[The Moors — Days 127-132]
[PHILLIP]
He'd fought through a curse and a siege and a sleeping castle and a dungeon full of unconscious guards and had felt, through all of it, the particular clarity of someone operating on adrenaline and purpose.
Walking into the Moors was different.
The thorn wall was gone — he'd known that, had been present for the coronation, had watched its absence from the castle with the intellectual understanding of a changed fact. Understanding it and walking through the former boundary line on foot, with the forest closing in from both sides and the bioluminescent flowers tracking his movement with a thousand small points of light, was two separate experiences.
Aurora walked beside him. The bare feet — he'd stopped being surprised by the bare feet — and the easy confidence of someone in their element. The Moors recognized her. The flowers near her were brighter.
"She knows we're coming," Aurora said.
"You told her?"
"The Moors told her." At his expression: "It's not as mysterious as it sounds. She's connected to this land. When something changes in it, she feels it." A pause. "She felt when Nathan was injured three weeks ago. From miles away."
Phillip processed that. "They're—"
"Close," Aurora said, in the tone of someone who had more to say and was choosing not to say it. "Here."
The grove was smaller than he'd expected. He didn't know what he'd expected — Maleficent's territory felt like it should be vast, some tremendous dark fortress of nature. The grove was modest. Flowers, stones, an old tree at the back. Intimate.
Maleficent stood at its center.
Nathan stood at the grove's edge, leaning against one of the larger stones with his arms crossed and the expression of a man who was available to intervene but was giving the primary parties their space.
Phillip stopped at the grove entrance. "Mistress Maleficent."
The pause that followed was the length of a full assessment.
"Prince Phillip," she said. Formal and cool and with the particular quality of someone performing courtesy as a deliberate act rather than a reflex.
Aurora squeezed his arm. He went in.
---
[NATHAN]
The visit lasted two hours and produced no casualties, which he was willing to count as a complete success.
Maleficent had been polite. The specific, weaponized politeness of a woman who'd decided to give something her best effort and whose best effort, when applied to someone she was uncertain about, looked like a formal dinner at a court that had never heard of warmth. Phillip had been nervous and sincere and had asked a question about the Moors' water fairy population that had — briefly, genuinely — interested her. Aurora had run interference with the unconscious grace of someone who'd spent her entire life managing complicated relationships between people who loved her.
After Phillip left — pressing Aurora's hand, nodding to Nathan, bowing to Maleficent with genuine respect that had earned him a slightly less formal nod in return — Maleficent stood in the center of the grove and looked at Nathan.
"He's very cheerful," she said.
"Yes."
"Persistently."
"That's generally considered a good quality."
She picked up a flower that had dropped from the northern cluster. Turned it in her fingers. "It's suspicious. People with that much genuine goodwill usually have an agenda they haven't disclosed."
"Or they just have that much genuine goodwill."
"The second option is less useful to plan for." She set the flower down. "He asked intelligent questions."
"I noticed."
"The water fairy question was not what I expected." She paused, and the pause contained the admission she was working around to. "He clearly paid attention to what Aurora told him. About the Moors."
"He's been paying attention to everything she tells him since the day he met her."
Maleficent looked at him. "You like him."
"I think he's decent. I think he'll be good for Aurora." He met her eyes. "I think you think so too."
She didn't answer. Picked up another flower. Set it down.
"He's cheerful," she said again, but the accusation had drained out of it. What was left was almost — almost — the sound of a woman finding something absurd in a way she might one day find charming.
Nathan felt the laugh in his chest and kept it there. Some victories were better appreciated privately.
---
[Day 130 — The Meadow]
Aurora brought food.
This was the thing Nathan hadn't anticipated about her reign — she was a queen now, had a castle full of people whose entire function was preparation and logistics, and she still occasionally showed up to the Moors with a basket she'd packed herself, because the principle of providing for people you loved was something the pixies had apparently installed in her before the cottage had even had a proper kitchen.
Phillip had come with her this time. Maleficent had been informed in advance, which meant she'd had two days to prepare her composure rather than being ambushed by his cheerfulness.
The meadow was a better venue than the grove. Open sky, room to breathe, the flowers providing the ambient light. Nathan had arrived first and had been sitting in the grass watching the water fairies in the eastern stream when Aurora had appeared over the treeline on foot with Phillip three paces behind carrying the basket with the expression of a man who'd decided that carrying things for Aurora was a privilege rather than a task.
Maleficent arrived last. From the air, which was the entrance she used when she wanted to remind herself she had the option of leaving.
She landed at the meadow's edge. Folded her wings. Crossed to them.
"You brought a great deal of food," she said, looking at the basket.
"Corwin's kitchen. They've been wanting to impress you since the coronation." Aurora spread a cloth on the grass. "Sit."
"I don't usually—"
"Godmother. Sit."
Maleficent sat. It was the slightly formal sit of someone who hadn't done it in grass in a long time — the adjustments for wings, for posture, for what to do with one's hands when there was no stone and no purpose. Phillip sat across from her with the measured care of someone who understood that proximity was a thing he was earning rather than assuming.
Nathan sat beside Maleficent, in the position he occupied by default, the three feet that was now an established geography.
Aurora distributed food with the unselfconscious efficiency of someone who'd managed meals under worse conditions than a meadow picnic. The pastries from the kitchen. Cold meat, sliced. A bread that was significantly better than the day-old variety from the first week. Fruit that the Moors' eastern orchard had produced — something hybrid, the result of Verdant Communion work Nathan had done on two of the older trees in spring, sweeter than standard.
"These are from the eastern orchard," Aurora said, handing the fruit to Maleficent.
Maleficent tasted it. Something moved in her expression — the involuntary response to better-than-expected, the same thing that had happened with the pastry at the coronation feast. Her eyes went to Nathan.
"You did something to the trees," she said.
"Maintenance work. Months ago."
"The flavor is different."
"The root network was stressed. Fixed it."
She looked at the fruit in her hand. Then at him. The look that lived in the register of you did a small thing that changed a larger thing and didn't mention it, which was a look he'd been collecting for two years and which had never quite lost its charge.
Phillip asked Aurora something about the water fairies. She answered. Their voices moved into a conversation that required attention from both of them, and Nathan leaned back on his hands and looked at the open sky.
Maleficent was watching him. He could feel it.
"The trees," she said quietly, while Aurora and Phillip were occupied.
"The Verdant Communion keeps finding things that need doing." He glanced at her. "I'll let you know if I do anything significant."
"You should have told me."
"You would have said it was unnecessary."
"It was." A pause. "The fruit is better."
He let that sit where it was. Across the meadow, Aurora laughed at something Phillip said — the real laugh, the full sound of it, the one that the Moors knew. Maleficent's head turned toward the sound with the specific quality of attention she always brought to Aurora's happiness.
The lines around her eyes were different than they'd been a year ago. Not softer exactly — Maleficent didn't do soft, had no interest in it — but less armored. The face of someone who'd stopped needing to brace.
---
[AURORA]
[After]
Phillip had left with a legitimate smile from Maleficent — genuine, brief, provoked by something he'd said about the Moors' crow population that had revealed he'd done actual research before the visit — and Aurora had counted it among the better moments of the month.
She found Nathan collecting the basket in the meadow while Maleficent walked the border line, wings loose, the particular contemplative patrol of someone working something through.
"She's trying very hard," Aurora said quietly. "Because of you."
Nathan glanced at Maleficent's retreating silhouette. "She'd try regardless."
"Not like this." Aurora picked up the edge of the cloth, folded it. "Before — when she was alone in the Moors — she tried because she had to. Because I needed something. Because the Moors needed something." She folded the cloth again. "This is different. She's trying because she wants to. For herself." She looked at him. "That's new. That's you."
Nathan was quiet for a moment. His eyes on Maleficent at the border line, standing in the space where the thorn wall used to be.
"She did the work," he said.
"She did." Aurora tucked the cloth into the basket. "With someone standing next to her while she did it."
Across the meadow, Maleficent turned from the border. Looked back at them. Something crossed her face at the sight of Nathan — brief, unguarded, the expression of someone who'd located a fixed point in uncertain terrain.
She began walking back.
Nathan straightened. Picked up the basket.
Aurora watched them converge in the middle of the meadow, watched Maleficent take the basket from him with the particular motion of someone who hadn't intended to do that and had done it anyway, watched them fall into step together toward the grove.
She stood in the meadow with the Moors breathing around her and the border open behind her and the flowers beginning their evening light sequence, and she was the queen of two realms and she was sixteen years old and everything was complicated and fine.
Her communicating raven — Diaval's training, a gift for the coronation — landed on her wrist.
A message from the castle. Councillor Harwick. Something about Lord Belmore that required her attention by morning.
She read it twice. Put it aside in her mind for the morning. Looked at the grove where two silhouettes were visible through the tree line.
Then she turned and walked toward the castle, bare feet on Moors moss, the familiar path she knew by dark.
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