DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to Dr. Scarberry, because you saved
her life, and to Dr. Boreman, because you saved mine.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One: Wynn
Chapter Two: Elric
Chapter Three: Wynn
Chapter Four: Elric
Chapter Five: Wynn
Chapter Six: Elric
Chapter Seven: Wynn
Chapter Eight: Elric
Chapter Nine: Wynn
Chapter Ten: Elric
Chapter Eleven: Wynn
Chapter Twelve: Elric
Chapter Thirteen: Wynn
Chapter Fourteen: Elric
Chapter Fifteen: Wynn
Chapter Sixteen: Elric
Chapter Seventeen: Wynn
Chapter Eighteen: Elric
Chapter Nineteen: Wynn
Chapter Twenty: Elric
Chapter Twenty-One: Elric
Chapter Twenty-Two: Elric
Chapter Twenty-Three: Wynn
Chapter Twenty-Four: Wynn
Chapter Twenty-Five: Wynn
Chapter Twenty-Six: Elric
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Elric
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Elric
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Wynn
Chapter Thirty: Elric
Chapter Thirty-One: Elric
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Kristin Bailey
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONEWynn
WYNN DIDN’T LIKE BEING A fairy princess. She sat on the end of her fluffy bed and kicked the wall with the toe of her silk slipper, making a low thumping sound on the soft wood. Living inside of a giant tree wasn’t very nice either. If she were a squirrel, or a bird, maybe she would like it. But she wasn’t a squirrel or a bird. She was a girl, and she wanted to go outside.
Before she came through the Silver Gate, Wynn used to go outside every day. She could go outside when she lived with her mother in a hut in the woods. She used to gather sticks for the fire and feed the chickens in the garden. There was lots to do, and her mother was always there. Sometimes her older brother, Elric, would come back from tending the sheep for the village, and they would play in the woods and try to find the gate to the realm of the Fairy Queen.
But then her mother got sick. And the storm came. And Mother didn’t get better. She didn’t wake up.
Wynn hugged her arms across her chest as she remembered. The shimmering skirts of her dress rustled as she drew her feet up under her and sat on the edge of the bed. Her father had come to the hut. He was angry. He wanted to get rid of her. He didn’t like that it took her so long to think, and her words didn’t sound right, and her thumbs weren’t shaped like other people’s thumbs. He thought she was cursed, a changeling child, a monster.
But then Elric came and together they ran away. Wynn followed the clues the Fairy Queen left for her, and she led them to the real Silver Gate, the only place where someone from the Otherworld could cross over to the land Between from the human world. It had been a scary adventure. They almost died. But they found the gate and Wynn was very happy when the Fairy Queen made them prince and princess of the land Between. The queen gave them beautiful and wonderful things and Wynn felt safe again.
Maybe too safe. She looked around her room. A magical tree formed the entire palace. The branches of the great tree were so large they held entire corridors with stairs and bridges. Wynn lived in a little nook, carved into one of the branches. It was a pretty room.
The fairies told her it didn’t hurt the tree to live in it. It wasn’t like the trees where she came from. This tree was magic, and magic could do strange things.
Sparkling stones had been fixed in the ceiling and walls. They glittered like stars in the night. A large glowing orb traveled across her room every day, following a sun that she could not see. When it stopped glowing and rested on the floor, she had to go to bed.
The magic in the Between was very beautiful. Colorful lights danced everywhere, and there was no dark shadows or mean villagers. But the magic things in her room only seemed magical for a while. Now they were just the same thing day after day, after day. Wynn got up and walked in a small circle around her room. It was very boring. Now no one needed anything from her.
The fairies had given her pretty dresses, funny puppets to play with, and a toy bird that came alive in her hands and flew around the room. But she couldn’t go outside. Not ever. It wasn’t safe. She walked over to the narrow slits in the wooden wall and tried to push her hand through, but her palm stuck. She wiggled her fingers outside, but she couldn’t feel a breeze. She couldn’t see anything interesting through the slits either. All she could see were some big leaves and the pinks, blues, and cool green colors that shifted through the magical dome that covered the fairy lands. She wanted a real window.
“No, Wynn, you could fall. No, Wynn, you can’t swim. No, Wynn, it’s too hot.” Wynn repeated the phrases that came too easily to her mind. She had heard them enough. They made her so angry.
She picked at the soft bark on the edge of the slit pulling it away in strips, then dropping it through the narrow gap. When she lived in the Otherworld, she used to spend her entire day looking for sticks so she and her mother would have enough wood to tend the fire at night. Every day it was the same: go to the woods, pick up sticks, find her way back home. Her pet hen, Mildred, would follow her and eat bugs. Wynn liked finding sticks. It was an important job and she could do it without help. Her mother needed those sticks. Her mother needed the fire. Her mother needed her.
Now she didn’t even have a window she could see things out of. The fairies were too afraid she would fall out of it. She knew how to stay inside a window. Wynn kicked the wall hard, and it hurt her foot, so she smacked the wall with her hand.
Elric had a bigger window, and his room was next to hers. She should go see what he was doing.
Wynn carefully opened the door to her room and peeked out. The hollow branch of the tree formed a long,
