Chapter Six
Ina flew to the sky court the next day under a pale stretch of morning sky, with the wind high and thin around her and the clouds bright beneath the sun.
She had expected Derran to be waiting for her in some graceful courtyard with a joke prepared and his hair already tousled by the breeze. Instead she found half the sky court platforms and city in disorder.
A small tornado, if such a thing could be called small when one lived among clouds and light, had dipped through a row of platforms and homes built along the lower vapor shelves.
It had torn awnings loose, twisted two footbridges out of line, and sent one family’s roof panels spinning into open air.
No one seemed badly hurt, but several fairies stood in the streets with their belongings in baskets and bundles, looking upward with the offended air of people who had been inconvenienced by weather they felt should have known better.
Derran stood in the middle of it all with his shirt sleeves rolled and his prince’s robe abandoned somewhere out of sight.
He was speaking to an older woman whose front shutters had been ripped free.
When Ina first saw him, he had one hand raised toward the broken frame, shaping the air with the same easy confidence he used when he was moving people toward sense without letting them notice.
The splintered wood lifted, turned, and settled neatly back into place.
The woman crossed her arms. “That had better hold.”
“It will,” Derran said. “Unless you continue insulting the wind. In which case it may return out of wounded pride.”
The woman sniffed. “Then it is a vain wind.”
“It lives in the sky court,” he grinned. “We’ve given it that example.”
That earned him the beginning of a smile, which appeared to have been his aim all along.
Ina landed on the rail of the nearest walkway and watched him for a moment before he noticed her.
He was different here. Still lighthearted, even teasing, but the easy silliness he used so often around her had been set aside.
He moved through the work with a quick, bright concentration that belonged wholly to this place, to his court.
To being a prince. He knew who needed comfort, who needed instructions, who needed to be ignored until they tired themselves out and began acting sensibly.
He listened without impatience. He gave orders without sounding like he was giving them.
He stooped to lift a dusty toy from the edge of a cloud stair and handed it back to a child as though that, too, were princely business and worth his full attention.
Perhaps it was.
She had known for a long time that he was kind.
He had been kind to her instantly. And yes, she had been kind to him too, and had cared for him as a swallow with a broken wing.
But he had given her something far more magical in return – her first introduction to the fairy kingdom.
And then he had saved her from it, more times than she could count.
He had given with both hands, and then some, and laughed while doing it.
Still, watching him here among his own people, with no audience but those who relied on him, showed her the shape of that generosity more clearly than she had seen it before.
Another fairy, moving a large stone with wind magic, called for him from the far side of the lane. He turned, gave a quick answer, then glanced back and saw her at last.
His whole face changed into pure delight.
He did not stop what he was doing. He only smiled and lifted a hand in greeting, as if she had arrived for some ordinary reason and not come upon him in the middle of rescuing a neighborhood from embarrassment.
But the joy twinkling in his sapphire eyes was unmistakable.
She crossed the last stretch between them.
“You didn’t tell me today’s lesson would begin with weather,” she teased.
“I thought it better to surprise you. Queens enjoy surprise.”
“Hardly. Queens enjoy warning.”
He laughed and gestured toward a pile of timber that had once been a tidy porch roof. “Then you may warn that beam it’s about to be needed elsewhere.”
She helped him for the next hour or two.
The work was not difficult by the standards of great magic, but it took patience and good judgment.
A roof brace had to be lifted and turned without collapsing the cloud-packed foundation beneath it.
A line of lantern hooks had to be steadied while two younger fairies retied them.
One elderly man refused assistance with his windows until Derran, with perfect seriousness, asked whether he intended to spend the night arguing with the breeze through an open wall. That ended the matter.
Ina used wind where it was useful, light where the shadows under the broken beams made work harder, and once a brief controlled flame to seal the frayed end of a mooring rope.
Derran moved in and out of all of it, charming and practical by turns, never still for long.
He remembered names. He remembered whose son had come down with a bad fever last spring, who had a cousin’s wedding the past summer, who had once complained at open court time and would certainly complain again.
No one doubted him. No one feared him either.
They spoke to him as a friend more than a prince, even as they listened to his commands and obeyed without hesitation.
At one point he stood on a ladder of woven reed and cloud-cord, steadying the upper frame of a balcony while two workmen fixed the lower joints. He glanced down to answer some question from below, and his eyes met Ina’s.
She had been watching him too openly. There was no help for it.
The admiration on her face was plain enough that he saw it and knew it.
A slight flush rose over his cheekbones before he looked away again and said, with notable attention to the balcony frame, “That peg goes on the left, not the right, unless we’re trying to make a new architectural style.”
Ina bent her head over the rope in her hands so no one else would see her smiling so hard it almost hurt her cheeks.
By late afternoon the worst of the damage had been put right.
The broken homes stood again, patched where they had to be patched, restored where they could be restored.
Awnings were rehung. Lost objects had been found or replaced.
Someone produced a tray of cups and passed around sunflower tea to the sky fairies.
Derran accepted one, drank half of it in three quick swallows, and only then seemed to remember that he had spent most of the day being a dutiful prince before he was anything else.
“My queen,” he said with a half-bow. “You came for dancing.”
“I seem to have received carpentry instead.”
“And at no extra cost.”
“That does improve the service.”
He grinned, looking no less energetic now that the work was done. “Come back with me?”
She went.
His bedchamber in the sky court had changed less than she expected.
That surprised her, though perhaps it should not have.
Derran liked comfort too much to rearrange a good room without reason.
The same long windows opened onto drifting light and layered sky beyond the balcony.
The same narrow shelves held books in careless order.
His bed still stood covered in silk sheets and decorated pillows.
On the round table near the window sat a plate of pastries dusted with sugar.
Ina stopped in the doorway.
Derran noticed. “You saw them.”
“You have the… the cloudberry twists.”
“I do.”
“And the honey crisps?”
“I do.”
“And those little almond things with the sugared tops.” She nearly squealed.
He leaned one arm against the doorframe. “You say that as if I’ve assembled a diplomatic offering.”
“You have!”
She crossed the room and took one before he had fully shut the door. The sugar cracked lightly under her teeth. The center was still soft.
Derran laughed. “I’ve missed many things in recent weeks, but your face when presented with pastry is among the finer ones.”
Ina swallowed. “This was a very good decision on your part.”
“There’s a reason I’m a prince,” he replied with a wink.
Then he came to the table and took one for himself, though she suspected he had chosen the assortment more for her than for any appetite of his own. They stood side by side eating in the slanting light, and for a little while it was quiet.
She turned toward him to say something, and he saw then a dusting of sugar caught at the corner of her mouth. Before she could speak, he touched the edge of her lip with his thumb and brushed away the white powder.
The gesture was so familiar it reached backward through time.
One of the first times he had brought her here, he had made nearly the same gesture, and nearly kissed her then. Nearly. Back when nearly still sent shivers through her.
She glanced toward his hand.
Then at his face.
He grinned, and this time he did not stop himself. He leaned in and kissed her.
Ina set the pastry down without looking where it landed and answered him with a different kind of hunger.
His mouth was warm and sweet with honey and sugar.
One of his hands came to rest against her neck, light at first, then firmer when she pulled him closer.
It had been too long since she had kissed him.
Too long since she had allowed herself even the beginning of it.
When he drew back, his eyes were bright in a way that made her pulse jump.
“We ought to practice some dancing before it gets too late,” he said. The hint of teasing stayed in his voice.
Ina stared at him, raising an eyebrow.
He smiled, not apologetic in the least. “I did promise instruction.”
“That’s a very sky court thing to say immediately after kissing someone.”
“It’s a princely sacrifice,” he said gravely. “You should admire me.”
He took her hand, brushing his thumb lightly over her fingers. Why that made her cheeks flush deeper than the kiss had, she could not have said.
“The marsh court style is more formal than ours,” he began his lesson, guiding her toward the open stretch of floor between the table and the windows. “Less cloud and lift. More pattern. They like the steps to mean something.”
“They make their dances symbolic?”
“Of course they do. Every court does, once they’ve had enough time to make things complicated.”