solution to keeping Eltaria safe. Thurman would still be alive if he hadn't been worn to a thread by running from one border crisis to another. Celeste might still be alive if he had been here instead of on the border.'
'And you will be worn to a thread if you aren't careful, Lily,' Jimson said with alarm and concern. 'You do not need that many more trials. There are only ten candidates left. Three of them are the enemy Princes and two more are from Kingdoms flanking them. We are still safe. You can stretch this out as long as a year without any of them taking umbrage, I think.'
'And I still don't have a long-term solution!' the Godmother said with despair. 'I have been Godmother to this Kingdom for three hundred years, and I still haven't got a solution that doesn't involve sending the Kings to an early grave!'
There was no one to see her but Jimson, no one to he alarmed at her weakness, no one to wonder if she was no longer up to the task....
Even though she herself now wondered just that very thing.
For the first time in three hundred years, she felt inadequate to the job. She put her head down in her hands, and wept. The Fae, even the half-Fae, as she was, were not supposed, by mortals at least, to weep. Mortals didn't know. The Fae did not cry often, and never in public, but oh yes, they wept. When you lived as long as the Fae did, there was a great deal to weep over. She had not wept in decades, but she was at the end of her proverbial rope.
'Lily — Lily — 'Jimson sounded frustrated and helpless. 'Please, do not cry — you are a good Godmother. No one could have managed better than you!'
She couldn't stop weeping, although she wept as the Fae did, quietly, the tears flowing from her eyes like rain. It was all, suddenly, too much. Even if one of the decent men won the right to Rosa's hand, it would all begin again. This poor little kingdom would be the tasty morsel that the neighbors all wanted to devour as long as there was no practical way to protect it.
Jimson continued to try and comfort her with soothing words, with reminders of several of the many disasters she had averted, and then just with 'it will be all right,' repeated over and over. But for the moment, she was inconsolable. Finally he burst out, 'Ah, I wish I was in your world, my love. I could at least hold you!'
That stopped her tears. She looked up suddenly and saw in the eyes of her Mirror Servant something she had never expected to see.
'Jimson?' she faltered.
He flushed. 'I should never have said that,' he mumbled, and started to fade.
'Wait!' she called. He paused, halfway between there and not there.
'Did you mean that?'
Slowly, he came back tothere. 'It slipped out.'
'But did you mean it?' She stared at him, as if she was seeing him, reallyseeing him, for the first time. For three hundred years, he had been her faithful helper, companion and confidant. Everything, everyone else, would come and go — but not Jimson. When had her feelings crossed that line? When had his? They had been together so long...
Perhaps it had only been recently. It came to her now, since all this started, he had stopped calling her 'Godmother,' unless Rosa was around. That might have been the first sign, if she had just been paying more attention.
Maybe she hadn't wanted to know; maybe her heart had known, and her head had realized that it was impossible and protected her from the knowledge. Because it was impossible. He could not be here, and despite knowing mirror-magic as well as she did, his world was still somewhere she could not go, for it was inhabited only by spirits.
'Of course I meant it.' He stared at her with naked longing, and for the first time ever, a hand joined the image of the face in the mirror, a hand pressed up against the surface of the glass as if by will alone he could reach into her world.
She pressed her hand to the same place, palm to palm. 'I'm sorry — ' she began.
'That you don't feel the same?' He smiled bitterly.
'No — ' she replied. 'I'm sorry it's taken me so long to notice that I do.'
Prince Leopold's gift encircled Rosa's neck under her gown, lying cool against her skin; there was something extraordinarily comforting about the feel of the unicorn necklace. She very much appreciated the gift, although the giver had pushed himself forward just a little too much, kissing her hand and then starting upward before she pulled away.
She had heard of such things of course, but she had never actually seen one, much less owned one. As wealthy as Eltaria was, all the money in the kingdom couldn't buy what no one would willingly sell.
She wondered about the unicorn this had come from. Leopold had said the hair was freely given, which made it more potent, but she rather doubted that he was a virgin. How had he gotten it? Had he followed the unicorn at a discreet distance, picking the hairs off bushes?
More likely he had found some young girl to get the hairs for him. She smiled a little as she shook her head. That man! A more charming rogue there never was. And she liked him well enough — just not as a consort. He'd be very amusing as a friend; he was witty and had a prankster's sense of humor, but was not afraid to turn the joke on himself. However, he was not what Eltaria needed. She sensed that he was cavalier about most things, and not really that good at thinking ahead. He would probably be a very popular King right up to the point that he did something disastrous. She had felt a little guilty accepting his gift, but then again, that came with being courted, and she had accepted a great many gifts by now, some just as valuable.
The only one as practical, however, was Prince Siegfried's gift. And Siegfried's was priceless. Of all the things she had been given or offered, being able to defend herself meant the most to her.
It was also a gift that no one else had even thought of. Siegfriedhad thought ahead; he had seen the blind spot her guards had when it came to the Princes, and he had given her a tool to get herself free. The second lesson
