In her confusion, Ellie took a wrong turn and left the castle through the main lobby, a path she usually avoided to keep from encountering guests. To her dismay, as she pushed open a glass door with her hip and maneuvered the stack of cages through the opening, two girls in short sundresses and strappy sandals approached on the front walkway and could not miss seeing her.
The Honorable Gillian Montmorency and Lady Raquel Cambout, both from the nation of Auvers and near Ellie’s age, were two of her least favorites among the hundreds of yearly visitors at Faraway Castle. Like most of the guests, they had never bothered to learn her name and always spoke to her as if she were a dim-witted child or scullery maid.
Their conversation broke off as soon as they saw her. Gillian, a stunning beauty with red-gold hair, asked sharply, “What are you carrying? I hear squeaking.”
“Cinder sprites,” Ellie said, peering around her stack of cages.
The girl’s lip curled. “How did you get so disgustingly dirty?”
“Capturing cinder sprites.” Ellie schooled her face into a pleasant expression. She hoped.
“I’ve never seen one.” Raquel, a slender brunette, peered into a cage, her nose wrinkled. “All I can see is straw. You caught them inside the castle? Where?”
“The Zeidan children found them outside and sneaked them into the royal suite.”
The girls looked at each other and sputtered with laughter. “Those adorable rascals,” Gillian said in a syrupy tone. “Good thing we have pest control available.” Her mocking gaze swept Ellie from head to toe.
“I don’t suppose you could tell us if the rumor about Prince Omar is true,” Raquel said, her vivid blue eyes eager.
“What rumor is that, my lady?” Ellie inquired, striving to sound pleasant. One of her arms began to cramp up, so she shifted the cages in her grasp.
Sensing her distress, one of the sprites whistled, and a chorus of squeals followed. “It’s all right, babies,” Ellie said, trying to calm herself as well as the little creatures. “I’ll get you home soon.”
“Can’t you keep those beasts quiet while we talk?” Raquel complained. “We heard that Prince Omar arrived during the night. Did you see him?”
Ellie paused, but there was no avoiding such a direct question. “I did.”
The girls gave little shrieks, giddy with excitement, and began to formulate plans to claim his time and attention. They were still talking when Ellie walked away, unwilling to hear more.
No matter how she tried to view Prince Omar as just another resort guest, even the thought of his marrying one of those two harpies made her want to throw something, hard. Preferably at their heads. Or maybe a kick in the shin would be more satisfying.
The cages in her arms seemed heavier by the moment, yet she walked quickly along the path leading to the staff cabins. “If I don’t stop thinking about—” cutting off sharply, she glanced around, saw no one near, then continued in a half-whisper “—Omar, I’ll either get myself fired or go stark, raving crazy.”
The mother sprite muttered irritably.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie sighed. “I’m upsetting you. It’s okay, little sprites, my angst isn’t about you. You’re going to be fine. I’ve got to stop thinking about . . . him.”
Omar wasn’t the crown prince. With two older brothers, he was third in line for the throne—primogeniture in Khenifra being through the male line—but he was still considered a hot marital catch. Probably because he was the handsomest of the older three brothers and wealthy in his own right.
“Girls like Gillian and Raquel can’t begin to appreciate his best qualities,” Ellie told the sprites. “He doesn’t think of himself as anything special. This morning he almost seemed worried about offending me.” After a pause, she huffed a laugh. She must have imagined the puppy-dog hopefulness in his eyes.
“Almost there now,” she said, striving to keep a cheery tone.
Ellie’s cottage was set amid other staff lodgings, comfortable one-bedroom homes offering no view but decent privacy. All were of weathered stone with crisp white trim, green shutters, and a red door. She released the magical lock with a verbal request, and the door swung open before her. A chorus of whistles and one shrill shout greeted her from the cages of captured creatures lining one corner of her tiny living room. “Yes, I’m back and will feed you all shortly. Have a little patience, please. I brought new friends.”
With a relieved sigh, she lowered her fresh stack of cages to the floor. “Whew!” She was a strong girl, but so many cages at once had made an unwieldy load. She’d almost dropped one on the stairs—the memory now made her cringe.
“Should I have let Omar help me carry them?” The thought escaped in a whisper. Briefly she imagined walking across the resort beside him, their arms full of cages, chatting easily about cinder sprites and . . . whatever princes talk about. Maybe he would have come in and stayed for a cup of tea.
The mind picture of him standing in her little cottage made her heart do crazy things. “My imagination will be the death of me,” she sighed.
The resident sprites now exchanged gentle squeaks of greeting with the newcomers, but the imp, a tiny green humanoid who’d been caught destroying cabbages in the kitchen garden, continued to berate Ellie in its shrill voice and unknown language. The glass cage insulated all forms of magic, so its curses were harmless. She gave it a smile, then opened the first cage and gently lifted out a solid-black baby sprite, the one from Omar’s bedroom.
He was still groggy, blinking his big eyes and twitching his ears. His little clawed feet tickled her hand. “You are simply the cutest thing ever,” Ellie murmured, then opened the mother’s cage and set the baby down beside her. Making comforting little chirps, the mother sprite checked him over with her busy tongue.
One by one Ellie moved the other four, and the mother’s cage grew to accommodate them all. Ellie cleaned out the empty cages, filled them with fresh hay, then gently squeezed them back into one-inch cubes before returning them to her pack. “I hope I never need that many at once again, but it’s best to be prepared.” She added several more to the pack, just in case. They were almost weightless at this size, after all.
Finished, she sat back on her heels and heaved a deep sigh. Focusing on the sprites, she spoke in her most encouraging tone. “You’ll all be happy at the Gamekeeper’s sprite refuge. Plenty to eat always, safe places to raise a family, and good company.”
Next she served carrots, kale, and endive to her furry guests—fresh greens helped to quench their fiery spirits. The gardeners kept her supplied with beetle larvae for the imp, which crouched over its food and stuffed its mouth, still muttering between bites. The sprites tucked in, puffing softly.
Her living room was feeling crowded with a dozen cages stacked against the wall. It would soon be time to send for the Gamekeeper to collect her little captives. The other sprites had been quite patient about their wait, content to gossip among themselves and eat good food, but they would all welcome open spaces and freedom.
Ellie poured tea to brew then flopped into a chair and tipped her head back. She was missing the noon meal at the castle, but she wasn’t hungry, just thirsty. And emotionally drained.
A picture popped into her head of Prince Omar seated cross-legged on his bed with Rita’s little arms around his neck, his hair standing on end, and shy excitement in his beautiful dark eyes. She didn’t mean to remember his pajama pants and white bathrobe, let alone the smooth brown skin of his neck and chest, but every detail seemed imprinted on her mind.
Shaking her head to banish the image, she leaped to her feet and rushed into her bedroom, where she stared into the small mirror hanging over her chest of drawers . . . and groaned. Soot and dust streaked her cheeks and chin. Her blonde hair was straggly and looked grayish and faded, like ashes. Even her eyes were gray. Her coverall, though neatly fitted to her figure, was smudged and dusty and made her look like a tall, skinny boy. She was colorless and dirty and couldn’t begin to compete with the glamour of Raquel or Gillian, one a sultry brunette, the other a golden-haired china doll.
“I sat there like a lump on his floor,” she whispered at her reflection, “and stared at him. So rude! But he tried to talk with me. He really tried! And then he hurried to catch up with me on the stairs.” Yet she would be a fool to imagine that he genuinely returned her interest.
While she showered and combed out her hair, Ellie thought back to her first real interaction with Omar three years ago, the night of a wedding celebration for some important people whose names she had long since forgotten. Ellie was assigned to serve drinks to the guests and keep their glasses filled. The meal had ended without mishap, but later, while Ellie
He and his older brother Taim were talking with great animation as she stood behind his chair—she’d caught such phrases as “interquartile range” and “permutation formula” and realized she didn’t speak his language, which saddened her. While he was distracted, the princess seated beside Omar held up his glass, and Ellie started to fill it. Not until she finished pouring and the princess moved the glass away did either of them notice the spreading dark patch on Omar’s suit jacket. Lemonade had dribbled down the side of the pitcher onto his back.
While Omar talked on unaware, gesturing with both hands, Ellie took a towel from its loop at her waist, started to reach for the wet spot, then reconsidered. “Your Highness?” she said, but it came out as a whisper.
Taim gave her a quizzical look and interrupted Omar’s mathematical discourse. “This young person desires your attention.”
Ellie could still picture Omar’s long, thick lashes lifting as he turned to regard her with some surprise. His expression softened into a shy smile, striking her dumb. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He closed it, swallowed, and tried again. “Is something wrong, Miss . . . ? Er, I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”
“E-Ellie,” she stuttered. “And I spilled lemonade down your back. Don’t you feel it?”
His eyes went wide. At eighteen he had looked more boyish, but those eyes had been just as devastating. “Uh, yes, I guess I do feel rather damp.” He asked for her towel, and she watched helplessly as he reached over his shoulder and tried to soak up the sticky juice. The princess took the towel from him and rubbed at the places he couldn’t reach, talking all the while about the stupid, clumsy girl who had ruined his fine dress coat. But Omar frowned, took the towel back, and stood up in that narrow space. “Here.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, holding out the towel. “I think I . . . I mean . . . Thank you, Miss Ellie.”
Then he had stood there looking down at her.
And she had stood there looking up at him.
Remembering this, Ellie smiled and shook her head. Now she realized how bashful and embarrassed he had been. And how completely he had ignored that princess and his brother.
During the six years since she first laid eyes on him, Ellie had told herself countless times not to be a fool—Omar was a prince. But every year when his family arrived at the resort in late June, she had sighed and dreamed of him. Many times he had smiled shyly at her and sent her heart and head spinning—but today marked the first time she had spoken with him since the lemonade incident.
Her position as magical-wildlife controller had finally brought her into his charmed circle but was unlikely to do so twice. In years to come she would cringe over the memory of thanking him . . . for what? For being incredibly hot and allowing her to stare at him? What must he have thought? Her face burned all over again. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and watched the blush spread.
“Enough obsessing over the unattainable,” she said firmly, pointing the comb at her reflection. A pink face was no better than a pale one, but at least her hair no longer looked ashen. “Time for work.”
She checked on the new sprites before heading outside. The babies, fully recovered, now snuggled up to their sweet little mother. “It wasn’t your fault you were inside the castle,” Ellie assured her. “You can return to the garden if you like.”
Sensing only uncertainty from the tired little sprite, she spoke a soothing farewell. “Everybody relax, and I’ll see you later!”
Ellie spent the misty afternoon helping her friend Rosa, Faraway Castle’s head gardener, catch another imp in the kitchen garden. She first talked the magical trap into appearing harmless and cozy like a pile of compost—an imps’ favorite nest—then, at Rosa’s suggestion, she baited it with baby lettuces.
“Imps usually eat insect larvae, so I rarely disturb them, but lately they’ve taken to devouring my greens,” Rosa explained. “I could probably eliminate them myself, but your live-trap methods are kinder.”
While Ellie finished setting the trap, she pondered Rosa’s possible methods for eradicating imps. Might she set her tiger lilies on their trail? A frightful thought! Rosa, only seventeen, had advanced to the position of head gardener for good reason. Chuck and Tasha, a pair of dwarfs who’d worked in the garden since before Ellie first came to Faraway Castle, occasionally dropped hints about their young supervisor, implying that she had more ability with plants than anyone else suspected and praising her to the skies.
“Why so mopey today?” Rosa’s voice interrupted Ellie’s thoughts as they exited the kitchen garden and descended a trellis-covered stairway into a lush topiary collection. Rosa brushed her hand over the leafy wing of a topiary heron.
Ellie blinked. Had she really seen the heron bob its head? No, it was just a beautifully trimmed boxwood shrub.
Rosa gave her a sly glance. “My guess is boy trouble.”
Ellie smiled. “I don’t spend enough time with boys to have any trouble. What boy would I want?”
Rosa’s lips curled into a wise smile. “One you cannot have, of course.”
“You know too much,” Ellie retorted in a teasing tone, “which is dangerous—especially for someone as mysterious as you are. Jeralee and I ought to spy on you again in retaliation.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Rosa said quickly, and her glance held . . . fear? Regret?
“No worries,” Ellie assured her with a rush of guilt. “I haven’t the time to be nosy these days.”
Why was Rosa so secretive? She had brilliant skill with plants and worked longer hours than the rest of the staff. She was sweet, occasionally witty, and quiet. Other than her Evoran accent, she offered no clues about her past, and she always dressed in unflattering work clothes and wore her hair in a long braid down her back. Since the day she first arrived at Faraway Castle two years ago, the girl hadn’t left the grounds for longer than an hour or two.
She was a mystery.
At present, however, Ellie didn’t have a brain cell free for wondering about Rosa’s secrets. Her own life was complicated enough.
“Since I’m here, I might as well make myself useful. Where shall I work this afternoon?” she asked.
The girls were trimming shrubbery when Ellie sensed her trap snapping shut. A high-pitched scream rolled down the hillside from the kitchen garden. “Caught it!” She dropped her shears and started off at a run, with Rosa close behind.
The imp stamped around inside the cage, shaking its fists and undoubtedly swearing in its high-decibel language. “You’re a girl, aren’t you?” Ellie commented as she gently tipped the furious creature into one of her glass cages. “I wonder if I don’t have your mate locked up in my room.”
That task finished, she straightened up and stretched her aching back.
“Thank you so much,” Rosa said, “for the garden work as well as for trapping that little lettuce-ravager.”
“You’re welcome. You know I enjoy it.” Ellie was just knocking garden dirt from her glass clogs when her wristband emitted its magical alert. “What now?”
A quick glance informed her. “No emergency. I think it’s from the director’s office.”
Rosa raised a quizzical brow. “Hmm. Wonder what that could be about.”
Something in her tone alerted Ellie. “What do you mean?”
“Just before you got here, Jeralee told me about cinder sprites in the royal suite.” Rosa’s tone expressed both concern and amusement. “Gossip spreads like strangleweed.”
“Great. Just great.” Ellie’s shoulders drooped. “I was only doing my job. Gotta go! Have to drop this imp off at my cottage before I report in.” With that, she made her escape.
Who leaked that story? And why must everyone at Faraway Castle demand to know everyone else’s business? Rosa knew about Ellie’s crush on Prince Omar. She must know as well as anyone how silly it would be even to imagine a happy ending for a staff member with a royal prince.
Ellie dropped the imp off in her cabin then sprinted to the castle, the cages in her pack clinking at every step. The director of Faraway Castle Resort did not take kindly to waiting, and for three years now she’d been looking for some reason to dismiss Ellie. Madame lacked the authority to directly fire Ellie, but she would be certain to report any infraction to the Gamekeeper.
Madame Genevieve seemed to despise every female member of the castle staff and found any romantic relationship appalling. Speculation was rife about her past. Had the director been spurned by a lover? Left at the altar?
A few of the guys insisted she was the hatchet-murderer type and probably had seven former husbands buried in hidden graves on resort grounds.
Yet when Ellie stood in the director’s office, returning the woman’s stare, she couldn’t help thinking how handsome Madame was. Tall, statuesque, with regular features, good teeth, abundant dark hair, and stunning green eyes. Her expression was the problem: cold, resentful, and forbidding.
Madame Genevieve regarded Ellie over the tops of her spectacles. “I have only moments to deal with you, Miss Calmer, so be truthful. I hold in my hand a note claiming that you removed cinder sprites from the royal guest suite, thereby saving the Zeidan family and possibly the entire castle from incineration, and that you afterward repaired all damage inflicted by the pests. It was written by Prince Omar of Khenifra on behalf of his royal parents and siblings.” Madame’s strange eyes seemed to peer into Ellie’s brain. “Do you deserve such commendation?”
Ellie’s spine was ramrod straight, and her gaze remained fixed on the letter. “I did my job, Madame, that’s all. This morning Sira the brownie alerted me that the Zeidan children had captured a family of sprites in the gardens and sneaked them into the family suite. I captured all six sprites and confined them in cages, then mended the damage they caused. They are currently in my cabin, pending either release or transfer to the Gamekeeper.”
“Indeed,” said the director, thoughtfully tapping the note with one finger. “Have you ever spoken with Prince Omar Zeidan before today?”
“Only once, Madame, and that was several years ago, after I spilled lemonade on his coat at a banquet.”
“I see.” Madame’s eye twitched. “Very well, Miss Calmer. You are aware of our fraternization rules. Carry on.” She waved one hand and returned her attention to the papers on her desk.
Thus Ellie was warned.
As if this warning had not annihilated her remaining peace of mind, another blow was yet to fall. That evening, on her way to the cafeteria with a few summer-staff gardeners, she encountered a large group of guests in the corridor outside the banquet hall, including Prince Omar with Raquel and Gillian pasted to his arms. Omar brightened and opened his mouth as if to greet her, but Gillian spoke first: “Well, if it isn’t Cinder Ellie!”
Raquel added, “Played in the ashes and soot today, Cinder Ellie?”
As soon as they were past, Ellie politely excused herself to her coworkers and took the service stairs down to the kitchen, where she begged a bowl of soup. With shrill laughter still ringing in her ears, she sat on the floor to eat among the brownies, who welcomed her, and the hobgoblins, who did not.
Geraldo gave her an accusing glare and growled, “Only two crumbs tonight, and neither of them chocolate. Hmph!”