No matter how difficult it was sometimes for Aurora to accept that she, who had never set foot in the palace until a few months before, was now the queen of Perceforest, it was still harder to get used to the idea that she was queen of the Moors. She suspected the Fair Folk found it hard to get used to, too. They were accustomed to following Maleficent, their defender, and if they did consider Aurora to be their ruler, it was only because Maleficent had ordered it.

In the Moors, Aurora felt like a little girl.

Especially when she found herself holding up her skirts and jumping from stone to stone, giggling as she dodged mud from the wallerbogs—including the one that had escaped Count Alain’s arrow. Then she was speaking with the enormous tree sentinels and scratching under the jaw of the stone dragon. Mushroom faeries and hedgehog faeries, a little foxkin in a drooping hat, and a hob with grass growing from the top of his head all scampered out of their nests and holes.

Eventually, tired out, she rested on a patch of moss as they gathered around her.

Had these creatures, whom she had thought of as friends, truly stolen away children from Perceforest? Cursed those boys? As comfortable as she felt here, Aurora knew that didn’t mean the Moors didn’t have secrets. She knew that war had been waged on them and that they had fought back.

“I came here tonight to ask you what you think about humans,” she said.

There were a lot of frowns exchanged and some snickering.

“Yes,” she said, “I know I am a human. But I won’t get angry. I promise.”

Diaval arrived at that moment, walking out of the shadows with a small wizened faerie called Robin by his side.

“Such a human thing to promise,” said Robin, “when you can no more choose how to feel than a cloud can choose when to rain.”

“I will try not to get angry,” said Aurora.

One of the hedgehog faeries stepped forward, giggling. “I think they want our magic.”

“And our rocks,” said a water faerie, popping her head from the stream. “They want to slice them up and wear pieces of them on their arms and around their throat. Or melt them and make them into rings and crowns.”

“They smell funny,” said one of the wallerbogs, which seemed rich, coming from a creature who spent so much time in mud.

“And they’re loud,” said Balthazar, one of the border guard.

“They get wrinkly fast,” said Mr. Chanterelle, a mushroom faerie, “the way fingers do in water. But their faces, too!”

“That’s called getting old,” Aurora said.

The mushroom faerie nodded, seemingly pleased to be given a name for it.

“They hate us,” said Robin with a frown. “That’s what I dislike about them most.”