Chapter 13
What Dreams May Come?
L eopold Tamias Lynister.
Still hearing the echoes of his last summoning, Leo stood in his own dressing room inside the White Palace. The mirror showed him nothing but his own reflection, but as he looked over the tunic the Fae Queen had provided for him to wear, he smiled. He still could remember a few traces of his last conversation with his dream girl, Tabitha. “There,” he said, as if the girl was still beside him. “You see? It’s much better without any ruffles.”
Nothing answered him, but it was just as well. He hadn’t even managed to convince himself that the words he said were true. The faerie tailors had matchless skill, but no true artistry; everything in the Fae Realm was nothing but an uncanny and soulless copy of something in the Mortal Realm.
The streamlined perfection of his appearance was as empty as a tomb.
The only thing out of place was the missing hair bead.
And when he stared at the small gap in his appearance, he remembered more about his dream girl. Tabitha hadn’t called him Tam’lin or even Leo.
She had called him Tom.
Leo shook his head, trying to clear it. Trying to determine which inner voice to listen to.
Tam’lin, where are you?
Talking to his dream girl, Leo had regained a few of his memories, but they weren’t the same memories he had before. Before he became a cat, before entering the Fae Realm, he might have enjoyed spending some extra time on his appearance, making certain he had the latest fashion to stand above the rest of the court. He used snide and clever words, danced all the latest steps, and filled his hunting cabinet with rare trophies, all in an effort to remain on top.
Now, preparing himself for the Fae Queen’s feast to celebrate the coming spring, he only wished the process was quicker and led to something he truly enjoyed.
Perhaps it was better to wear a fur coat than go through all this fuss.
Tam’lin, come to me.
Leo turned from the mirror and entered the halls of the White Palace, certain the Queen would summon him again if he didn’t answer her soon. A few of the fae servants slipped around him like shadows, and some even bowed as he passed, but his feet dragged.
Once, he was certain he had enjoyed being a prince, along with the prospect of a beautiful woman waiting to latch onto his arm and watching others bow and scrape before him.
Now, he wondered if he had only enjoyed it because he hadn’t had anything else to compare it to. The beauty around him was empty, the bows almost meaningless. He could never show his true self to the Queen without risking her displeasure, and to everyone else, he was merely a human and a prince.
Sometimes, his dream girl seemed to see him as a cat. Sometimes, a hero. But she always seemed to see him truly, as if she could peer into the very depths of his soul and see not only what he was, but what he should be.
He never felt like just a soulless prince to her .
And once, he would have ignored the children moving in the next room he passed as someone else’s trouble, but now he could only think of Tabitha’s previous request—that he find some way to set them free. And he didn’t care if he risked the wrath of the Queen and the loss of the empty position he now held. He wanted to do this one thing for his dream girl, even if he wasn’t able to manage anything else.
He wanted to become the sort of selfless hero Tabitha already thought he could be.
So, in the bustle of the preparations for the Spring Celebration, Leo stopped his progress down the hall and went to the next room. He greeted the children, called Han’sel and Gret’sel, and told them that it was time to play a game.
“What kind of game?” Han’sel asked somewhat suspiciously. The towheaded boy was the oldest at about eight or nine, but at the moment, he looked like he might be even older than that. Tired. Used up. Perhaps the same way Leo looked after dancing and feasting with the fae past the time of mortal endurance. Past the point where he would collapse, or his feet might bleed.
And the girl wouldn’t look at Leo at all.
“We’ll go out into the woods,” Leo tried first, not certain how much he could explain.
The boy shook his head. “The Queen says we’ll get lost if we go there.”
“Only if you don’t know where you want to go. But I think you’re smart enough to find your own way home.” The boy was certainly smarter than Leo wanted him to be and was asking far too many questions, taking far too much time.
The Queen could summon Leo again at any moment.
Han’sel frowned down at a fist of cake left over from the night before. It left a small trail of crumbs on the marble floor. “Like we could mark a path back for ourselves?”
Leo nodded, impatiently checking the hall again for any eavesdroppers. “You could try that. But I’d rather you find a path to somewhere you really want to go.” It seemed he would have to just come out and say it. “Did you never have a home other than this place? Parents? Friends?”
“I think we did,” Han’sel answered, halting as if rediscovering some previously buried pain. “We had a father, but we didn’t like our new mother much. She said we had to do all our lessons and chores, go to bed early, and eat greens for supper. We wanted to go to the woods where we could play for however long we wanted to and eat sweets every day.”
“I see,” Leo said, now seeing the whole picture with the same clarity as he had seen himself in the mirror. “The Queen never did learn your real names, did she? You ran from home, made yourself strays, and all she had to do to keep you was give you sweets or anything else you foolishly thought you wanted.” Again, Leo found himself talking to himself more than the boy before him, but Han’sel still dropped his head in shame.
“Yes. But maybe it’s not as fun as we thought it would be.”
“No, it isn’t,” Leo agreed. “But this is good news. If the Queen doesn’t know your true names, you can leave, and she can’t call you back. So, do you want to go home?”
The boy nodded, and so did the girl, even if she had taken to hiding behind her brother.
“Then don’t mark a path to come back,” Leo said. “Forget any tie you might have to this place—even your own names if you have to. Just go into the woods and keep going until you find someone who will give you more than sweets. Someone who wants you to grow into something better.”
“And will you come with us?” the girl asked, speaking for the first time. Light, she had her short hair in pigtails and couldn’t be more than five or six.
They really needed someone to go with them, but he would never be allowed.
Leo still smiled for her. “I’ll go with you for as long as I can before the Queen summons me. But even if I disappear, I want you to go, and I can make certain no one else follows.”
When Tabitha first went out to find Tom, she had left in a rush. She had not prepared herself or the shop for a week-long journey. This time, wishing and hoping that she could take the same journey again and have it not be too late, she kept the shop closed for the rest of the day and finished Lady Sabine’s gown and anything else that could be done in one afternoon.
She passed the final deliveries to Billy, asking him to look in on the cats and not to expect her back until perhaps after the princess’s wedding.
Then, that evening, she took Bandit and the last of her projects with her to the borders of Castletown. Deep inside the Darkwood, she knelt beside the faerie ring, presented her offering, and tried to think of a name that the cat might respond to.
“Fayette? Little Faerie Cat?” she tried. “Will you bargain with me again?”
Nothing. Tabitha wasn’t sure what she had expected; faeries were nothing if self-interested even if they weren’t also cats, but the oppressive stillness made her want to wail.
Especially when she considered she only had herself to blame. It was her own reckless use of magic that had brought her home prematurely. What if she wasn’t able to get back? Tom would waste away, and it would be all her fault. Tears pricked her eyes. “I didn’t mean to leave him, you know. I shouldn’t have left him. I just . . . and he just . . . Will you please help me?”
The mushroom ring was empty except for her offering. The forest was still. There was no one to address her pleading to, only the cat in her arms that she looked down on in despair.
And by some gift of the fates, Bandit answered her with his own small mew .
That was when the leftover winter sludge moved from the forest floor, stirred by a sudden breeze. The faerie cat appeared, sitting on fresh shoots of green inside the ring. “Well, I suppose I knew that you both would be crawling back to me eventually, but you better be ready to make this worth my while.”