Chapter 588: Bonus - 57: Gold god and Pink Girl: Silver Trio

"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?"

Titania took one long sip.

The steam from the cup curled around her face and softened the edges of her smile without erasing it.

She held the pause as if silence were another kind of joke.

Then she set the vined, intricate teacup down upon the table with a delicate click of porcelain against wood and paid Vaelora a glance at last, as if noticing a servant who had been standing there for some time and might, if indulged, say something interesting.

"Let them eat cake!"

The words rang prettily, as she and the twins began to giggle.

"Bleugh—!!"

Titania and Tera immediately found their faces shoved into the great cake in the middle of the table.

Vaelora had moved before either of them could finish the next breath, then crossed the last small distance with a speed that made her gown flare and her wings snap once, hard.

She grabbed the back of their heads, her fingers closing in silver hair and violet ribbon, and lifted them from their seats just high enough to bury their faces deep into the snack.

Icing smeared in thick, wet strokes. Sugared violets crushed into purple stains. Crystallized dew-drops broke with tiny sounds like snapped glass.

The absurd cake yielded with a soft, heavy sigh that seemed far too loud in the sudden quiet of the hall. White frosting rose in ridges around two buried faces.

Vaelora held them there a heartbeat longer than courtesy would have allowed, and then a heartbeat longer than that.

Tesa sat frozen. She had not been touched. Her hands remained around her cup.

Her wings had gone still in a way wings rarely did, locked as if frost had found the joints. The color left her face until she looked less like a laughing attendant and more like a portrait that had been finished too pale.

"Huh?" she asked quietly, her voice thin. "Wh-Why was I spared?"

Vaelora did not look at her at first.

She kept her hands where they were a moment longer, feeling the startled tension in two skulls and the ridiculous softness of cake against two royal faces, then released the two she had chosen and stepped back.

Icing clung to her fingers. When she spoke, her voice had dropped to a lower tone, and her pink eyes had become a solid color, no longer bright with reflected window-light but flat and intent, the color of a decision already made.

"Listen to me," she said, "and listen well. I will be going away for official and important business that cannot wait. I have delayed it already, and delay has a way of growing teeth. While I am gone, Her Majesty will take responsibility as Queen."

Titania pulled her head from the cake and faced Vaelora.

White icing smeared her face: her cheeks, her brow, the tip of her nose, the pretty bow of her mouth.

A crushed violet clung to one silver eyelash and hung there, absurd and ruined.

She blinked frosting from her lashes and tried, with what dignity remained to a queen wearing dessert, to sit upright. Tera came up beside her with a gasp that turned into a sputter, silver hair streaked white.

"I understand," Titania said. The words came slower than her usual chatter. "I have been neglecting my duties just a little, teensy, tiny bit. I see that now. And I have heard you. So I will properly work as quee—"

"You must not play with them," Vaelora interrupted, and Titania’s brows knitted in distress at once. "You must not have any tea parties either. They understand how pathetic Her Majesty can be—fortunately, and unfortunately—so you do not need to worry about soiling your reputation in their eyes. They already know the shape of your idleness. I will return soon. And when I do, I will see how well you have done."

The three fairies nodded, assuring Vaelora they would behave themselves.

Vaelora looked at each of them in turn. The weight in her chest did not lighten, but it shifted enough that she could breathe around it.

She gave a single, sharp nod of her own and turned away before any of them could invent a new promise they would not keep.

She flew from the hall.

Her pink wings carried her upward through the high windows and out into the open air of Fairylynch.

Below her the kingdom spread like a living map. Treehouses clung to the great trunks of the elder oaks, their wooden platforms and hanging bridges strung with lanterns that would not be lit until dusk.

Some fairies moved along those bridges in small, purposeful clusters—some carrying baskets of dew-berries, others arguing cheerfully over the proper length of a midsummer ribbon.

Children darted in the air and between the roots in games that involved more laughter than rules.

Vaelora watched it all from above, one last survey, the wind combing through her long curly pink hair and tugging at the near-transparent edges of her gown.

The kingdom looked peaceful. It always did, from this height. The cracks only showed when one stood on the ground and listened for unanswered petitions.

She found Isabelle near the eastern watch-spire, where the air smelled of damp moss and the faint metallic tang of the barrier charms.

Isabelle was already waiting, her own wings folded tight against her back in the posture of someone who expected trouble and intended to meet it standing.

Vaelora landed lightly on the stone platform and wasted no time on greetings.

"I am leaving for a few hours," she said. "Official business that cannot be delayed any longer. Her majesty and her fools for attendants have been reminded of their duties. They have promised to behave, but I do not trust it."

Isabelle’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "You want me to keep an eye on them?"

"I want you to keep both eyes on them, and a third if you can borrow one. Titania most of all. Tera will follow wherever the queen leads..." Vaelora ordered."

Isabelle inclined her head in respect, as pink mist emerged in the air in front of Vaelora, soft as breath and edged with the shimmer of magic.

She nodded toward Isabelle and stepped into the mist.