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Babbitt reappeared with a giggle. “I know what blue jeans are now.” She snapped her fingers and pointed at Kate.

The pajamas on Kate’s body vanished, and she was suddenly wearing blue jeans and a khaki-colored sweater, complete with a matching pair of khaki suede boots.

Kate stared down at herself in shock. She hadn’t even felt anything but a faint breeze as her PJs had vanished and these new clothes replaced them.

She even had new panties and a bra. What she wouldn’t give to have the ability to snap her fingers and change clothes like that.

“Do you like it?” the brownie asked.

“It’s perfect!” Kate said honestly. “Thanks, Babbitt. Now, how do I get out of here?”

“Get out of where?”

“Here. This room. The doors are locked and I can’t leave.”

“Oh...” Babbitt’s smile vanished. “Lord Arun wishes you to remain here.”

“He may wish for that, but I sure as hell don’t. He is keeping me here against my will.” She strode toward the balcony doors and yanked on them.

Locked. Shocker .

“Babbitt, can you unlock the balcony doors?”

The brownie frowned slightly. “I suppose, mistress. Lord Arun would probably wish for you to get some fresh air.” She pointed and snapped her fingers.

Kate, her hands still on the silver door latches, felt the locks click and she opened the doors.

She stepped out onto the balcony and gasped.

She was easily four stories in the air, and the brilliant moonlight lit up the ground below which spiraled out in a chaotic maze of hedgerows that seemed to go on forever.

“What’s that?” she asked the brownie, who’d joined her at the balcony’s stone railing.

Babbitt shivered. “That’s the labyrinth, Mistress Kate.”

“The labyrinth?”

Babbitt’s golden eyes were wide with fear.

“Why does it scare you?”

“No one passes through the labyrinth. No one except Lord Arun. He is the only one who knows the way through it. That’s what makes it dangerous.

You think it’s easy to understand, but.

.. it never is. Even if you could find a way, there are dangers in the dark.

The most deadly kind of Fae dwell inside the labyrinth.

It is our greatest guard against the Seelie.

They cannot reach the palace unless they make it through the labyrinth.

Lord Arun sees everything in the labyrinth, and he would kill the Seelie if they tried to come to the palace. ”

There was that name again. Seelie. Kate remembered fragments of the old stories her mother had told her of the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Weren’t the Seelie supposed to be the good fairies? Maybe these were different. “What exactly are the Seelie?”

“The Seelie are the Fae who dwell in the land opposite ours. They live in the land of the sun. We, the Unseelie, dwell in moonlight. We are two sides of the same coin, but we are enemies.”

“So you never get sunlight here?” Kate judged that the moonlight was bright enough that if they never had sunlight, it was easy enough to see.

“Oh, we do, but it isn’t as bright as the land of the Seelie, nor do they have strong moonlight in their world.”

Kate studied the vast network of winding passages that made up a seemingly endless maze.

“The Seelie never come here?” She wondered how big this world was.

Was it on a full planet like her world or on some other kind of plane of existence entirely?

Admittedly, she was fascinated, but she wasn’t sure if asking Babbitt would give her the answers she needed.

“No, Mistress Kate. But there’s talk that they’ve been sighted in the Black Hills, which are just beyond the edge of the labyrinth.

The Black Hills divide our lands and theirs.

Lord Arun was attacked when he visited the hills to search for them.

” The brownie pointed to a distant set of mountains that looked dark and forbidding.

“When was Lord Arun attacked?” Kate asked.

“Yesterday,” the brownie replied. “I heard from the guards that he was injured in the fight and ended up in your realm trying to escape.”

“The owl,” Kate gasped. “Roan can turn into an owl? I thought perhaps that I’d dreamed it up. Is that... normal? For Fae to turn into animals?”

“For him it is,” Babbitt said. “The owl is his wild Fae form. His sister, Lady Eudora, turns into a white cat, clever and fierce, and Lord Rath Ender becomes a large black dog, a dark guardian who will fight to the death to protect others. Not all Shining Ones have the wildness in them, mind you. Some have the gift of song, others the gift of dreams, and some the gift of enchantments. The gift of wildness is very special, very rare.”

“Wait, who are Lady Eudora and Lord Rath Ender?”

“Lady Eudora is Lord Arun’s younger sister, high princess of the Twilight Court. Lord Rath Ender is Lord Arun’s closest friend and First Lance.”

“What’s that?” Kate asked.

“The First Lance is both a bodyguard and a confidant.”

Kate tapped her fingers on the railing, studying the brownie. “You know everything about this place, don’t you?”

“I have to, mistress,” the brownie said with a ready grin.

“Then you can tell me how to get out of here and go home, can’t you?”

Babbitt realized the trap Kate had set and began to shake her head. “No, no, Mistress Kate. You are Lord Arun’s special guest, and I cannot interfere.”

“Why not?” Kate pressed. “This isn’t my world. I don’t belong here.”

The brownie removed her cap and held it awkwardly in her hands. “Lord Arun is my king. I cannot go against my king’s wishes.”

Kate fought off the sudden frustration that swamped her. Even in her dreams, she had no control. It wasn’t fair. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t figure something out.

“I’m sorry, Babbitt, I didn’t mean to upset you. I don’t know anything about this place, and I’m going to make a lot of mistakes.”

Babbitt sniffled and nodded in understanding.

“Can I get you anything else, Mistress Kate?” Babbitt asked.

“No, I suppose... Wait! Could you give me a very long piece of thick rope? Something that has knots tied in it every two or three feet down the length of it? Make it about seventy feet long?” Kate held her breath, waiting to see if the brownie could actually do that.

“A rope?” Babbitt’s nose wrinkled. “I don’t know why you would want one, but I can do that.” She snapped her fingers, and the rope appeared in a coil piled on the floor at Kate’s feet. It looked like the climbing rope she used to have to climb in gym class.

“Thank you, Babbitt. Um, I guess you can go now, if you want. I don’t want to keep you busy when you have things to do for Lord Arun.” She didn’t want to make it look too obvious that she wanted Babbitt to leave, but she couldn’t very well escape with the brownie watching her.

“If you need anything else, just call my name and I will come to you, Mistress Kate.”

The brownie picked up her pile of laundry and vanished with a pop.

Chuckling, Kate grabbed the rope and dragged it toward the open balcony railing.

This was going to be easy.