval stood. The raven cawed again, scratching his claws against the soil.

“Where is she?” Aurora asked him. “I don’t understand! Oh, Diaval, if you would just turn back into a man and tell me.”

But that just made the raven jump around more frantically.

Count Alain let out a massive sigh. “We’ve followed this bird for a night and a day. I am afraid it doesn’t know where its mistress is.”

“He knows,” Aurora said, certain. “But perhaps he can’t tell us.”

“Well, if he can’t, then he’s little use.” Count Alain jumped down from his horse.

Aurora paced around the spot, then stomped with one booted foot. “Hello!” she shouted. “Is anyone there?”

Only silence greeted her call.

“Maybe there will be more to see in the morning. Let’s make camp,” Count Alain suggested once more. “I will get up a fire. There was a stream not too far back for the horses to drink from. And we can have a meal and rest a little.”

Aurora wanted to keep going, keep looking, but she had no idea how. Perhaps Count Alain was right. Maybe things would make more sense in the morning. Things often did.

“I’ll gather up some firewood,” Aurora said, glad of a chance to walk after riding for so long.

It was a familiar task, one she’d done often as a child. Along the way, she found a few mushrooms. But as she filled the pockets of her borrowed dress, she thought of the foraged mushrooms she’d eaten in the Moors at the banquet with Prince Phillip.

I love you. I love your laugh and the way you see the best in everyone. I love that you’re brave and kind and that you care more about what’s true and right than what anyone thinks—

If only she could have said something to him before he departed…

When Maleficent was found, she would write to him in Ulstead. Or arrange a state visit. She would find an excuse to see him. And then she would admit that she loved him. And that she’d been afraid.

And she would hope.

The last time she had seen Phillip, he’d been speaking with her godmother. It had been during her dance with Alain, and Aurora could have sworn she saw a smile pulling up a corner of her godmother’s lips.

Aurora stopped abruptly in the woods, recalling the memory again with new significance.

Had Phillip been the last person to see her godmother? Did he know something about her disappearance? Had he been taken, too?

With unsteady steps she returned to the clearing. Count Alain had already kindled a small fire. She set down the wood she’d harvested.

Diaval wasn’t by the fire or circling in the sky. Diaval wasn’t anywhere.

“Have you seen the raven?” Aurora asked.

Count Alain gave a nonchalant shrug. “Went off to find some carrion, I suppose. Or worms. Or whatever they eat.”

Going to the fire, she took a stick and began to thread on mushrooms. It wasn’t much, but at least her stomach would have something in it. “Would you like some?” she offered.

Count Alain smiled. “We can do better than that,” he said, rising. From the saddlebags of his horse, he produced a pigeon pie, a bottle of port, and a thick hunk of cheese.

“Oh!” she said. “How did you think to provision yourself so well? You can’t have known you were about to go on a journey.”

He appeared surprised by her question, then laughed. “Yes, well observed! No, I didn’t know I would be venturing out here with you, but luckily I did think I would be riding to my own estates. As I said before, I hoped to convince you to come for a visit. I thought I might ride out and prepare my people for your potential arrival.”

She frowned at that, not sure what to think. Still, she was happy to eat well. Soon the fire was crackling merrily and she was wrapped in a blanket, her stomach full.

“You were good to come with me,” she told Count Alain. “Especially when I know you do not care much for my godmother.”

“I like her no less than she likes me,” he said.

“Do you suppose Prince Phillip could be with her?” she asked. “He was not her favorite person either, but I saw them together when we were dancing. He might have been the last person to see her before whatever befell her happened.”

He frowned. “Phillip?”

“Your sister told me he went back to Ulstead, but what if he only intended to leave? If she was abducted and he was with her, he might have been taken, too.”

Count Alain gave that some thought. “You may be right about Phillip. But I fear he may not be the subject of misfortune, but rather its architect.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, about a half hour after you and I parted, I saw Phillip walking toward your godmother, and there was an expression on his face I am not sure I can describe. Grim purpose, perhaps. And there was something in his hand. Some kind of dull metal. If he was the one who took Maleficent, it would explain their going missing at the same time. And it would give Ulstead power over Perceforest.”

Aurora listened to him in horror, thinking of the cold iron blade that had been found. Surely that couldn’t have belonged to Phillip. Surely he would never do such a wretched thing.

But wasn’t that what Maleficent had once thought about Stefan? Wasn’t that what was so dangerous about love: that it made you vulnerable to betrayal?

Count Alain went on. “If that’s what he’s done, he’s probably making for the border between your lands and his. Perhaps the significance of this place is that it’s where the raven lost the trail. It’s possible Phillip did something to throw us off the track.”

Aurora was trying to think of a reason it couldn’t be true. “But Phillip…”

“Always seemed so kind?” Count Alain said, a slight sneer in his voice. “I have heard things about Ulstead. You may think that your people are suspicious of faeries, but there they are despised.”

In Ulstead, the stories of faeries are even worse than those told here, and there are no Fair Folk to contradict them. He’d spoken those words. But what if he also believed those tales?

Aurora recalled the night she had discovered Phillip in the Moors.

I had to see you, he’d told her. But what if he’d gone there not expecting to find her at all? What if he’d gone for a more sinister reason?

What if he’d spent the entire banquet thinking about how he hated the faeries he was dining with?

What if Aurora’s rejection of him was the final straw? Reluctantly, she thought of Lord Ortolan’s warning.

You may have noticed that Prince Phillip has been dangling after you. I believe he is here to win your land for Ulstead through marriage. Be wary of him.

“I can see I’ve upset you,” said Count Alain.

Aurora picked at the cheese and did not answer.

“We are not so far from my estate,” said Count Alain. “Let’s make for it in the morning. I will put my soldiers at your disposal. If Phillip has Maleficent, we’ll recover her. And if you must make war on Ulstead, your country will be behind you.”

Aurora thought of the moment when she’d discovered Maleficent’s wings trapped in King Stefan’s chamber, beating against their cage as though they were living things, independent of Maleficent. She had felt such immense horror, looking at them.

Before that, Aurora had never understood what great evil truly was. But it looked like chains of cold iron. It looked like King Stefan, hurling Maleficent across the room, intent only on causing her more pain. It looked like a desire to destroy that was greater even than a desire for power or pride.

She tried to picture that expression on Phillip’s face and shuddered. Aurora was the one who had asked Maleficent to trust humans again. If only Maleficent hadn’t loved Aurora, she would be safe now.

Maybe true love was a weapon after all, no matter whom you loved.

“I will save my godmother,” she swore to Count Alain. “No matter who I have to face.”

“I know you will,” he said, taking her hand and gazing deeply into her eyes.