“Of course not,” Aurora said, hopping along a path of stones half sunk in the water with the ease that came from long practice. “But if you found him, it would do a lot to convince the people of Perceforest that we are all on the same side. What happened today showed the lack of understanding between humans and the faeries. Count Alain thought his sister was being insulted, and etiquette demanded he do something about it.”

Maleficent gave her a long look.

“He doesn’t see the wallerbogs as we do, as gentle and mischievous beings,” Aurora admitted. “But I couldn’t help pitying him a little, first to be knocked around by one of the sentinels and then to be saved by you. You had only to fail to intervene and he might have fallen to his death.”

“When you put it that way, I do see I made an error,” Maleficent drawled.

That made Aurora laugh, as though the words were said in jest. Maleficent had only intervened because she hadn’t wanted the tree warrior to be blamed for a human death. Personally, she wouldn’t have minded if he had fallen.

The more Maleficent thought about it, the more she was convinced that Aurora had learned all the wrong lessons from her.

Because Aurora had been wrong about Maleficent. She wasn’t a kindly faerie, no matter how many times Aurora insisted that she was. And at least in the beginning, she’d seen Aurora only as the means through which she would exact her revenge on King Stefan.

It didn’t matter that Maleficent helped Diaval get her milk when she was a baby, or that Maleficent caused some vines to save her when she ran straight off a cliff while chasing a butterfly right in front of those oblivious pixies. It didn’t matter that things had worked out for the best. It didn’t matter that Aurora’s goodness had woken something in Maleficent she’d thought was lost forever.

It was still foolish to try to see the best in those who were wicked.

And most humans had those seeds of wickedness in them, just waiting to bloom.

But there was no making the girl believe that she’d been mistaken in trusting Maleficent. And Aurora was likely to make the same mistake again, probably with that floppy-haired prince who was mooning over her or that arrogant count desperately trying to impress her. She was going to trust in their goodness, and they were going to fail her, perhaps even hurt her.

“Stay here, in the Moors,” Maleficent said impulsively. “Here, where you’re safe. Here, with me.”

“But at the palace—” Aurora began. Before she could get the sentence out, Maleficent lifted her hands, and in a swirl of golden light, a mist that had hovered over one particular area cleared and her palace of flowers and greenery was revealed. Its spires seemed to spin up into the sky.