I Do Believe in Faeries (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 3) by Erin Hayes Read Free Book Online Page A

feel my cheeks deepen in a blush. “You remind me of her,” he said finally.
    “Is she real?”
    “No.” He laughed mockingly. “She’s a fairy tale.”
    I frowned, feeling let down by that. “Well, you’re like a Peter Pan, who’s a villain,” I retorted.
    “What makes me a villain?”
    “You frighten me.”
    The words popped out before I could stop them, but it stopped Robin in his tracks. His face was unreadable as he gazed at me, and I swallowed, feeling self-conscious again.
    “Listen, Tinkerbell— Abby ,” he corrected himself and licked his lips. “I—”
    “Why, if it isn’t Robin Goodfellow!” an impossibly high-pitched voice screeched, interrupting whatever he was going to say. Disappointment fluttered in my stomach.
    “Hello, Mustardseed,” Robin said, his voice now bored.
    “You have a lot of nerve showing your face here after everything you did!” I still couldn’t see who or what Mustardseed was, as the voice seemed to be coming from every direction.
    “I was working for my king,” Robin answered. “You’d do the same for Titania.”
    “Yes, but she is better than Oberon,” Mustardseed’s voice quipped, sounding highly offended.
    Robin snorted, letting the voice know exactly what he thought of Titania. “I’m sure any loyal subject thinks that way about their ruler.” He nodded to me. “Now, if you’re done trying to posture, would you mind showing your ugly face so that the little lady could see you?”
    “What little lady— Oh! ”
    From out of nowhere, a young child’s face popped into existence two inches from my nose, like it was inspecting me. I shrieked and stumbled backwards. The faerie in front of me was persistent, inspecting me, and watching me like I was a unicorn. Then I wondered if there were any unicorns in Tir na nÓg and I thought that if there were, they probably wouldn’t be as magickal to faeries as they are to humans.
    “You brought a mortal here?” Mustardseed fretted. “Oh, Titania isn’t going to like this.”
    “Why wouldn’t Titania like me here?” I asked. I tried stepping out of the faerie’s way, but it kept coming in closer to inspect me.
    “And the mortal talks too!” Mustardseed bemoaned. “Oh no.”
    I couldn’t tell if Mustardseed was a boy or a girl. It was only the length of my hand and green-skinned with a loin cloth made up of lilies and a shirt made up of leaves. Gossamer wings allowed it to fly around my head like some sort of satellite in orbit.
    It got old really quick.
    “Relax,” Robin said. As if noticing that I was unhappy being inspected like this, he plucked the faerie out of the air and held it aloft. “The mortal is just here to ask Titania a question, and we’ll be on our merry way soon after that.”
    “There is no ‘merry way’ with you, Robin,” Mustardseed lamented. “You always find ways of mucking things up.”
    Robin shrugged and released the little guy. “It’s in my nature. Now, are you going to take us to your wise and kind ruler or are we going to have to get the bug spray out to shut you up?”
    “Why, I never!” Mustardseed protested.
    Robin rolled his eyes. “C’mon Tinkerbell. And once we get to the Spring Court, let me do the talking.”
    I was actually very impressed with how he had handled things, so I suppressed a giggle as I sidestepped the little faerie and caught up with Robin, who didn’t even look back once as we walked to the castle. Mustardseed let his unhappiness be known the entire time, but it was far more fun to ignore the faerie and ruffle some feathers, than anything else.
    The castle was more of an open-air building. Columns entwined with ivy delineated the castle grounds, and trees wove together to make some semblance of a structure. For the most part, it was like flowers and ferns made up the castle.
    In a word, it was breathtaking, unlike anything I had ever seen before. I went to a botanical garden once. The flowers had been in full bloom, gorgeous, and