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.

Atletha finished the spoons and put the tray away. The prince's answer was still in her chest, warm and heavy. She had five days at most before the love fairy leader arrived. She needed a room with a door that locked, a mirror, and quiet. The steward's cot in the servants' hall had none of these. She slept there beside two under-maids and a laundress who rose at fourth bell. She could not unpin her hair there. She could not lift the crown from under it and set it on her head to see if it still sat true. She tried the linen closet first. Too small. She tried the disused sewing room on the west stair. A guard used it now for card games. She tried the map room after supper and found two clerks still working. Every door in the castle belonged to someone else. She was the steward. She held keys to rooms she could not use. She went to the prince at the mews, where he was checking a young winged fawn's wing splint. The fawn stood quiet under his hand, spotted flanks twitching. He looked up when he saw her face. "I have no room," she said. "To prepare. To put the crown on and see myself in it before she comes. The servants' hall is full. Every private room has someone in it." He wiped his hands on a cloth. "Take the south tower study. I use it for maps. I will move the maps tonight. The lock is good and the key is mine to give." He pulled a small brass key from his coat and set it in her palm. "Tell the housekeeper I asked for it. Do not explain." She closed her hand on the key. It was warm from his pocket. "The housekeeper will ask," she said. "She asks about every candle." "Then she asks me," he said. "Go." Atletha climbed to the south tower that night with a lamp and her mother's crown wrapped in a cloth. The room was small and clean. One narrow window. One mirror above a washstand. She turned the key in the lock and heard it catch. She unpinned her hair. The crown came out of the cloth and settled on her head where it was meant to sit. In the mirror she saw a fairy of the black tribe wearing pink and purple and mint, with red hair loose and a crown that caught the lamp. She kept her wings still out of habit, then let them open. The prince's colors showed in the underveil. She had her room. She had four days. Down in the courtyard, a rider in rose and gold reined in at the gate, a leather satchel with a brass heart buckle at her hip. The love fairy leader had come early.