Fern Capella crouched in the flattened ruin of her mushroom patch and counted the broken caps. Nineteen. The boot print in the moss was longer than her whole arm. She knew whose boot. The fae prince had ridden through at dawn with his hunting party, and she had watched from behind a fern frond, too shy to call out, too small to be seen even if she had. She pressed her palm to the crushed soil and pushed a little magic down. A green shoot uncurled between her fingers. Her ribs ached at once. She pulled the magic back. The forest still needed her whole strength. The poisoned soil at the eastern edge was pulling color out of the trees, and she did not yet know why. She could not spend herself on mushrooms. But she could not stop thinking about him either. He had laughed as he rode. A bright, careless laugh. She wanted him to laugh like that near her on purpose. The prince held court at the lavender stone castle every seventh day. Petitioners lined the rose gates from dawn. Fern had gone once. She had stood at knee height in a crowd of tall folk and watched him pass three paces away without turning his head. Her wings were transparent. Her voice did not carry. She was the size of a child's doll and quieter. Today was the seventh day again. She was folding her satchel when a shadow fell over the patch. A mushroom cap wider than her shoulders. Under it, a boy her own height, green-eyed, barefoot in leaf-scraps. Spore Willowveil. He lived where the ground told him to live. Sometimes that was near her clearing. She had shared soup with him twice. He looked at the boot print. Then at her face. "You're going back," he said. "He didn't see me." "Nobody sees anybody in a crowd." Spore tilted his head. His wing-caps shifted on their own. "There's a playset behind the castle. Painted wood. Deer and foxes carved on it. Children climb it during court day. The slides are taller than the gate guards." Fern stared at him. "You want me to stand on a slide." "I want you higher than everyone's heads. That's all." He paused. "I don't usually tell people what I notice. I'm telling you." She thought about the crowd. The forest of knees. The prince's laugh going past her again. "Show me," she said. They went through the trees together. The lavender castle rose above the rose hedges, turrets pale against the sky. Behind it, tucked in a meadow, stood the painted playset: pastel slides, a swing shaped like a fox, mushroom stools around the base. Court-day children already swarmed it. Fern climbed. Her wings caught nothing; she used her hands. At the top of the tallest slide, she stood level with the castle's second-floor windows. She could see the whole courtyard. She could see the prince. This time, when he rode out, he would ride under her.

Fern climbed down from the slide with the prince's route mapped in her head. She had a perch. She had a plan. Then the wind shifted, and she smelled the hounds before she saw them. Spore caught her wrist. "Their noses," he said. "You smell like sugar and wet moss. They'll find you before you reach the swing." Fern looked past the rose hedges. Two long gray hounds paced the inner grounds on braided leashes. A third sniffed the base of the painted playset where she had just stood. Court-day children scattered from the slides. The hound put its nose to the mushroom stool she had touched and growled low. Her ribs went cold. She had thought about guards. She had not thought about noses. "I can't wash it off," she said. "It's my skin." "No," said a soft voice behind her. A boy drifted out of the tree shadow, feet not quite touching the moss. She could see the bark through his chest. Mushrooms grew where his hair should be, pink and pale purple, the same shape as her own caps. Oliver Whisperwood. She had met him once by the firefly pond. He had counted to forty before letting the last one go. "Oliver," she said. "Hello, Fern." His face brightened. Then he looked at the hounds and it went flat again. "They'll tear you." "I know." "I can carry the smell." He held out a translucent hand. "Ghosts don't smell like anything. If you press your hands on me, the scent goes on me. I walk the other way. They follow me. I can't be bitten." Spore's wing-caps lifted. "That works." Fern hesitated. "They'll chase you the whole court day." "Yes." "You wanted to catch fireflies tonight." "I did." He smiled small. "Another night." She pressed both palms flat to his cold chest. Her hands sank in to the wrist. She rubbed the sweet mushroom oil from her skin against the inside of him until her fingers came out dim and clean. She smelled like nothing now. Like river stone. Oliver floated backward toward the far hedge. He waved once. Then he darted low across the meadow, dragging her scent behind him like a ribbon. All three hounds jerked their heads up. The handler shouted. The leashes snapped taut and the dogs bolted after the ghost, baying, tearing across the grounds away from the castle gate. The path to the playset stood empty. Fern ran. Her bare feet made no sound on the moss. She reached the tallest slide and climbed. At the top, she stood level with the pale stone turrets and the arched library window of the castle. Below her, the courtyard filled. Trumpets sounded inside the walls. The prince was coming out. She had traded a friend's evening for a clear line of sight. She meant to use it.

From the top of the slide, Fern watched the prince step onto the moss. He wore green. His crown was low and simple. He turned toward the koi pond, exactly where she had guessed he would. She braced her small feet on the painted wood and lifted her wings for balance. If he looked up once, he would see her at eye level with the turrets. She only needed one glance. Then a hand closed on the ladder rail below her. A court attendant in gray livery started up the rungs. He was not looking at the prince. He was looking at her. "Down," he said. "Now. No forest things on the playset." His voice was bored. He had said it a hundred times today. Behind him, two more attendants herded children off the swings and out through the hedge gate. Fern's throat closed. In thirty seconds she would be lifted off the slide by her wing and set outside the rose hedge, invisible again, while the prince walked to the pond and back into the castle. Her second seventh day. Wasted. She looked down and saw a flash of odd color at the hedge line. A fox stood there in a purple robe stitched with tiny stars. Pale lilac fur. A pink rose behind one ear. Fern had met her once at the pastel tavern west of the grove, in the corner where the fortune teller took coin. Lavinia Starwhisper. The one whose cards came up wrong now. Lavinia's yellow eyes flicked up to Fern. Then to the attendant. Then to the prince. "Boy," Lavinia called, clipped and clear. "Your left boot." The attendant paused on the ladder. "What?" "Snake in it. Green one. Climbed in at the gate." It was a lie. Fern could see the boot from above. Empty. But the attendant froze, then dropped off the ladder and yanked the boot off, hopping. The other attendants turned to look. A child screamed, delighted. The prince stopped walking and turned his head toward the noise. Toward the slide. Fern stood up straight. The wind lifted her cap. The prince's eyes traveled up the painted wood, past the ladder, and stopped on her face. He saw her. His mouth opened a little. He tilted his head. He did not smile, and he did not scowl. He looked, the way a person looks at something he does not recognize but wants to. Then he lifted one gloved hand and beckoned her down. At the hedge, Lavinia was already melting back into the green. She spoke once over her shoulder without turning. "He'll ask your name. Don't lie. Cards say the lie is what breaks it." The attendant was still shaking his boot. Fern climbed down toward the prince, on her own feet, invited.

Fern's feet touched the moss. The prince stood taller than she remembered, and closer. He knelt to bring his face nearer hers, one knee in the grass. His green sleeves brushed the ground. Up close his eyes were the color of pond weed. He smiled a small, curious smile. "What's your name, little one?" Fern opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Her voice, when it worked at all, worked at the size of her body. Small. She tried again. A whisper, thinner than moth wing, slipped between her lips and died before it reached him. The prince tilted his head. He waited. She saw his shoulders start to shift, the beginning of a rise, the beginning of a turn back toward the pond. In one more breath he would stand. In two he would be gone. She could not lie. She could not shout. But she could grow. Fern pressed her palm flat to the moss. She pushed her magic down through her fingers, hard, the way she pushed it into a dying edge. Green rushed under the skin of the ground. A single stem shot up between her hand and the prince's knee, thickened, opened. A trumpet flower, pale as milk, tall as her shoulder. Its bell pointed up at her face. She cupped the bloom, put her lips to the narrow end, and spoke into it. "Fern Capella." The flower carried her voice out its wide mouth, full-sized, close to his ear. He startled. Then he laughed. It was a real laugh, surprised out of him. "Fern Capella," he repeated. He touched the petal with one gloved finger. "You grew a throat." "I grow things," she said into the flower. "It's what I do." "Show me another." She grew him a second. Then a third, blue this time, and a fourth that smelled of pepper. The prince sat down in the grass. Attendants hovered at the hedge and did not approach. He asked her questions and she answered through the blooms, her real voice small, the flowers making it heard. Her hands began to shake. She had pushed too much, too fast. A bright line of pain opened behind her eyes. She kept her face still. She could not stop yet. The prince noticed anyway. He caught her wrist. His glove was cool. "You're cold," he said. "You're using yourself up." "I'm fine." "Come to supper tomorrow. Bring no flowers. I want to hear the small voice." He stood, and the attendants stepped forward with him. He looked down at her once more. "Don't be late, Fern Capella." He walked to the pond. Fern sat in the ring of blooms she had made. Her wings would not fold flat. Her hands would not stop shaking. She had won the prince's ear, and tomorrow he wanted the true one, the one no flower could carry.