sink in.
Meanwhile, Aurora Rose was thinking furiously in the pause before the storm. She had never done anything violent in her life before these adventures. She wasn’t sure she could plan to now. Kill someone? Someone she knew? Would any of her remembered affection for Maleficent slow her hand when they faced off?
It certainly wouldn’t cause a moment’s hesitation from Maleficent.
She discreetly juggled two or three rocks at her side with her mind. It helped distract her.
“I’m going to miss this,” she said aloud with a sigh. “All this work and when I wake up I won’t even have these powers anymore.”
“You didn’t have them to begin with,” the red fairy said pragmatically.
“But she has experienced it now,” the green one said. “It’s hard to go back to not having something so wonderful. Plus now she also knows she was living with fairies the whole time! And that’s gone, too. She’s going back to being a regular human girl in a world where princesses are used as pawns and never have any sort of real power of their own.”
“Thanks,” the princess said. “I was trying not to think about that.”
“Hey,” Phillip whispered in her ear as he caught up with her. “I think I’ve figured it out! The blue one is the smart one? And the red one is the brave one? And the green one is…nice? Or compassionate or something?”
He really was just trying to help.
“Oh…yes—I’ll bet that’s probably right,” she said slowly, trying to make it sound like she meant it. “I was sort of coming to a similar conclusion myself.”
Phillip smiled, pleased with her praise.
“Wish I had my horse. Samson could take at least two of us. Or maybe three. He’s really strong, you know—just a bit temperamental. Did I ever tell you he was part Nisaean? You wouldn’t guess it from his color. Definitely has war horse tendencies, I can tell you that.”
She understood that he was excited by the return journey to the castle, probably a little nervous about the final showdown, and perhaps showing off a bit to the one in red.
“I do wish there was a faster way to the castle,” she said instead of shut up. “I’m worried about the time we’re wasting and Maleficent’s being able to see what we’re—”
TIME BECAME DISJOINTED.
Her head grew muddled and thick. For the very first time in the world of the Thorn Castle, she knew she was asleep: groggy and aware things weren’t making sense, as if in the middle of a very deep dream.
“BE CAREFUL WHAT you wish for, my dear.”
Aurora Rose was not altogether surprised to see that they were back in the throne room of the Thorn Castle.
She blinked her eyes muzzily and was transfixed, for just a moment, by how out of place her little party looked. She, in armor and golden rags. The three strange ladies, dressed in red, blue, and green. The prince, who looked somehow more alive and glowing than any of the murky people around the edges of the room.
A blinding green light shone from the orb at the top of Maleficent’s staff; it bathed the room in a sickly cast and confused the shadows. Her visage, never that healthy-looking to begin with, was also a throbbing green. But the queen’s purple-and-black robes lay thickly and luxuriously around her as always, and she sat with less of the tense elegance she always had; now she seemed more relaxed, almost sated.
A raven perched next to her wrist on the throne and seemed to smile evilly. The princess was confused; Maleficent had never kept a pet. The shallow, visual similarities between the two were not subtle: both familiar and mistress were black, yellow, angular, and vicious-looking.
The princess turned away from the pulsing green light and blinked again to take a better look at the rest of the room. The people pressed against its walls were those she had spent the last subjective decades with—the people whose real bodies were elsewhere, sleeping. They seemed strangely unfamiliar now, like someone was forcing her to name people in a portrait who were hard to distinguish and resembled others she might have known.
Maleficent’s unnatural servants stood guard in front of them. There were more of the nasty goblin-like creatures with yellow eyes than Aurora Rose remembered. They stood insolently with their spear tips crossed to make an improvised fence to hold their prisoners back. Obviously, the queen had given up all pretense; the poor nobles and servants and peasants now all knew what