Chapter Text
King Dagda picked himself off the ground and tried to recover at least some of his dignity.
While his older daughter still danced through the air with the Bog King, he concentrated on the younger, who hadn’t noticed him so far. When he called her name, Dawn perked up and let go of Sunny’s hands.
“Daddy!” She made a bee-line for her father and hugged him, almost throwing him off balance. He put his arms around her more gently.
“You’re really unharmed?”
“Yes! Bog is such a sweetie once you get to know him. Did you see how he got me out when his castle collapsed? I’m so glad Marianne finally found someone.”
The babbling, delivered while she hovered in the air in front of him, weaving from side to side in excitement, left Dagda wide-eyed.
Sunny trailed after Dawn hesitantly. He had not forgotten the Fairy King’s ire last night, and was loath to draw attention to himself. But maybe he would be asked for a report.
Seeing the elf, Dawn fluttered over to him and slung her arms around his neck. “And I finally found true love, too! Right under my nose.”
Her beaming face should not leave her father feeling conflicted, but considering what had been going on, his voice went tense with suppressed anger. “Sunny. Is that the love potion?”
Sunny jumped in his skin and raised his hands defensively. “No! No no no no no no no.”
Marianne and Bog had, after their kiss, swirled to the ground slowly, like Autumn leaves drifting on a breeze. When she caught sight of her father and Dawn and Sunny, their body language showing it was not a friendly chat they were having, Marianne flew to join them, followed by the Bog King.
“Whoa, Dad, calm down. Everything is all right.”
“Apart from your army destroying my castle.” Bog’s voice was dry, a sound suggesting crinkling straw. While Dagda gave his two personal guards a sign to be alert, Bog looked around at the mixed crowd. Goblins and elves didn’t seem to mind mingling after the general high spirits of surviving disaster and helping along a public declaration of love. Most of the fairies stayed in their own groups, but not even all of them held themselves apart. “Nobody seems to feel like fighting a war right now, though. Do you want to change that?”
“I just want my daughters back.” Seeing how they were both right there, not being held prisoner or threatened — Bog had his hand on Marianne’s shoulder, but given that she had slung her arm around his waist, it was hard to pretend the gesture to be threatening — King Dagda relaxed with an exasperated sigh. “Well, I would also like to know how we get from a raid with abduction to declarations of love.”
Bog took two more steps so he was not standing downslope from Dagda any more, Marianne following readily. “I would be interested in the full story, too.”
“Where should we start?” Dawn asked.
“Where did that love potion come from in the first place?” Dagda’s question sounded only mildly irritated, but it made Sunny flinch, anyway. He tried to make himself smaller than he was, with not one but two kings glaring at him.
“I… I wanted to use it on Dawn. I’d been in love with her for years, and…” he looked at his feet and shrugged. Almost whispering, he concluded, “I’m sorry.”
Dawn was still behind him, with her arms around his neck. She leaned forward. “I wish you would have just said something.”
“Me, too.”
The Bog King was gnashing his teeth and finally made a sweeping gesture, hand clawed. “And that is all? ‘Sorry’ and everything is forgiven?”
Dawns eyes narrowed, and with a flap of her wings she stood before Sunny. “That’s between him and me. You leave Sunny alone!”
The Sugar Plum Fairy had attached herself to Bog’s shoulder again, and said in a quiet singsong voice, “Young and impetuous.”
Bog straightened up with a start, his face smoothing out too a mere frown. “Well, if the Fairy Kingdom has no laws against using love potion on someone, I guess that is what it is.” He raised his eyebrow at Dagda, wondering if Dawn’s father would just take… this.
The Fairy King pressed his lips together in a thin line. “No, not as such.”
“And we should change that,” Marianne interjected firmly.
“Yes. We will talk about that with the council, but, yes, I agree it’s too dangerous in the wrong hands.” He ignored the Plum Fairy’s indignant “oh!” and continued. “But we wanted to get a full picture of last night.”
Marianne frowned at Sunny, eyes wide and sad. All right, he was sorry now, but she never would have thought their friend capable of planning such a betrayal. “Wherever did you get such an idea?” She tensed, remembering. “Was it me talking about the Sugar Plum Fairy the day before the Spring Ball?”
“No, no. It was at the Spring Ball.” He straightened up at raised a finger, voice growing stronger again. “Roland! He talked me into it. We were both unhappy in love, I could slip through the sentries into the Dark Forest, and we could both use the love potion.” He shrank again. “And I agreed to it, so I’m not shifting blame away, but, um, that’s what happened.”
“He did throw the potion in my face. We all saw it. So he planned that from the start.” Marianne felt stiff and cold. She told herself that Roland was such a smooth-talker she had fallen for him, so she shouldn’t blame Sunny too much for doing the same, but still could not help feeling betrayed. Bog’s hand on her shoulder tensed, his other hand clenching into a fist. He should have taken that elf when he’d offered himself up.
The Fairy King, however, raised his voice first. “Men, put together a patrol to search for Roland. If you find his body, good, if you find him alive, arrest him.” Belatedly he remembered he was not in his own territory. “If you don’t object, Bog King.”
Bog nodded and gave orders himself, for a few goblins to accompany the fairies and to cooperate. The fairy knights turned to their King, who just said, “You heard him.”
“Stuff, I want a head count, and whatever else information you can gather. We’ll have a lot to do once this talk here is finished.”
With a deep breath, he turned to Dagda. “I thought there were no laws against the use of love potion.”
Dagda answered with a dark look. “If the target is the crown princess… and corrupting one of her friends was involved… that does tilt towards a conspiracy to take the throne. High treason, if we can make it stick.”
“Good. I might have some complaints myself to add.” He turned to Sunny. His voice was clipped, anger carefully restrained, mostly because he did not want to upset Dawn. “What I’d like to know is how you got past the goblins I sent out to search the Forest, and into my castle.”
Sunny fidgeted, pulling at his fingers, but he had seen Bog a lot more threatening than right now. “The guards, well, I’m quick, I guess? And an Imp led me to the castle, and to a hole that led in the end directly to the dungeon.”
“The Imp is crazy about my potion. Spreads it around eeeeverywhere, hitting as many people as possible.” Sugar Plum spun like a top, letting blue sparks rain from her fingertips to demonstrate.
Sunny nodded. “He Imp really tried to steal it from me as soon as we were at a safe distance, but I lost him and went to the Spring Dance.” Having fallen into an even storytelling rhythm, Sunny went on without thinking. “I had some trouble opening the bottle to dust Marianne so she’d fall in love with Roland—”
“You went that far?!” Bog lunged forward a step, but Marianne stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Listen, I know from experience. Roland has charisma. He’s persuasive. And manipulative.”
Sunny had pulled down his headband a little, still holding on to it. “I didn’t know what a slimeball he was. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Bog snorted in disgust. “Go on, then. You said you didn’t have the potion when I was at the dance.”
“Um, right, right. That was when the goblins took over the stage, and the Imp had caught up with me and tried to get the bottle. In the scuffle Dawn got hit with the potion, just before the goblins caught her in a sack. The Imp grabbed the bottle and scampered off, some goblins grabbed me and Marianne and everyone. You, you told us your terms, and after you left Marianne told me to get the potion back.”
Marianne nodded. “I made my way to the Dark Forest. And despite me telling him Roland couldn’t be trusted, my father provided him with an army.” She gave the Fairy King a narrow-eyes glare.
“I should have listened to you. He—”
“Is a manipulative, charming bastard.” Marianne grinned without the least trace of humour.
Bog had relaxed, most likely because of Marianne’s closeness, or maybe because she seemed to need someone calm. He gesticulated towards the hole in the ground where his castle had been. “We brought Dawn here, and let her out of the bag in my throne room. I wanted to talk to her.”
“You wanted to scare me.”
Bog nodded. “It did not work.”
Dawn fluttered in a little circle. “He looked like the dreamiest of dreamy guys I’d ever seen right then.”
“I told you the potion worked!”
“Plum, none of that. Please.” Bog was, for once, more scared than angry.
“Okay, okay.”
After another sigh, Bog added, “She sang.”
“Sugarpie, Honeybunch—”
Bog crouched slightly, grimacing. “Yeah. It was awful. I had her put in the dungeon to get her out of the way, and to protect her from my people attacking her in self-defence.”
“Hey!”
“Nothing personal, princess. I suspect goblin ears work a bit differently from yours.”
Dagda reached for Dawn. “My poor child.”
She took his hand. “I wasn’t scared. Just sad that Boggy wasn’t there. And he came to visit me.”
“Her voice carried through most of the castle.”
“And when he noticed trying to scare me didn’t work, he asked nicely. It’s really weird in hindsight, but I’m OK.”
He put an arm around her shoulder protectively, anyway, and turned to Bog. “I still don’t understand why you did not take Sunny when he admitted he had taken the potion, but took one of my daughters.”
Bog took a deep breath, letting it go with a low growl. “Because my goal was to frighten and humiliate your whole country, and you, personally, which would be unlikely to be served by abducting a random elf. I couldn’t even be sure he told the truth, rather than nobly sacrificing himself.”
“But why?”
Bog wiped a clawed hand down his face slowly. Marianne took his other hand, wanting to remind everyone that they were not enemies today. “Dagda. Tell me. Before last night, when was the last time a goblin came into your realm to cause trouble?”
The Fairy King shrank back a little from the Bog King’s glare. “I don’t know?”
“Eight years ago. I know because I personally caught him and brought him back before he could cause any actual trouble, and then I made an example of him. Because the border is the law, and I will have the law respected.” The careful control of his anger slipped a little, and he grew more animated. “But you, either you don’t have your subjects under control, or you don’t care about the Divided Realms Treaty being violated, seeing how hardly a year passes without some fairy or elf showing up in my forest. I’d had it with you and your people acting like goblins could freely be mocked and disrespected.”
While Marianne whispered to Bog trying to calm him down, Dagda tried to think that over without regard to his personal feelings. If goblins being spotted in the Fair Fields were a regular occurrence, would he have blamed their King? It seemed possible, maybe even likely. “I understand. I do not agree with your course of action, but, yes…”
“I don’t—” Bog bit back the rest of the sentence when Marianne squeezed his hand. He did need the Fairy King’s goodwill right now. With the castle destroyed and the armoury buried under rubble, his realm was more vulnerable than at any time in living memory. Besides, he was the father of the woman he loved…
And it was her who spoke up. “You know, if our kingdoms had diplomatic contact, this could have been cleared up before escalating as it did.”
“Maybe we really should…” Dagda hesitated, looking from Marianne to Bog. Bog looked at her hand in his, smiling softly. The Fairy King still could not really believe they were in love.
The Bog King looked at him, his smile not entirely faded, and squeezed Marianne’s hand gently. “It seems necessary.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. Princess Dawn’s behaviour was… unsettling. I tried to get the Sugar Plum Fairy to give me the antidote, but she refused.”
“I didn’t exactly have any incentive to help you.”
“How about helping the victim?” He pointed at Dawn.
Plum waved it off and blew a raspberry. “She was probably better off with the potion. Less scared, you know.”
Bog raised his hands in surrender. “All right. Well, next change in situation was when Marianne broke through the skylight of my throne room and tried to split my skull.” Dagda found Bog’s fond smile a little unsettling in this context. “We duelled, fighting each other to a standstill. That’s when Dawn woke up and started singing again.”
“Woke up? You could actually sleep?”
“Boggy asked nicely.” Dawn blinked at her father, all innocence.
“It’s the potion,” Marianne said. “She did anything he asked, and even refused to leave with me.”
“It was useful right that moment, but believe me, I wanted that curse lifted as much as Marianne did.”
“That potion is dangerous.”
“Whom are you telling this. My dungeon was full of creatures who had been hit with it.”
Marianne shuddered at the memory. “That was so creepy.”
Dagda cut in. “But why imprison them?”
“I did not want the chaos to spread. Besides, they would have been right there if I managed to convince Plum to make an antidote.”
“Are they…” Dagda looked at the chasm.
“I got them out,” Sunny offered shyly.
“You broke in again?”
“All to the best, Boggy,” the Sugar Plum Fairy chirped. “He got me out of my prison, I got Griselda out of that collapsing heap. You’d be sad if I didn’t.”
“You did?” He looked at her baffled for a moment, but then cleared his throat and schooled his face back to his usual scowl. “I’m still Bog to you, though.”
The Plum fairy rolled hear eyes, leaning back until she faced away from the group, upside down.
Dagda tried to get the conversation back on track. “So, the Imp had the potion at that time and was spreading it. How did it end up with Roland?”
“Pare and I caught the Imp, with help from Lizzy. Um, she fell in love with us because the Imp dusted her, is why she helped us. And then we caught up with the army led by Roland and I gave him the potion. Which was stupid in hindsight, but he was the leader and sent to bring Dawn home, right?”
“Before they arrived here, Marianne and I had been talking to Sugarplum. She stalled for a while, but eventually revealed that the antidote to the love potion is real love.”
“I did not think that would help us, since Dawn… well.” Marianne gave a little shrug. “You know how she is.”
“But it worked, when I figured out I love Sunny!”
The elf lowered his head. “I feel so stupid.”
“You certainly caused a lot of chaos.” Once again Dawn put herself between Sunny and Bog’s withering look.
Marianne raised her voice. “Anyway, Bog and I left the castle to clear our heads, and when we returned, that’s the first time we saw that army.”
She and Bog exchanged a sad, uncomfortable look. What had happened between them, good and bad, was just too personal.
Bog picked up the thread. “I left Marianne behind and flew into the throne room, and confronted Roland there. Since he had the potion, I didn’t attack him, but had Dawn brought up from the dungeon.”
Sunny raised a hand cautiously, since he had something to add. “Roland had gone inside only with his three cronies and left the rest of us standing outside. After a while I couldn’t stand it any more, I just had to try to find Dawn, and went inside through the hole the Imp had shown me. But Dawn was already gone, and the Sugar Plum Fairy said she’d only tell me where she was if I let all of them out.”
Bog snorted, more on principle than from real anger. Being hit with love potion didn’t mean someone deserved death.
Marianne continued. “When Dawn and Bog and I were all in the throne room, Roland wanted to use the love potion on me, and when Bog noticed, he attacked Roland. We both fought him together. That’s when he used Dawn as a shield.”
Dagda gasped. If he wasn’t dead already, Roland was finished.
Bog sneered. “Calling him a worm would be rude towards worms the world over.”
“Well, we stopped him, anyway, but that’s when the castle started shaking.”
“Roland’s cronies did that. They crashed things into the central column in the dungeon. They destroyed it.”
With his arm again around Marianne protectively, Bog added, “With the castle falling to pieces around us, Roland shoved Dawn at me, and grabbed Marianne.”
“He dragged me up and out. I got hold of his sword, and got him tangled up with some falling wood from the highest spire of the castle. I thought I’d got rid of him.”
“I kept Dawn close and tried to find you, but it got too dangerous.”
Sunny blurted out, “And you risked your life to get Dawn out! Everybody saw it! I can’t thank you enough.”
The Bog King was taken aback by enthusiasm from Sunny, of all people, aimed at him, and answered with a shrug and noncommittal grumbling.
Dawn cut in, “Sunny took care of me, and that’s when I realized I loved him and the potion stopped working.”
“Are you sure it did, entirely?”
“Daddy, Bog is all right. You two really need to talk more.”
“Not today, at least not much,” Bog said. With the relief at not having a war on their hands, and at having survived the collapse of the castle, wearing off, his people were growing tense and worried. They would need to get organised, and it was his duty to take care of that. “I think everybody else saw the rest?”
“But how did you and Marianne fall in love?”
The princess answered with a shrug. “We talked while Plum was stalling, and found we had a lot in common. It just happened.”
Dagda would have to chew on that for a while. But he had seen himself how Roland had thrown the love potion in her face, and it failed to work. He looked at the Sugar Plum Fairy.
“Allll natural, your majesty. Really truly cross my heart.” She giggled.
After another snort, Bog drew himself up to his full height and addressed the Fairy King. “So. What will be next? Will the Fair Fields march on the Dark Forest?”
“No. I never meant for something like this to happen. I just wanted my daughters back.”
Marianne stood on her tiptoes and whispered to Bog. “Don’t worry. He’d have to fight me first.”
Bog grinned briefly. “All right. I’m willing to lay all blame on the individuals who actually caused the damage—” his eyes flicked to Sunny briefly “— particularly Roland, and call it a rogue conspiracy, rather than hostile action by the Fairy Kingdom.”
Dagda nodded formally, almost a slight bow.
“I do expect some say in what happens to him, if he’s alive and captured.”
“That seems fair. Given what a smooth talker he is, the more we can throw at him, the better.” Dagda took a deep breath. “If there is anything we can do to help rebuild…”
“This is beyond rebuilding. We will need to scout for a new place. We will manage.” After a tiny nudge from Marianne, he added, “The offer is appreciated, though. I might come back to it if something comes up. And that… We can’t change the Treaty and open the border just on a word, but I suggest setting up a small border post where messages can be passed off and envoys may be welcomed. At the root gate about halfway between here and your palace?”
“Agreed.”
For the first time in generations, the rulers of the Fair Fields and the Dark Forest shook hands.
Afterwards, Dagda asked, “Which treaty were you referring to, exactly?”
“The Divided Realms Treaty.” Bog looked at him in astonishment. Dagda frowned thoughtfully, like he tried to remember if he’d heard of it, rather than showing recognition. But Bog had more important things to do than giving his fellow king a history lesson. “Digging up our copy will take a while. Check your archives.”
“Yes, yes I will. Ah, we’ll be going, then.” He turned to gather his troops.
Bog leaned close to Marianne. “You have archives, don’t you?”
“Yes. I don’t remember hearing of that treaty, either. Maybe we just named it differently.”
“Maybe.” He sighed. “I have to take care of my people now. I hope you will visit again soon.”
“I’d like to stay. With you. And help. Scouting?”
“Is better done by people who know the area.” He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up. “I’d like you to stay, but we’ll have to find shelter for a few dozen goblins already. We need to sort ourselves out. And if your people back home see you, they won’t start any rumours about you being kept as a hostage.”
With a sigh, Marianne hugged him tight. “This will need a while to work out.”
“Yes.”
“But we will.”