I Do Believe in Faeries (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 3) (13 page)

“I made a wish within a Faerie Ring. Someone had tried to warn me—” I glanced as Robin as I said this “—but I was…stupid, as a friend once told me.”

Robin snorted at that.

“Some pixies within the faerie ring granted it for me,” I continued, “but it required a sacrifice, one that wasn’t mine to give.”

Oberon stroked his beard as he looked at me. “That sounds very familiar,” he conceded.

“It is,” I said. I pointed at the magenta orb of the baby floating in space above the room, like a trophy to be won. “That baby is my friend’s unborn child.”

The Court erupted into pandemonium at my accusation. Maybe I should have been more tactful with revealing that, but I couldn’t stand there another moment while I was so. damn. close.

A swirl of tiny faeries flew to Oberon, too many for me to count, but their piteous, tiny cries sounded familiar to me. I clenched my hands, threatening to send a fireball their way and incinerate them. It was the pixies who had granted my wish and took the baby in the first place, and if they were here then…

“SILENCE!” Oberon thundered. His voice quieted the entire court. The pixies in front of him stopped chattering and hovered in the space between them. “We will discuss this like civilized folk!”

I glanced at Titania, who was looking at me with something akin to fascination. She hadn’t been shouting. She just watched me curiously throughout it all. A slow smile came to her features and I was reminded that she was worse in many ways compared to Mab.

“See, my lovely ex-husband,” Titania said. “You were trying to win me back by giving me a stolen child.” As she spoke, her tone became more and more dangerous.

Oberon’s jaw clenched. “Is this true?” he asked the pixies.

His question sent them in another flurry as they all tried to explain to him what happened. I couldn’t understand them, but I could tell based on the other faeries’ expressions in the court that they were making sense.

“They say that you offered up the child when you were granted your magick,” Oberon said. “That they wouldn’t be able to grant you a wish if it hadn’t been offered to you in the first place.”

Amazing that he could get that out of forty tiny little voices. I was impressed. I shook my head. “No,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. Not at all.”

Oberon sighed, and shook his head. “That’s the problem with mortal conventions of bargains. You think you understand our rules when you really don’t. You see, I had just accepted these pixies’ offer of a mortal child for refuge within my own court.”

“And he’s trying to give the baby to me,” Titania sniffled. “It’s going to take much more than just presents to win me back.”

“A baby isn’t a present!” I yelled, my outburst surprising even me. “A baby is meant to be home with its family. To be loved.”

Oh, my god, that sounded familiar. I saw a lot of myself in that scenario. Now I felt really homesick for Jordyn, Mom, and even Aunt Margaret. This had to work. It
had
to.

“I’m sorry,” Oberon said, “but I’ve already made a trade with the pixies.” He glared at Titania. “Even though Titania doesn’t want it.”

“You could feed it to the Nuckelavee,” Titania offered. “At least it would offer some sort of entertainment.”

“No,” I whispered. Again, I had no idea what a Nucklelavee was, but I wasn’t about to risk the baby to find out.

Titania grinned down at me, taking delight in my fear. “Or perhaps, the Hags of the Autumn Court would like to take care of it.”

“Titania,” Oberon warned. “You have not left my court with the baby yet, therefore, it is still mine to give.”

Still his…

“Wait,” I said, hearing my voice waver as I spoke. “Faeries like to bargain, right? What if I traded you something for the baby?”

“Tinkerbell…” Robin hissed behind me.

I ignored him as I kept going. “Would you be interested in a trade?”

Oberon looked at me, considering my offer. “What would you be willing to trade?” he asked.

“You can’t do that,” Titania tittered. “You were just offering the baby to me!”

“And you hadn’t accepted yet,” Oberon pointed out.

“Then I accept,” she said quickly. She’d do anything so I wouldn’t get my way, the bitch.

Oberon gave her a grin. “We have a counter offer, my love.”

My eyes flicked to Titania, who shot daggers at me with her eyes. I tried thinking through everything I had for trade. What would a faerie want? Here they were trading favors for unborn babies. While I trade magick for—

Oh.

That was it.

“I’ll trade you back my fire magick.” I licked my lips and looked at Titania. “Your grace would probably like that. Since I humiliated you earlier.” She gasped in anger, but I kept going before I lost my nerve. “I traded the baby for magick in the first place. I will trade that power to get the baby and go back to my realm.”

“Tinkerbell,” Robin said quietly.

I ignored him, holding my breath as I looked at Oberon for an answer.

“You’d do that?” the king asked.

“In a heartbeat,” I whispered. “You’d get the better end of the deal. It took the power of forty faeries to do it in the first place. You can have all that power to yourself.”

The king fell silent for a few moments. Without a word, he reached out and touched my forehead and closed his eyes. I closed my own, screaming at him with my mind for him to accept the offer.

“I can’t,” Oberon said. He withdrew his hand and turned away. “Sure you traded for magick, but I need to get something bigger and better than that. You think you’re powerful, but you’re really not. And I have a chance to win back Titania.”

No.
I couldn’t believe it.
No!
This wasn’t happening. My heart sank as my jaw dropped. This couldn’t be the end of it. My entire body went numb as this new reality set in.

I failed.

Titania looked smug as she smirked down at me. “Looks like you’re not getting your way,” she said. “Looks like it’s not a happily ever after for you,” her smile widened, “and Robin.”

No.

This wasn’t happening. Not when I was so close.

“Please,” I begged, reaching out for Oberon. Water filled my eyes and I couldn’t see straight. “Please!”

“Your highness!” a voice shouted behind me. “If I may offer a counter offer to the counter offer!”

The king looked back and blinked confusedly. “Robin?” he asked. “What would you offer?”

I looked back at the red-headed faerie. His eyes were warmly on me as he smiled. There was a tinge of sadness to it. What was he doing?

Without taking his eyes off me, he said, “I offer up my magick as well.”

Rather than the court erupting into pandemonium, the entire place stayed silent as everyone there thought about his offer. Even Titania’s jaw dropped.

Without skipping a beat, Robin stepped in front of me, and bowed deeply to his king again. “So that’s two bits of powerful magick for the price of one baby, your royalness,” he said, falling back into the Puck that I knew so well. “You’d be a fool to pass that up, and—sorry, Tinkerbell—I have to say that my magick is much more powerful than yours. That means it’s worth more. And that also means,” he grinned at the king, “that it’s a very good deal now.”

“You’d offer your magick up?” Oberon asked in disbelief.

Robin nodded playfully. “Yeah. Although I warn you, it does come with some baggage.”

“You can’t do this, Robin,” I told him. “What are you—?”

“Take it or leave it, your majesty,” Robin bellowed, cutting me off. “I have the feeling that there’s a baby that needs to go back home. Into some lady’s womb.”

“You realize that you are mostly magick by this point,” Oberon said. “You’re one of the oldest living creatures in Tir na nÓg. Without your magick, you may become nothing. There may be nothing left for you to exist on this plane.”

“I’m fully aware of that, your Royal Crownness.”

“Robin,” I pleaded, “you can’t—”

The king chuckled sadly. “Is it that awful being my servant?”

Robin nodded gravely. “The worst.”

The king smiled, a real genuine smile this time. “Then I guess I have no choice, but to accept the bargain.”

“No!” I shouted. I ran up to Robin, took his hand, and pleaded with him. “You can’t do this! Robin, why are you doing this?”

“Because I can,” he said simply.

“But
why
?”

He blinked, taken aback. “I thought I already made that clear.
Multiple
times. I. Am. In. Love. With. You.”

“If that’s true,” I rasped, “then you can’t do this. Please? What about our date?”
Because I think I have feelings for you.

He chuckled and looked down at me. “I guess I may not be able to go on that date,” he said softly. “So let me call in that favor now.” He stroked my cheek as he said that. “I want you to let me do this for you. So that you can save you friend’s baby and go home.”

My “no” died in my throat as his lips pressed against mine. A kiss. A wonderful, sublime kiss from the faerie that had been helping me through thick and thin. The faerie that had saved my life. The faerie that was giving up everything because of my failure.

I clung to him, willing a different outcome into this situation.

But it didn’t come.

He broke the kiss and smiled down at me. “Now go back to being a normal human. And get something to eat, will you? Your stomach growling has been distracting this entire time.”

Really? That was going to be the last thing he said to me? I opened my mouth to say more, but as I did so, the very fabric of the world tore around me, stretching me farther and farther away from Robin.

As I was swept away, I cried out… until I was lost to the darkness.

Chapter 15

“Abby? Abby?”

“Ugh,” I groaned through dry, chapped lips. I tried opening my eyes, but I grimaced as too much sunlight seeped its way in between my lids. Why is sunlight so bright?

“What are you doing out here?” the same voice asked me.

That was…
Jordyn’s
voice?

A thousand different thoughts and sensations ran through my head, but the few that stood out to me were:
Where am I? Is the baby okay?
And,
Where’s Robin? Did he survive the bargain?

The last one made the hole in my heart ache. I had no way of knowing if he was all right too.

“What am I doing out here?” I repeated, dumbly.

Suddenly, it felt like real, coherent thought made its way back into my numb brain. I jolted awake and immediately winced as my cracked ribs screamed in pain. That certainly felt real.

“Whoa, easy there,” Jordyn told me. She smiled and laughed, her pink hair catching the sunlight. “You must have slept wrong. How did you fall asleep on a bench anyways?”

A bench. I blinked and sat up, finally able to take in where I was. We were outside in the garden of the hospital. This was the last place I saw Robin before he whisked me away to Tir na nÓg. I’d gone down here when we went to visit Alaina after her baby was stolen. And now…

Now it was morning. Now my heart hurt in ways I couldn’t quite comprehend just yet, and I could feel the empty ache in my chest that had always been there. My fire magick was gone. I was just a normal human girl once again.

Before, that thought would have made me sad, but right now, it meant that things were as they should be in my world. That was all I could ask for, wasn’t it?

“How’s Alaina?” I asked.

Jordyn sighed and sunk deeper onto the bench. At first, I couldn’t tell if it was a happy or sad sigh. Then she turned her head over towards me and grinned widely.

“She’s just fine,” she said, relieved. “They ran another battery of tests on her this morning, and, I guess the machines they used to monitor her baby or something weren’t working.”

“Because?” I prompted.

She laughed and combed a hand through her hair. “Because the baby is there and it’s fine. The doctor has no idea what happened. I mean, Alaina and James could sue, because, you know, that kind of malpractice could have sent Alaina into shock and…”

“So she’s okay?” I breathed happily.

Jordyn chuckled. “Yeah, she’s fine. Sorry I didn’t find you until now. I just didn’t want to leave Alaina’s side like that.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I was just so exhausted and scared for her, that I think I went out here and passed out.” A likely story, I guess, because Jordyn nodded her head in understanding.

“I’m so glad that worked out,” she sighed. “You have no idea how devastated Alaina would have been if…if anything had happened.”

I could hardly guess at that.

I reached over and hugged my big sister as tight as I could. I didn’t want to let her go. We were totally different, but she was one thing I could always count on, even when I messed up.

I understood now. I understood why she’d do anything to do what she thought was right.

“Hey, what’s that for?” she asked.

“Just missed you,” I whispered. “Plus…I’m just so relieved about Alaina.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Can I see her?” I asked.

“Of course,” Jordyn said.

Then, to my chagrin, my stomach growled, loudly.

“Actually,” I admitted, “I think I need to eat first.”

Jordyn laughed. “Mom’s pork casserole was that bad, huh?”

“Well, I did ralph it up last night.”

I remember barfing it out on the side of the road to the hospital. During my time in Tir na nÓg, I would have given anything to have it again. And I couldn’t wait to see Mom again.

Jordyn rose to her feet. “I think there was a cafeteria on the second floor somewhere. Would that work?”

“
Food
sounds wonderful,” I sighed happily.

***

“Hey Alaina.”

Jordyn rapped lightly on the door, where her friend laid in her bed. To my immense relief, her hand was over her burgeoning stomach. The baby was safe. That was all that mattered, right? She’d just been talking to her boyfriend and he held her hand as they talked about things couples do.

The gorgeous woman looked at us and grinned tiredly.
Relieved
was the word that came to mind when I looked at her. Relieved and happy.