Fairy Lies by E. D. Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

he learned that Titania had a daughter, he was convinced that the girl was his child.”
    Hawthorne’s reply was too faint to make out. Tamisin turned to Dasras, who was glaring at the lilies in his hand. “Why do I get the feeling that she doesn’t like me?” she asked. “We’ve never even met before.”
    Dasras shrugged. “A lot of the fairies in Oberon’s court don’t think you belong here. Some don’t believe that you’re really his daughter; others think you might be, but that you’ve aligned yourself with Titania and have come here to spy for her. Fairies are a very distrustful lot, even of their own kind.”
    “At least they aren’t all as rude as Lily.”
    “I’d like to say that Lily is the worst of them, but she isn’t. At least she’s open about the way she feels. Fairies like Hawthorne, on the other hand, will be nice to yourface, then stab you in the back if they get a chance. Ah, here we are,” Dasras said as he stopped at the edge of a stream. “Let me help you.”
    Tamisin took his hand and followed him across the water, setting her feet on the large, flat stones that made a path from one side to the other. His hand felt cool and dry, so unlike another hand she remembered holding. That other hand had warmed her own and felt so right that for a time she’d held it as often as she could. And the owner of the hand . . . If only she could remember!
    When she looked up, Tamisin saw that they were in a large, well-kept meadow. A tall, thin nymph dressed in fluttering leaves tended to the aspen trees growing alongside the stream. Fairies sat in groups among the wildflowers, talking among themselves until Dasras and Tamisin came close. The fairies grew silent then, and Tamisin could feel their eyes on her as she passed by.
    In the center of the meadow, small flower fairies were playing with a dandelion puff, tossing it back and forth between them so deftly that it maintained its fluffy shape no matter how hard they hit it. Dasras and Tamisin skirted the little group, heading for a massive hedge that defined the back of the meadow. As they drew closer, Tamisin saw that it was made completely of briars and was so tall that she couldn’t have reached the top even if she’d stood on tiptoe. The wall looked impenetrable from a distance, but Dasras led her directly to a narrow gap in the briars that she didn’t see until she was close enough to touch the prickly plants.
    “The servants live on the other side of this hedge,” Dasras said, stepping into the gap. “Some of them do their work there, and the others have to go back after their work is completed in the fairy side of the forest. There’s a curfew at night; they can get in real trouble if they aren’t on their side after the curfew.”
    The hedge was about ten feet thick. Here and there Tamisin could see scraps of fabric and broken twigs where passersby had been unable to avoid the thorns. “Why didn’t we fly over this?” she asked, pushing aside a twig.
    Dasras glanced back at her. “You could have, but I don’t have wings,” he said as if it wasn’t important. There was an almost imperceptible catch in his voice, however, and suddenly Tamisin understood why he’d looked at her wings the way he had earlier that morning. He hadn’t been admiring them as much as wishing he had some of his own.
    It hadn’t occurred to her that he wasn’t a fairy. He was blue, which meant that he wasn’t a human, so she’d just assumed that he was a fairy, too. “I didn’t mean . . .”
    “Narlayna’s cave is just through those trees,” he said as she stepped out of the briars.
    Tamisin stopped to look around, surprised at the differences between this forest and the one on the fairies’ side. The other forest had been well groomed, whereas this one had been left in its natural state. Trees grew closer together here, their branches interlaced as they competed for sunlight. Ferns peeped between broken branches that lay uncollected on the