What fascinates me is how this illustrates what they percieve as being in the realm of my 'power.' I control the food, I control the door, sure, but my cats love to sit on the balcony in the sun, and it has happened plenty of times that on a rainy day they come get me, go to the balcony and show me... the rain. "Please fix this" they say. "Please get rid of the wet"

As night comes on, Cardan pulls me aside. “I want to show you something,” he says. Then he sends away the guards. Together, we leave the palace and walk — just us — into the woods.

“Are we allowed to ditch out on…?” I ask him, not actually sure what we’re ditching out on. But something. Surely there’s some crisis we should be reading up on, strategizing for.

He laughs. “I don’t know why you’d believe my answer when it comes to responsibilities.”

I make a face and give up on questions.

Deeper in the woods, there’s a grove of flowers with a large rock at the center. Mushrooms dot the landscape and moonlight shines down between the trees. Above us, I hear owls calling to one another. In the distance, out at sea, there’s the song of merfolk from the rocky shore and, from another direction, the buzzing of wings.

Cardan flops down in the grass in all his finery and looks up at the stars.

“What is it you wanted me to see?” I ask, joining him. “If you’re expecting me to see a particular star sign, remember back at palace school lessons — I have mortal eyes and can’t see anything.”

“Nothing like that.” He laughs. “Our land. Elfhame. Yours and mine. You gave this to me.” There’s a little awe in his voice.

“And you to me,” I remind him, voice soft.

“Well, to be fair, you really more tricked me into being High King,” he muses, lapsing back into sounding more like myself. “And then I tricked you, which I am particularly proud of.”

I kick my leg into his.

He reaches up his hand and when he does it seems like the stars themselves rush to his fingers. But it isn’t that. It’s fireflies and then, after a moment, sprites, their glowing bodies flitting above us.

“Go ahead,” he tells me. Gingerly, I lift my hand and they come to me too, circling around my head with their tinkling laughter.

“Now look around you.”

I turn to one side and see what he means. Because where I stepped, small white flowers are growing in my footsteps. “It’s magic…but I’m not magic. I’m mortal. I’m a mortal girl.”

“You’re the Queen of Elfhame,” he says.