Page 33 of The Maleficent Faerie
My hair is golden, and my—
My wings—
A frantic sweat bursts across my skin.
I know what it feels like when my wings are glamoured invisible and intangible. Even under such a glamour, I can still feel them, rooted in my spine, connected to my brain.
This is different. My wings aren’t just glamoured. They’re gone.
“You—you took my wings.” My voice cracks. “What did you do? Oh goddess, what have you done to me?”
He struggles heavily to his feet. “Destroying another Fae’s wings is beyond my power. That’s not something I can do, not even with Void magic. The wings were never yours, Aura. They were stolen from another Fae and fused to you. Those wings had been dead for years, animated only by a powerful spell. With the shattering of the spell, they disintegrated.”
“What?” My legs are trembling, my stomach churning.
He casts aside the remnants of his armor and approaches me, his dark eyes soft with sympathy, no hint of green light in them now. “The wings were part of a visceral glamour. A physical alteration so pervasive, so convincing, it required three extremely powerful casters. The Three Faeries.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Touch your ears, Aura.”
With shaking fingers, I feel my left ear. Instead of a sharply pointed tip, the top edge is rounded.
“Those are your true ears,” he says quietly. “That is your real hair. Your false wings are gone. The charmed rings that gave you the ability to do magic have been stripped away. You are as you were meant to be—the human daughter of royal parents, Crown Princess of Caennith, and the future Conduit of Eonnula’s power.”
Bile shoots up the back of my throat, and I lurch forward, vomiting onto the carpet. I manage to claw back my hair just in time—my hair, my hair—my golden hair—
“What is happening?” I whimper. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Your parents must have given you to the Three Faeries for concealment and protection right after I cursed you. The Faeries transformed you with a visceral glamour—which, I might add, has been forbidden for centuries because of its unpredictable effect on the subject’s mind. They taught you to fight, to defend yourself. And the Royals placed you right next to their fake daughter, so you would have all the advantages and protection afforded to the Princess. You were hidden from me in plain sight.”
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The Princess vomits again. This time I step forward and hold back her yellow locks while she heaves and sobs. I rather miss the blue hair. But her natural tresses are glorious.
Finally she straightens, and I fetch a cloth from an incense cabinet nearby so she can wipe her mouth.
“You’re saying I’ve been human all along.” Her voice is tight and raw.
“Yes. Your parents gave you to the Three Faeries and adopted a human girl to stand in your place. Dawn has been your double since you were both small.”
“Yet they told me to guard her.”
“They taught you to fight. They gave you magic and wings. You had all the benefits of being secured within castles, guarded as closely as the Princess, yet with the added protection of a secret identity.”
“Don’t try to make it sound clever. It was a stupid plan.”
“It was a brilliant, sadistic plan. One that almost worked perfectly.”
“Sadistic,” she says slowly, frowning. “Do you think Dawn knew?”
“I’m fairly sure she didn’t.”
“They put her in the most dangerous position in the kingdom, but they didn’t give her a choice. They raised her as their own, as if she was the true Princess, and she never knew—” Aura breaks off the sentence, biting her lip, furious tears sparkling in her eyes. “How didyouknow who I was?”
“I began to suspect some trickery because of your nonreactive wings, and the strange heirlooms you wore. But those things in themselves weren’t conclusive—they could have been explained by other means. The strongest indication was the report Fitzell gave me right before we left camp. She was supposed to ride with me to Ru Gallamet—all the Edge-Knights were—but we received word of massive attacks at various points along the border. The sheer scale and intensity of those attacks—the King wouldn’t have ordered them for the daughter of the Three Faeries. Nothing less than the kidnapping of his own child would warrant such an invasion. So I left Fitzell and most of my knights to help with the fight, and headed straight here. After I bathed, I told the High Priestess my suspicions, and she gave me more information about visceral glamours. She agreed to keep the others away from the Chapel after the service, so I could explore your mind and body and discover what lay concealed there. But I didn’t truly know if I was right—not until your mothers’ magic began to attack me.”
“The Three Faeries are not my mothers.” She speaks the words slowly, vaguely, as if she can’t grasp them yet.
