“No,” Nanny Stoat told her. “We ought to be like this, all together. Even if we squabble. And it does the people good to see their queen having fun.”

Aurora smiled at that. “I am not sure what my court makes of me, let alone my people.”

“They think you’re young and a little foolish,” she replied. “And entirely too comfortable with the common folk. Not to mention the Fair Folk.”

Aurora wrinkled her nose. “And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, either.”

The old woman laughed.

“I don’t know how to make any of them listen to me the way they listen to you,” Aurora said with a sigh.

“You will,” said Nanny Stoat. “But changing their minds is something else. You might see the beauty in magic, while some people will only ever see the power in it.”

With that, Nanny Stoat walked off, leaning on her walking stick for support. The crowd was still breaking up. Count Alain remained by Aurora’s side.

“Thank you for bringing me here and for knowing that I’d want to come,” she told him. “I didn’t think you understood.”

“Because of the necklace?” he asked her.

She thought of the arrow he’d shot into the Moors and the rage on his face. “For one thing.”

He took her hand. “My queen, I have lived my whole life thinking of the faeries as monsters. To see them differently isn’t easy for me, but you have made me want to try. I should have considered my gift to you more carefully, but as it is the metal mined in my lands, I have a special affinity for it.”

“I am glad you’re trying,” Aurora said, smiling up at Count Alain. She recalled how she’d thought that if she could convince him to see the benefits of allying with the Fair Folk, then it would be possible to convince the rest of her kingdom. She’d given up on that after the gift of the necklace, but it seemed she’d succeeded after all. She ought to be pleased.

But it was impossible for her to feel much of anything when she still needed to make things right with Phillip.

She’d spotted him during her dance with Alain. It had been all she could do not to rush from the dance to chase him down and explain things. She knew she shouldn’t have spoken so harshly to him after the banquet in the Moors. She owed him an apology.

But first she had to find him.

When she returned to the dancing area, a branle was being performed, the participants moving back and forth in a wide circle, up onto their toes and down again. Phillip was neither among the dancers nor among those watching. Her godmother was nowhere to be seen, either, but there was some time before the signing ceremony.