She willed herself to rest, but as her eyes drifted closed, her whole body jerked awake in nameless terror. After several attempts, her heart was beating so wildly that she knew sleep wasn’t coming. And if she wasn’t careful, Maleficent might discover her trouble. Aurora knew it would make Maleficent feel awful. Aurora wanted that least of anything.

As quietly as she could, she slid from the bed. She didn’t bother looking around for her shoes or even pulling on her overdress. She hurried down the stairs and out of the palace. The moss under her feet was soft and cool and a little damp. The breeze was warm. She began to walk. In the starlight, gems shimmered beneath the waves. She saw wallerbogs snoring gently, sleeping beneath blankets of mounded leaves.

On she went, until she was almost at the edge of the area where there had once been a barrier between the Moors and the human lands. There she heard a sound, too large for a possum and too tentative for a bear. At first she thought it might be a deer come to nibble at the new green leaves.

By the time she realized it was a human, he was too close for it to matter if she screamed.

Chapter 15

Maleficent wasn’t sure what had woken her. She turned to one side on the divan, her gaze going automatically to check on Aurora.

Except the girl wasn’t in her bed.

The embroidered blankets were piled up where Aurora ought to have been, one of them trailing on the floor as though she’d kicked her way free of it. Maleficent sat up and looked around. The wind blew through the trees on the balcony, sending down a shower of silvery leaves.

Maleficent walked until she spotted footprints in the moss. They looked leisurely, unrushed. No doubt the girl would be back in a moment.

But a moment passed, and then another, and Maleficent couldn’t help worrying. She began to walk along the path of the footprints, her worry deepening as she realized that they went farther than could have been explained by the needs of a body.

Her wings flexed, opening and closing restlessly with her desire to fly and survey the landscape for Aurora, but her view of the ground would be obscured by thick vines and flowering trees, and she worried she might not be able to pick up the trail easily again once she abandoned it.

Then Maleficent heard a voice. Not Aurora’s—a deeper voice, one that might belong to a man. She rushed forward, moving swiftly between trees. She stopped at the sight of Phillip walking at Aurora’s side with his hands clasped behind his back.

Phillip, here, after she’d warned him. Phillip, defying her.