Chapter 587: Bonus - 56: Gold god and Pink Girl: Something About Cake

It was a bright and beautiful day once again in the fairy kingdom of Fairylynch.

The artificial morning light came down through the high arched windows of the palace in long, slow rivers of gold, and wherever that light touched marble it turned the stone the color of warm cream.

Dust motes drifted in the shafts like tiny lazy stars.

Outside, the gardens of Fairylynch were loud with magical bugs and brighter still with blossoms that opened only when the queen was said to be in a pleasant mood, which, as far as the flowers could tell, was nearly always.

Inside the great hall, the air smelled of crushed rose petals, warm sugar, steeped silverleaf tea, and the sweet smoke of candles that had been lit for no reason except that Titania liked the way they looked beside a teapot.

Queen Titania sat at the center of it all as if the kingdom itself had been arranged only to keep her cup full and her laughter easy.

She was playing house and tea parties with her attendants, Tera and Tesa, the silver-haired twins who mirrored one another in every lazy smile, every tilt of the wrist, and every little cruel sparkle that passed between them when someone serious entered a room.

Plates had been set with the ceremony of a coronation and then immediately treated as toys. Tiny forks flashed. Porcelain chimed.

The queen’s voice rose and fell in delighted nonsense while the twins answered her in the same bright register, as though work were a story told to frighten children and they had long since stopped believing it.

The entire administrative and governing duty of Fairylynch remained on the shoulders of Vaelora.

And it was heavy.

The weight of it sat in her chest like a stone wrapped in silk.

In her chambers the petitions had stacked themselves until the earliest pages had begun to yellow at the edges.

A trivial dispute between the river fairy clans and the orchard fairy folk waited with two wax seals unbroken and a third cracked from being handled too often and signed too little.

Harvest tallies from the eastern groves had gone three days without an answer.

Vaelora had read each of these things twice. She had drafted replies in her mind while her wings twitched against the back of her chair.

She needed some kind of release and relief before the last thin thread of her patience snapped and she would cross the palace just to shove her queen’s face into her hot tea.

Thus, she left her chambers.

The door closed behind her with a sound too soft for the force she felt in her hands.

She flew from the dim, orderly quiet of her rooms toward the palace hall, her pink butterfly wings beating and flapping in short, sharp strokes that lifted and transported her short, petite form down the long corridor.

The near-transparent sleeveless gown she wore clung as she moved.

Light passed through the fabric and painted pale rose shadows along her arms, the line of her throat, the small stubborn set of her shoulders.

Her long, curly pink hair streamed behind her like a banner she had never asked to carry and could not put down.

The fairy attendants that encountered Vaelora flattened themselves against the walls as she passed. None of them spoke.

They had learned the particular silence that followed Vaelora when her mouth was closed and her eyes were bright.

The hall opened before her like a stage that had forgotten it was supposed to be a seat of government.

Her large pink eyes found her queen at once.

Titania sat sipping tea and cackling with the silver-haired twins as though she had no care left in her world, and perhaps, in that hour, she did not.

An absurdly large cake occupied the middle of the table.

Its white icing had been piled in soft, gleaming hills. Sugared violets and crystallized dew-drops were scattered across the top like jewelry no one intended to eat, but only to admire.

A silver knife rested unused beside it, more ornament than tool. Steam rose from three cups in lazy curls.

As usual, the queen was dressed in her frilly violet-white princess outfit that stopped a little past the knees.

Lace foamed at the hem. Ribbons had been tied as if the morning itself had insisted on being decorative.

Her translucent, silvery butterfly wings gave happy beats and little involuntary twitches each time she laughed.

Vaelora hovered a moment in the high air of the hall and watched.

The twins leaned in. Tera said something behind her hand, then Tesa laughed lightly into her cup.

Titania tipped her head back until the light caught in her silver hair and made it look like spilled moonlight. A drop of tea marked the tablecloth and no one moved to blot it.

[Calm down,] Vaelora told herself, because her anger was reaching a breaking point and she could feel it in the roots of her teeth. [Despite everything, she is your honored superior and the one to whom you have sworn allegiance.]

A little calmer, or at least a little more tightly held together, she flew toward that corner of the extravagant palace hall.

Marble, vined columns covered in roses rose around her like frozen waterfalls. Tapestries hung between them, their threads glittering whenever a breeze from an open window touched them.

In one was the queen, in an adult form, raising a spear of thorn in manufactured glory.

In another, a host of winged soldiers crossed a golden river. None of those images appeared as a short, haughty princess eating cake the size of a baptismal font.

Vaelora’s long, curly pink hair fluttered in that same window-breeze as she descended, and the closer she came to the table the louder the porcelain sounded.

She landed lightly. Her wings settled, then gave one last irritated shiver she could not quite stop.

"Well, well," Tera said, paying her a glance and taking a bite of cake from a small plate. Crumbs clung to the corner of her mouth. She did not wipe them away. "Look who finally crawled out of her stacks of parchment. What is it this time, Miss Washboard Chest? Has some farmer’s complaint about missing apples risen all at once to the dignity of a national crisis? Do tell us."

Vaelora ignored the jab and faced the queen. She folded her hands in front of her because if she did not fold them she might use them.

The polite smile she forced onto her mouth did not reach her eyes. It sat there like something borrowed.

"Your Majesty," she began upon reaching the silver-haired trio at the table. "I think it has been a while since you performed queenly duty. I do not say this to ornament the morning. I say it because the morning has already been ornamented enough. It may not seem so, but Her Majesty is quite popular amongst the fairies she rules.

"They speak of you in the market lanes when the stalls open. They leave offerings at the foot of the palace steps: honey in thimbles, braided grass, the first white berry of the season. Your Majesty—are you listening?"