Vidya looked into the faces of the adults dancing around them. They were looking at each other in confusion, looking up at the sun and back down at their guardian plants with furrowed brows.
They danced for a minute longer before the music slowed down and the Fae slowed their steps, perplexed expressions on the previously excited faces.
“Did it happen?” asked Daisy, frowning, coming to a stop. “Was that it? Did I miss it?”
Vidya shook her head as the Fae adults moved from foot to foot and began speaking in low voices. Pancake’s little head whipped around, trying to see everything at once.
“What’s happening?” she heard someone behind her say.
“Why didn’t the plants light up like they normally do?” said another.
“Did we get the day wrong?” a child squeaked.
Daisy tugged at the green sleeve of Vidya’s dress. “Vidya, what happened? I don’t get it.”
But just as Vidya opened her mouth to tell her she had no clue, vivid blue wings fluttered next to her ear, and she almost groaned. She knew who it was before she turned.
Standing there with wide eyes were her annoying triplet cousins. At the same age at her, Lobey, Luna, and Toad were identical triplets with straight electric blue hair and wings. Those weren’t their proper names, of course, but it was what Vidya had been calling them for years.
“What’s happening?” asked Linaria, known as Toad because her guardian plant was the Toadflax plant.
Lunaria, or Luna, rubbed her arms anxiously. “That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?”
“Of course not,” said Lobelia, or Lobey, crossly, a deep frown on her face. “As heir to the throne, Vidya knows that this is not a good sign.”
Vidya tried very hard not to roll her eyes at Lobey, the eldest triplet and forever her rival. The only thing that made them even was that Lobey didn’t know her guardian plant either.
“Why isn’t it a good sign?” piped Daisy, purple wings twitching anxiously.
Lobey gave her a superior look and looked down her nose at Daisy. “Because, cousin, the spring light shows the power of Fae magic in all its glory. The fact that the magic didn’t happen is very, very bad.”
The five cousins exchanged a look of worry as the whispering around them grew.
“I’m going to speak to my parents,” said Vidya, pushing past Toad to get to the edge of the group.
But as she got to the edge of the garden, she found both her parents stepping onto the wooden dais they used to stand upon to give speeches.
Her father raised his hands, and everyone shushed. A hundred pairs of green eyes turned to watch the King and Queen. The Queen gently patted baby Mahiya and beckoned Vidya to come and stand next to them. Vidya padded forward and stood next to her mother on the dais. Wings twitched in uncertainty all around her as she stared into the worried faces of the Fae.
“Something is happening,” boomed King Farrion in a loud, serious voice. As Vidya looked at his even face, she noticed no surprise, only determination.
He knew, Vidya realised. He’s not surprised at all—he knew this was going to happen. What did the Old Ones tell him?
“The Fae magic has… changed somehow,” he continued. “There is nothing to be alarmed about at this stage. The Queen and I will call a council to figure out our next steps.”
The surrounding Fae exchanged looks of fear. Wings twitched and brows furrowed.
“Everyone needs to go about their day as normal,” the Queen said in a calm voice that carried across the lawn. “We will let you know when things become clear to us. We are sure it will all be sorted out quickly.”
The Fae magic has changed. Fae were whispering to each other. What did that mean? Lobey had said that it had ‘failed’. Was that really what had happened? Nothing like this had ever happened before in the history of the Fae, as Vidya knew it from what her teachers had told her. Fae magic was as sure as nature itself. But there was one big problem Vidya could see as she looked back up to the stern face of her father. The Fae were made of Fae magic. If it was failing. What on earth did that mean for them?
2
Trouble Comes in Threes
All things are One. The Fae are one with the soil, the plants, the trees. The Fae are one with the animals. To be Fae means to look into the eyes of another and know they are one part of the same whole.
—The Book of the Fae, Queen Mab the First, 3333 B.C.
There was no breakfast feast that year for the Eastern Bushland Fae. Instead, everyone shuffled off back to an ordinary day’s work, shrugging at each other. ‘Don’t panic,’ the King had said, and so, the Fae, being trusting people with good faith in a King who had never failed to protect them and a Queen who ran the city wisely, went about their day as normal, the worry cast back to the furthest corners of their minds.
But Princess Vidya was thinking.
The children were rounded up and taken to their classes, which for the ten-year-olds meant gathering in the palace library with Master Sunny, a yellow-haired Fae so elderly that his wings were almost completely see-through. Vidya had never seen him fly, and so she wasn’t even sure his wings could work at all. The Fae were nothing if not polite people, and it was considered bad manners to flap your wings around if you could walk instead, but in ‘flying areas’ such as out in the city, everyone chose to fly.
Princess Vidya, Pancake, the blue triplets, and ten other Fae children the same age sat at rectangular wooden tables in front of a blackboard, upon which Master Sunny was drawing a
