“I want the princess to ask me,” Puck said, switching his gaze to mine. “I’ll be helping her, after all. I want to hear it from her own frosted pink lips.”
I pressed my pink lips together to keep back a nasty reply. Glad to see at least one of us is being mature about this, I wanted to say, which wouldn’t have been very mature at all. Besides, Ash was watching me, all solemn and serious, and a little bit pleading. If he could swallow his pride and ask his archnemesis for help, I guess I could be the grown-up here, too.
For now.
I sighed. “Fine.” But there will be repercussions later, believe me. “Puck, I’d really appreciate it if you helped me out a little.” He raised an eyebrow, and I grit my teeth. “Please.”
He flashed me a smug grin. “Help you out with what, princess?”
“My magic.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
I was sorely tempted to fling a rock at his head, but he wasn’t flashing me that stupid grin anymore, so maybe he was being serious. “I don’t know,” I sighed. “I can’t use glamour anymore without getting either really tired or really sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It didn’t used to be like this.”
“Huh.” Puck jumped down from the tree, landing as lightly as a cat. He took two steps toward us and stopped, peering at me with intense green eyes. “When was the last time you used glamour, princess? Without getting sick or tired?”
I thought back. I’d used Summer magic on the spider-hags and nearly thrown up with the effort. Before that, my glamour had been sealed by Mab, so… “The warehouse,” I answered, remembering the battle with another of Machina’s old lieutenants. “When we fought Virus. You were there, remember? I stopped her bugs from swarming all over us.”
Puck bobbed his head, looking thoughtful. “But that was Iron magic, wasn’t it, princess?” he asked, and I nodded. “When was the last time you used Summer glamour, normal glamour, without feeling sick or tired?”
“Machina’s realm,” Ash said softly, looking at me. Understanding was beginning to dawn on him, though I had no idea where this was leading. “You pulled up the roots to trap the Iron King,” he went on, “right before he stabbed you. Right before he died.”
“That’s where you got your Iron glamour, princess,” Puck added, nodding thoughtfully. “I’d bet Titania’s golden mirror on it. You somehow got stuck with Machina’s Iron magic—that’s why the false king wants you, I’d wager. It has something to do with the power of the Iron King.”
I shivered. Glitch had said as much, but I hadn’t wanted to think about it. “So what does that have to do with my glamour problems?” I asked. Ash and Puck shared a look. “Because, princess,” Puck said, leaning back against a tree, “you have two powers inside you right now, Summer and Iron. And, simply put, they’re not getting along.”
“They can’t exist together,” Ash put in, as if he’d just figured it out.
“Whenever you try, one glamour reacts violently to the other, the same way we react to iron. So the Summer glamour is making you sick because it touched Iron magic, and vice versa.”
Puck whistled. “Now that’s a Catch-22.”
“But…but I used Iron glamour before this,” I protested, not liking their explanations at all. “In the factory with Virus. And I didn’t have any problems then. We’d all be dead otherwise.”
“Your regular magic was sealed then.” Ash frowned, deep in thought. “When we went to Winter, Mab put a binding on you, sealing away your Summer magic. She didn’t know about the Iron glamour.” He looked up. “After the binding shattered, that’s when you started having difficulty.”
I crossed my arms in frustration. “This is so not fair,” I muttered, as Ash and Puck looked on with varying degrees of sympathy. I glared at them both. “What am I supposed to do now?” I demanded. “How am I supposed to fix this?”
“You’ll have to learn to use them both,” Ash said calmly. “There has to be a way to wield both glamours separately, without one tainting the other.”
“Maybe it’ll get easier with practice,” Puck added, and that irritating smirk came creeping back. “I could teach you. How to use Summer glamour at least. If you want me to.”
I stared at him, searching for a hint of my former best friend, for a spark of the affection we’d had for each other. The obnoxious smirk never wavered, but I saw something in his eyes, a glimmer of remorse, perhaps? Whatever it was, it was enough. I couldn’t do this alone. Something told me I was going to need all the help I could get.
“Fine,” I told him, watching his smile turn dangerously close to a leer. “But this doesn’t mean we’re okay. I still haven’t forgiven you for what you did to my family.”
Puck sighed dramatically and glanced at Ash. “Join the club, princess.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
UNDERSTANDING MEASURES
So, there we were again, the three of us: me, Ash, and Puck, together once more but not really the same. I practiced sword drills with Ash in the morning, and Summer magic with Puck in the afternoon, usually around the hottest part of the day. In the evenings, I listened to the piano or talked to my dad, while trying to ignore the obvious tension between the two faeries in the room. Paul was doing better, at least, his moments of confusion fewer and farther between. The morning he made breakfast, I got teary-eyed with relief, although our resident brownies threw a fit and nearly left the house. I was able to woo them back with bowls of cream and honey, and the promise that Paul wouldn’t intrude on their chores again.