Page 32 of Fairies Don't Fall

Of course. They were planting trees for the terraform. Relieved that they weren’t poisoned, I pulled my hand out of his and stepped around him, leaping lightly to the ground with barely a flicker of my tattered wings to soften the fall. I needed to get to the poisoned wolves as fast as possible. If I had functional wings, I’d be so much faster. I should pull these ones off and hope a better set grew in. But it hurt, and was so depressing when another lackluster set flapped at me. So what? I needed to do it anyway, so I wasn’t stuck with my slow legs when there was an emergency.

“We’ll take the elevator down to the caverns in my house,” Max said, gesturing towards the neon house, but not taking my hand again. Good. He shouldn’t offer me comfort when it was so easy to be addicted to it. He should guard his space more carefully, particularly around fairies, because apparently we all craved his strength, goodness, and…Shotglass’s memories hit me again. I definitely shouldn’t have been in her head while she touched him. How long would I keep getting these flashbacks? It didn’t help me forget about the poisoning, just added another layer of panic. I could not want a warrior wolf. Can you imagine what Vervain would say?

We jogged across the grass until we reached the house. Max stepped in front of me to open the door. He gestured me inside with a smile on his mouth. His lips were so interesting to Shotglass. I shook myself and walked past him. They were interesting to me, too. I’d love to see how long it took for my venom-poison to work on him. No. I wanted to see how long I could taste his lips before he pushed me away. He would push me away, like he did Shotglass and the werewolf woman. He was bound to the moon, not to me. Good. I had a duty to my world, to my people, and that included taking a consort and the mantle of queenship. The thought made my skin itch. Maybe that was from being so close to Max.

The elevator felt crowded with just the two of us, even though I was sure it wasn’t iron. I tried not to touch him, but I kept bumping into him, or maybe he was bumping into me. He wasn’t careful not to touch me. He didn’t seem to notice how close he was, how many times his arm brushed mine. I was wearing Ruin’s hoodie, so it wasn’t skin on skin, not like when we were snuggled in the blanket. Except that had been his beast. Why was his beast like that? He was Max’s opposite, but he claimed they were the same. What would it be like to kiss the beast?

“Don’t worry, Princess,” Max murmured.

I inhaled sharply and looked up at him, startled. “What?” I felt guilty as his fascinating lips curved in a delicious smile.

“You seem worried. Don’t be. Werewolves are very tough, and the poisoning was caught early.”

“Good.” I needed to tell him why I was really here. But how could I?

“You’re still worried. What can I do to help?”

I gave him a look. “They’re your wolves. What can I do to help you?”

He held out his hand towards me. “I feel better when we’re holding hands.”

I stared at him, shocked and delighted. I shouldn’t be happy about him finding comfort in my touch, but I was. I slipped my hand in his and squeezed it tight. “Of course you do. That way, you know I won’t run off to find some pixie dust. Will you teach me how to read?” I asked, feeling nervous and shy as the doors opened into the big owl cavern.

We stepped out together, still holding hands. “What do you want to read?”

We broke into a jog, him keeping up with my pace. “Catch-22. It put me right to sleep, so in the future, I’ll take it out and drift away.”

“Do you have trouble sleeping?” He looked concerned even as we made good time through the owl cavern. The owls flew around us, a wing even brushed his shoulder, but he didn’t look away from me. There was something so terribly, wonderfully magical about that moment, us rushing to save something together, the mystical white owls whirling around us like fat snowflakes.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked.

“It’s like Christmas,” I said. Even in Fairyland, there were stories of Christmas on earth. Their best time for magic. That’s how it felt like with Max. So magical.

He rumbled a low laugh that made me shiver.

When we got to the cavern with the cave-in, the distant moaning that had been growing in the background made sense. There were fairies, more fairies than had been at the dock, and all of them were weeping over a tree. Some trees were taller than Max. Shotglass was sobbing over the biggest one like her heart was broken. She still looked magical, glistening, and beautiful. It was wrong to see all those trees in the dark cave. They needed light, a breeze, rain, life. They couldn’t grow the trees with their tears forever.

“Here,” Max said, handing me the shampoo bottle with his beautiful sky inside of it, like he could read my mind.

“But we should hurry to the warehouse.”

He squeezed my hand. “The healers are already hard at work. We brought in the best. If it takes you as long to put it in place as it did to gather it up, you may as well do it while we walk through.”

I hesitated. It wasn’t like that. I was calling the sky from the moment I stepped out of the white plane of terror. Still, it shouldn’t take very long to set the sky. I let go of his hand and raised the bottle up to eye-level while I walked, sending my will and intention into my borrowed sky until I was certain it knew what it had to do.

I uncapped the bottle and the night breeze swept out of it, rushing up, spreading above us along with a sea of shimmering stars.

“Ooooh!” The fairies looked up, drinking in the beauty of the night.

Everyone gasped as the moon came out, passing behind a silvery cloud. Then they ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed,’ like they’d never seen a moon before. Well, not that one. Max had taken me to a very good sky. Even I basked in its glow as the last shimmer of stars slipped from the bottle.

And now it was time to hurry to the warehouse. I glanced at Max, and he was watching me with golden glowing eyes filled with approval. I wanted to preen like I’d done something spectacular, but I’d just mumbled a few spells and opened a lid.

I headed for the exit, done with these weird feelings I had no business cultivating.

A fairy stared at me as I walked past, looking at me in a way that told me my skin was glowing. I couldn’t help it. I felt so much better after spending so much time soaking up Max’s beautiful world filled with sunshine and wind and… I’d woken up feeling so good from drawing in his beast’s strength and warmth. I really liked being someone else’s duty.

“Is that why you came here?” a fairy asked, stepping in front of me. It was one of the gruel servers, the same one with silver hair and speckled wings who had given me a bowl.

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