I cocked my head, startled. Was he telling me they felt emotion? I was just about to ask when he continued, “Nor did our loins. From jealousy and spite they drove us out, stupendous, all-powerful Queen. She who rules no more decreed we were not Fae enough for Faery once we began siring young on this world.”

I gasped. “You can have children?” I’d thought it impossible for Fae to reproduce!

“Few, but yes, O Fair and Radiant Liege. It didn’t begin happening until we came to this world. The other castes were patient for a time, waiting to see if the same would occur for them. When it did not, they turned the queen’s icy heart against us. She stripped us of our place in Faery.”

He gestured to someone behind him and a young, light purple and green fairy, the perfect coloring to hide in a hydrangea bush, came forward holding a tiny bundle in her arms, cradling it beneath a shiny leaf to keep it dry. She peeled back the misted leaf to show me a naked, translucent, infant fairy the size of a fingernail.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, smiling. It was adorable. And so tiny! “She’s lovely.”

Blushing, the fairy exclaimed, “I am honored by your kindness, great Queen! Our young are void of color at birth and grow slowly into their patterns, painted by whatever element of Nature they favor. Some are drawn to waterfalls.” She waved a hand at a young female fairy, marked with vertical stripes of white and pale gray. “Others to rocks or forests or tall grassy meadows or flowers. Some part of Nature calls to each of us and she patterns us accordingly.” She blushed again. “I live among the gorse and heather, great Queen. If I am blessed, so will my child be.”

“Why would you wish to return to court? It sounds as if you like this world.”

The male fairy said, “My Queen, we but seek the freedom to come and go as we wish, as do the others of our kind. We desire our seat upon the council back. We are Fae. We have always been Fae. They had no right to cast us out. Faery is our home, too, and we would have a say in the matters of our race.”

As I stared out at the thousands of diminutive Fae gathered in the rainy street, it finally, fully sunk in.

I was the Faery queen. This wasn’t a trial run or a temporary situation.

They’d felt my power and sought me out, tracked me here. No doubt other Seelie would, too. And each would bring their problems and grievances and demands. The higher castes (thinking Dree’lia here) would no doubt come armed with hostility, resentment, and murder in their frosted hearts. I was supposed to rule this race. Hear and settle their disputes, enter into their politics.

It was too much to process. Part of me wanted to whirl back into the bookstore, slam the door, and reject it all. It was one thing to have been bequeathed the potential to save our world, entirely another to actually become the queen of a race of beings I was beginning to realize I knew nothing about. A race of beings that, a year ago, I’d actively hunted and killed. I’d wanted nothing more than to eradicate the Fae race from our planet. Was that the answer? Save our world, find them a new one and turn my power over to another, Fae-born?

At the moment, whether I liked it or not, I was their queen, and until I figured out what to do about it I would behave accordingly. These tiny beings were looking to me for justice, decisions, leadership. They could have children. They felt. My entire apprehension of the Fae race was being turned on its ear.

They were elementals, drawn to Nature. “Do you sense the disturbance in the fabric of this world?”

Thousands of heads nodded instantly.

“Is there anything you can do to help heal it?”

Thousands of heads shook no.

“We are small Fae, and do small things, beauteous Queen,” the heather and gorse fairy said. “Enriching the soil, cleansing the water, making flowers bloom more brightly. Large matters such as the sickness that eats away at this world are beyond us.”

“I’ve heard your petition and will consider it. But as your queen, my first duty is to secure the safety of this planet.”

The male fairy with copper-tan spots bowed deeply again. “Well said, my lucent Queen. We will repair to our abodes and await an opportune moment.”

Clapping their hands to their heads, they vanished.

Frowning, I hurried back into the warmth and dryness of the bookstore. I’d assumed they were a lower caste. Could they sift?

My eyes widened. Could I sift now?

If I could sift, I had no bloody idea how.

Magic didn’t work for me the way it did for Harry Potter, by pointing a wand, muttering a spell, and getting the desired outcome, nor with the twinkle of a Bewitched nose. It was far more elusive and subtle than that. Either that or I just didn’t know the right magic words or the proper part of my body to twitch.

The two times I’d channeled the magic, I had no idea how I’d done it. When I’d returned from the planet with three moons, the bookstore was perfectly restored but I didn’t know why. I figured it was because I’d been found worthy, but that wasn’t a repeatable recipe. And thank goodness, because I’d hate to have to prove myself worthy every time I wanted to use it. Not only would that be a real time suck, but stressful to endure a new interrogation each time.

I’d envisioned the flowers from the mound, and the ice had melted. But again I had no idea why or what I’d done. I sat on the sofa for an hour this morning (after spending ten minutes braiding my insanely long mane of hair to get it out of my face), trying to do something so simple as grow a single flower, and met with repeated failure. I even tried stripping away all emotion and using sheer force of will on the world around me, employing my “belief is reality” tool with equally abysmal results.

Unable to take advantage of a queenly power I’d really like to use, I slogged like every other human in Dublin, through cobbled streets that were gushing with small gutter-bound rivers, fighting to hold my umbrella against the brisk, drenching wind, making my way to Trinity College to deliver the music box as promised.

Periodically I’d feel the acute stress of someone’s regard and glance quickly, to catch only a brief glimpse of one Fae or another as they melted hastily from my vision, behind a building or lamp or car.

The word was out. It was possible the Spyrssidhe alone—already banished and with little to lose—would dare approach me. I knew how feared the princes were among the Fae, inspiring obsequious fawning, obedience, and given wide, wary berth. No doubt their queen had been a hundred times as terrifying. How else could anyone control a race of immortals as power-hungry and brutal as V’lane/Cruce?