Heart of the Moors

Chapter 1

When Aurora had been a child in the forest and her only crown had been woven of honeysuckle, she’d thought that the queen of the distant castle must be happy all the time, because everyone had to listen to her and do exactly what she said. Since Aurora had come to the throne, she’d discovered just how wrong she’d been.

For one thing, now everyone seemed to want to tell her what to do.

Her late father’s advisor, a grim-faced elderly man called Lord Ortolan, liked to drone on and on about her royal obligations, which usually involved enacting his strategies for enriching the treasury.

And there were the courtiers—young men and women from noble families throughout the kingdom sent to the palace to be her companions. They took for granted luxuries and delights she’d never known. They taught her formal dances she’d never tried before, and brought in minstrels to sing songs of heroic deeds, and jugglers and acrobats to make her laugh with their antics. They gossiped about one another and speculated about Prince Phillip’s extended visit to her kingdom and whether his pretext of studying Ulsteadian folklore in the libraries of Perceforest was his real reason for remaining. It was all very pleasant, but they still wanted her to do things the way they had always been done. And Aurora wanted change.

She might have expected her godmother, Maleficent, to be sympathetic, but she wasn’t. Instead, Maleficent made endless unhelpful and pointed suggestions about how Aurora would be happier ruling her kingdom from the Moors. And while Aurora lived at the palace, Maleficent stayed away. For the first time in her life, Aurora didn’t have the comfort of Maleficent’s shadow.

It didn’t help that Aurora would be happier in the Moors. The castle was massive and drafty and damp. Wind often whistled down interior corridors. The fireplaces were fond of backing up, giving the elaborately decorated rooms a slight but constant stink of smoke. Worst of all, though, was the iron. Iron latches, iron bars on windows, and iron bands on doors. They were a reminder of the horrible things her father, King Stefan, had done and the even more horrible things he’d wanted to do. Aurora had ordered it all stripped and replaced, but that was such a large undertaking that not even a quarter of the rooms were finished.

She didn’t blame Maleficent for not wanting to visit her there, with all those memories.

But the palace was where Aurora needed to be. Not just because she wanted to know what it was like to be human, but because she had one goal as queen of Perceforest and the Moors—to lead the faeries and humans of both kingdoms into thinking of themselves as belonging to one united land. Her first step was a treaty. The only problem was that no one could agree on anything.

The faeries wanted the humans to stay out of the Moors, but wanted to be able to wander through Perceforest whenever they liked. And the humans wanted to be able to pick up whatever they found lying around in the Moors, even though some of those things were actually mushroom faeries, or crystals that were part of the landscape, or bits of other creatures’ homes.

She had spent the morning trying to make headway, to no avail.

“I hope no one here has offended you,” said Count Alain, drawing Aurora out of her wandering thoughts. The youngest of her important landholders, he was also the most dashing. He had thick midnight hair with a single stripe of white in it, like a very handsome skunk.

“Excuse me?” Aurora asked, puzzled.

He pointed toward the window. “You’ve put a terror in all of us that you might glare at us the way you’ve been glaring at that window.”

“Oh, no,” she said, embarrassed. “I was only lost in my own contemplations.”

On the other side of the great hall, a harpist was entertaining a group of ladies. The royal household had come from their midday dinner and were beginning to consider the games and activities of the evening.

Count Alain stroked his chin, where a thin beard grew. His green eyes sparked with mirth, but sometimes she wondered if he was laughing at her. “I fear we have neglected to amuse you, my queen. Let’s have a hunt in those woods you were staring at.”

“That’s very kind,” Aurora replied, “but I have never liked hunting. I feel too sorry for the creatures.”

“Your sympathy does you credit,” Count Alain said, and before she could respond, he broke into a wide grin. “Yet this you will enjoy! It will be all in fun. A mere excuse for a romp. Surely you’d like to get out of this stuffy castle for a pleasant afternoon.”

She did want to get out of the castle.

“Yes,” said a voice. It was Prince Phillip, just entering the room, mud on his boots. “I can testify you ought to, Your Majesty. Your kingdom is marvelously beautiful right now, with summer turning to autumn.”

With his caramel curls and a careless smile he bestowed on everyone, he turned the heads of most of the women and half the men in the room.

But not hers. Since she had become queen, he was the one she confided in, the one she laughed with when she felt overwhelmed by the task of ruling the kingdom. Just the night before, they’d spent a comfortable evening playing the Game of the Goose in front of the fire, both of them cheating unmercifully.

Friendship with Prince Phillip was safe. He’d already kissed her, after all, even if she didn’t remember it. And he hadn’t even done it because he wanted to, but in the hopes it might end the curse.

It hadn’t, because he didn’t love her. It hadn’t been True Love’s Kiss—which, she told herself, was a relief. After all, love had been the cause of all of Maleficent’s pain. Friendship was better in every way.

“Tell me this,” she said to Phillip. “In your land, is hunting ever done all in fun?”

“In Ulstead,” he said after giving the matter some thought, “while many find hunting enjoyable, we always do it in deadly earnest.”

Aurora turned back to Count Alain. His smile had stiffened. She felt a little guilty.

“I would love to ride in the forest,” Aurora told him. “But it must not be a hunt. And we must not cross into the Moors.”

“Of course, my queen,” replied Count Alain, the spark back in his eyes. “It is well known you take an unaccountably generous view of the faeries.”

Her instinct was to snap at Count Alain that it was the humans who had waged war against the Fair Folk for generations and not the other way around, but she bit back the words. He had grown up being warned about the Moors. Like most of the nobility, he had no experience with the beauty of the place—or the joyful wildness of the beings who lived there.

He’d grown up with lies. She had to convince him that what he’d heard was wrong and believe that he could learn a new way of seeing the faeries. A new way of seeing the world.

If she could get him on her side, he would be a powerfully ally in negotiating the treaty and in changing the minds of her people, especially the younger courtiers, who admired him.

Perhaps the ride was a very good idea.

“We must not cross into the Moors, but we can ride close enough to view them,” Aurora amended. “In fact, the whole court ought to come. We can go tomorrow afternoon and picnic up high enough that we can see inside. The Moors are nothing like the wall of briars that used to surround them. They’re beautiful.”

Count Alain sighed and gave a smile that was only a little forced. “As you wish, my queen.”