Beltrix Beldonna awoke with a startled scream. Someone pounded on the wall outside her hotel so hard the whole building shook. A huge eye, with an iris the size of her head and shes as thick around as her wrist, peered through her picture window. It had been a terrible idea to leave the blinds open when she fell asleep in Avalon.

  Heart pounding, wings fluttering as if they could escape from her back, Beltrix lurched out of bed. She was terribly gd she hadn’t brought a date back to her room or fallen asleep in the nude. Her orange hair, a shade that matched the monarch butterfly patterning on her wings, floated around her head like a dandelion’s puff, wild from sleep. Fury bubbled up inside her as she stalked to the windows. They opened with a turn crank. She hauled the handle around until the window swung open wide enough to hear through.

  “Are you out of your mind?” She screeched. “People are sleeping in here! You can’t wake private citizens up that way!”

  The voice rumbled so deep she felt it through the floor. The other hotel guests would be furious with her. “Terribly sorry, Miss Beldonna.” The voice changed the air pressure so suddenly her ears popped.

  “You’re sorry.” She blew a loose strand of hair off her forehead. This always seemed to happen when she worked in cities dominated by the Big Folk. “Well? Are you going to tell me what you want?”

  “I have a royal summons for you, Miss.” The deep voice cleared its throat. “The High King requests your presence at the White Pace.”

  For a moment, Beltrix was too taken aback to respond. The White Pace? She was in town brokering the sale of the Luminous Orchard’s test lemon harvest to the resorts along the beach. She had nothing to do with the High King, nor did he have anything to do with her. She didn’t really even know who the High King was now that the old one was dead. One of the boys, she supposed. The st set of Quintinars had so many children she never could tell the difference between them. “Are you pulling my wing?”

  “No, Miss Beldonna.” The eye disappeared from the window. An expanse of night blue fabric shifted like an ocean wave, and a massive hand appeared where the eye had been. A letter-sized piece of paper had been folded up and left on the gargantuan finger.

  She muttered, “You expect me to go and fetch that from you, I suppose.” Beltrix sighed. She stepped onto the window ledge, then pushed herself through the crack between the gss and the frame. Fluttering her wings, she lifted herself onto the hand to fetch the paper.

  It was beautiful paper, creamy and heavy. She unfolded it to find it stamped with a very official looking sun sigil. The giant was right. It was a royal summons, sent from the High King’s own desk.

  She peered, squinting, up at his face. “Oi! What does he want, then?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say,” thundered the giant. “Only that the Most High would like to see you at two o’clock on the dot.”

  Beltrix checked her watch. It was 12:30. She grimaced. She’d gotten too drunk with the clients st night and slept in. She’d have to hurry. She didn’t know what the king wanted with her, but she knew she didn’t want to be te.

  She dressed in a suit of pearl-white satin, then sat down at the hotel vanity to put on her makeup. Her hands wouldn’t quit shaking and she rather made a mess of her eyeliner. Beltrix’s mind circled the summons over and over. The High King, of all people! What could he possibly want with her? The Quintinars were famous for having the Birthright, a magic that gave them the ability to kill any immortal they desired. He wasn’t trying to accuse her of treason and execute her, was he? No, that was ridiculous. She wasn’t close enough to the government to do any real damage to it.

  Surely the High King couldn’t discharge his deadly magic by accident. Could he? No, she would have heard about it if the Quintinars just killed people willy-nilly these days. None of them had acted like that since King Aubri, at least, not that she knew of, and that was before her time.

  When she stepped outside the hotel at 1:30, there was a massive bck car waiting for her at the curb, idling with the sound of great, deep church bells. She had to dodge a few walking mountains as she fluttered in. The enormous chauffeur closed the door behind her. She seated herself far enough away from the plush leather seat to keep from crushing her wings but somewhere secure enough she wouldn’t need the too rge seatbelt. Beltrix sensed she’d have to shapeshift today, though she would wait until she got out of the car. Vehicles like this weren’t comfortable for people with any sort of a wingspan. She preferred a chariot.

  Her hands shook as they pulled up to the pace. It was a massive structure, so vast it was shadowy to her brain, and she changed size right there in the drive just for the ability to comprehend it. Even at many times her usual size and nearly as tall as the car attendant, the structure was huge.

  Beltrix had seen the White Pace from the street, of course, soaring over the trees that lined the Boulevard of the Oaks, but up close it was even more impressive. It was called ‘The White Pace’ because it was all made of gleaming white marble, topped with turrets of blue-gray ste, with dark blue pennants fluttering from the ramparts. Huge stained gss windows adorned with blue skies and yellow suns lined everything that wasn’t marble. There was no moat nor portcullis, only a pair of rge wooden doors. The Gentry didn’t need security measures like that. The only fey who could threaten them were other Gentry, and even those wouldn’t trifle with the High King and his Birthright.

  A servant led her into a vast hall filled with multicolored illumination. It streamed through the great dome of a gss skylight and the windows that lined the rotunda’s walls. She only had a moment to gawp before the same servant led her through a brightly lit maze of marble columns, soaring arches, and people in Quintinar blue. Beltrix wished she’d brought a camera. The Great Hall alone!

  The servant who walked beside her was a Brownie, shorter than the height she’d chosen for herself by quite a bit, nut brown and with massive eyes that took up the entire top half of his face. Outside an intricately carved door with a pair of knights (knights!) standing outside, he stopped her with a touch on her arm.

  “When you come out, you’ll need to sign a Non-disclosure agreement,” he said. “The Most High is…not well currently and he might say some odd things. We can’t risk those things getting back to the press.”

  A pebble of dread tumbled into the well of her soul. “What do you mean, he’s not well?”

  The Brownie held up his hands. “He’s certainly not dangerous, don’t worry about that! But…he’s had a very minor…break. From reality. If possible, we need you to humor him. No one is really certain how he’d respond if you didn’t.”

  Dread spread outward, rippling into fear. “Are you trying to tell me the High King is mad, and I’m to humor him?”

  The Brownie grimaced. “I wouldn’t say he’s mad. No. He’s only had a minor break from reality. As I said.” He knocked on the door.

  A mellifluous voice, faintly muffled by the door, called out, “Come.”

  “Good luck,” whispered the Brownie as one of the guards swung the door open.

  Wings pulsing too fast with fear, Beltrix tottered inside.

  She found herself in a sumptuous office, all blue leather and mahogany, with books lining the walls and an unlit firepce. The person behind the desk stood. He was quite tall, even taller than the size she’d chosen for herself, and lovely in the way of all Gentry. His pale hair hung in a braided fall down his back. He was younger than she expected, with a face just slightly too soft around the edges. Dark circles, as from sleeplessness, lined his eyes. His expression was serious and studious. He didn’t seem mad at all.

  Beltrix took a knee. In a soft voice that was clearly unused to shouting, the young man said, “Please rise, Miss Beldonna. We’re very grateful you’ve come.”

  She did as she was told, then blurted out, “I don’t know why you’ve called me in, if I’m honest. I’m really nobody of interest.”

  The High King, for that’s exactly who he was, seated himself on the edge of his desk, crossing his legs at the ankles. “Please. Have a seat.”

  A blue velvet bench that wouldn’t crush her wings had been arranged nearby. That was thoughtful, she decided, and felt considerably more at ease.

  “Though I’m certain you’re quite incorrect about how interesting you are as a person, we’re currently curious about someone you may remember meeting.” He csped his hands in his p. “We have reason to believe you may have encountered someone called the Border Lord some time ago.”

  The Border Lord? Of all things, his questions were about the Border Lord? Beltrix sighed. Oh, she remembered him, all right. He was a Big Folk with even bigger magic, someone so good he was warm to stand beside, someone so lovely she had been unable to tear her eyes away the entire time she knew him. “The Border Lord? I haven’t seen him in ages, though I think about him all the time. He was vastly beautiful, m’lord. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  The young king raised both elegant eyebrows. “Really? That beautiful?”

  “That beautiful.” Her voice was an uncontrolble gush of emotion. “I’ll never forget him for all my days. I wish he’d come back. There’s nothing I wish more for.”

  He made a thoughtful sound. No. The king wasn’t mad, though the nguid way he moved indicated he must be terribly fatigued. “And do you have any idea how the Border Lord came to be here, Miss Beldonna? We understand he was born–or created–somewhere far outside of Faerie.”

  “That’s certainly true.” Beltrix’s wings fpped with emotion, stirring the air in the otherwise still office. “If you’d met him, you’d know he was something other. There’s simply too much magic in him.” She paused. “I’m terribly sorry, what was the question?”

  “Whether you know how he came to be here, or why.” The king’s voice was patient and calm. For a person his age, he was remarkably poised. But of course, he would be, holding a position like this.

  “I don’t know why,” Beltrix said, “But he came here through a hole in the aether, didn’t he? Just appeared one day. Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. He let me ride on his shoulder.” Against her will, she puffed with pride. She’d been no more than a slip of a thing then, and the honor still sang in her.

  “So you mentioned. And did he leave again by the same method?”

  Beltrix nodded enthusiastically. “He certainly did. When he finished here, he went on to other climes. But I do hope he’ll come back someday. I’ve missed him most of my life now.”

  The king made that soft, thoughtful sound again. “We suppose that means you have no way of contacting him.”

  Beltrix’s heart dropped. “No, m’lord. Though you could try praying for his return. I do. Every night before bed.”

  “Praying.” The faintest hint of doubt crept into the High King’s voice. “It’s as much of a lead as anything else. You’ve been most kind.”

  “I wish I could tell you where he was.” She rose from her bench. “Then we’d both know.”

  The High King held the door for her, showing her out with an elegant gesture. “Don’t forget to sign your NDA on the way out, Miss Beldonna.”

  When Beltrix fell asleep that night in her hotel room, she dreamed that the Border Lord had returned, and she sighed happily in her sleep. “Eagle Eye,” she sang, in a soft, absent voice. “Eagle Eye.”