Atletha Duststone's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Atletha Duststone counted the silver spoons twice because her hands would not stay still. The prince was to receive envoys at the third bell, and she was House Steward, and the tribe crown beneath her pinned hair weighed more today than it had yesterday. She had folded the prince's colors into the underveil of her wings that morning. He would see them. He always did. That was the trouble. Her mother had packed the crown for her the night she left the fairy tribe. Keep your head up, her mother said. Keep your wings clean. Her mother meant the position at the castle. Her mother did not mean the prince. Atletha had come here to serve, and instead she had begun to hope, and hope without proof was a thing she could not carry into a court that did not know what she was. She needed one moment alone with him. One question, one answer. Would he choose her if the hall knew she wore a fairy crown under her braid? Without that answer she could not step forward, and she could not step back either. She had been still for weeks. The great doors were not the place. The corridor to the receiving hall was not the place. She chose the stone bench in the side gallery, where the guard emblems were carved into the back and the light came thin through one high window. Servants passed there without stopping. She sat and waited, spoons abandoned on a tray behind her. He came alone, without the crown, in the coat he wore for tracking. He had been out again after the herd. He saw her and stopped. "Atletha." He sat on the far end of the bench and set his hat on the stone between them. "You waited." "I need to ask you something," she said. She kept her wings still. She kept her face neutral. "If the court learned I was not what they think I am. If they learned what I wear under this hair. Would you still stand where I could see you." She did not make it a question. She could not. He looked at the hat. Then at her wings, where his colors showed through the underveil. "Yes," he said. "I would stand there. I would say it out loud." He did not soften it. He did not add anything. He picked up the hat and stood. "Say when." He went on to the receiving hall. Atletha stayed on the bench a moment longer. She had her answer, and the answer was a door she now had to walk through. The love fairy leader was expected at court within the week to bless any royal match, and she would look at Atletha and know a crown when she saw one. Atletha stood, smoothed her skirt of pink and purple and mint, and went back to her spoons.