With a sinking heart, Aurora danced the gavotte, the saltarello, and several caroles. Her spirits lowered with each one, although a tree man spun her with such grace that she never lost her footing. And yet, she could see that her plan was working. She wasn’t the only human partnered with a faerie. Nor were all the dancers noble. For her last set, she was partnered with a sturdy farmer who clearly couldn’t believe his luck and guided her through the steps with aplomb.

When it was done, she excused herself from the floor. Phillip hadn’t returned. She meant to look for him in another area of the festival, but before she could, Lady Fiora brought her a cup of cider. Immediately, she began discussing the nobles who had come, and telling Aurora how beautiful she had looked on the floor.

“I shouldn’t say this, but my brother stared so while you danced,” Lady Fiora said with a giggle. “And you are beautifully flushed. Your eyes are positively sparkling.”

“Have you seen Prince Phillip?” Aurora asked before gulping down the drink.

Lady Fiora looked surprised. “Why, I thought he’d gone,” she said. “Back to Ulstead.”

Aurora’s heart seemed to twist.

“Did I say something—”

“Excuse me.” Aurora raced away from the dancing and across the lawn, past jugglers and an impromptu wrestling match between a hedgehog faerie and a burly human who seemed surprisingly equal in both strength and agility, past the storyteller Maleficent had uncursed, who was telling a tale about a fish with a ring in its stomach. But Phillip was nowhere she looked.

It was hard for Aurora to move through the crowd without someone stopping her to tell her either how lovely the festival was and how much they were enjoying it or to make a request that she do something about, say, their neighbors’ goats always grazing on their land.

But Aurora paused long enough only to smile or thank the person or say that she couldn’t help them right then. And with each step, her feeling of panic intensified.

She spotted Flittle near a large basin where children were laughing and bobbing for apples.

“Have you seen Phillip, Auntie?” she asked.

“No, my dear,” said Flittle. “Is he lost?”

Aurora moved on, but at every turn there was someone to engage her in conversation.

“Did you see what Lord Donald of Summerhill is wearing?” asked Lady Sybil. “He’s got on a jacket with sleeves so long they’re dragging in the dirt!”

“Beauteous Queen Aurora, whose hair resembles nothing so much as the wheat of fertile fields, I was devastated to lose the riddle contest,” said Baron Nicholas. “But though I could not have the first dance, perhaps I can have this one. Won’t you step out with me?”

“I see the reason for the treaty now,” said Balthazar the tree man. “Not before, but now.”