Friday
Picture 2
Muse Calliope's Choice: Picture 1
Title:
Fionnuala, long lost Queen of the Winter Court of Faerie, had apparently hidden the door to her quarters at the back of the supply cupboard located on the opposite end of the palace dungeons. It actually rather ingenious, Trinity supposed; after all, it was rather unlikely that it had ever occurred to anyone that a Queen would have the entrance to her private quarters in the freaking dungeons of all places. Then again, for that reason alone it would have been one of the first places Trinity herself would had searched. Apparently Aoife was not as genre savvy.
Fiachra noticed her look and shrugged. “The door moves around the palace, usually taking the place of some other door and blending in. Only someone loyal to Fionnuala can find the blast thing.”
“If it moves around, how do you know where to look? Or when you’ve found it, for that matter?”
The princeling threw another of his trademark grins Trinity’s way, clearly indifferent to her indifference. “Today the door is white,” he observed, gesturing towards the banged up yet otherwise ordinary door he’d led them to. “Last time it was my own bedroom door. Once it was a garden gate and I vaguely recall it replacing a walk-in freezer a few times. The door itself doesn’t matter so long as hinges of some kind are involved. The real magic lies in the knob.”
Trinity blinked. Stepping slightly to one side, she glanced around Fiachra and got her first look at the knob in question. Despite the age and wear on the door itself, the knob was a brilliant blue prism that seemed to sparkle with an inner light. Not exactly the most subtle thing she’d ever seen, but then she supposed the Fae predated neon signs.
“Don’t look so worried.” Fiachra chastised. “Only the loyal see it as it truly is; for anyone else this is the door it is meant to be. Really, Fi perfected this trick when we were children. She used to replace my closet door at night so after we’d been tucked in, I could stuff some pillows under my blankets and go on over to stay up half the night telling stories and trading magic lessons.”
Before Trinity could comment, Fiachra shook his head and got on with things, opening the door and ushering her inside. Fionnuala’s room was …not what Trinity had expected. A massive bed sat atop a stout dais, its headboard against one wall, a loveseat and two armchairs made up a sitting area tucked into one corner, and a long, heavyset desk was piled high with books and various baubles on the opposite side of the room. That was it for the furniture, all of it white. The walls and carpet were white too but the ceiling was painted with a gorgeous mural that did for Celtic mythology what Michaelangelo did for Christianity. The mess on the desk excepted, the only blatantly personal touch in the room was the comforter on the bed; some sort of patchwork quilt the blended dark and light hued patches to form a snowflake pattern. Coupled with the teeming pile of stuffed animals, most of them jungle beasts, that spilled over to sprawl over the floor, it gave the bed an almost human quality.
“The patches on the quilt are all from pieces of clothing belonging to Fi’s friends and family here at Court,” Fiachra informed Trinity absently as he moved across to the desk and began to look through its horde. “My mother would kill to get her hands on it; do have any idea the spells she could work with that thing? The leverage it would give her? Unfortunately for her, Faerie would never allow anyone to take Fi’s belongings from this room.”
“And how, exactly, would Faerie stop them?”
Another flashy playboy grin. “Look behind you, lady love.”
Frowning, Trinity did as he bade and promptly cursed. The door had vanished.
Trinity sighed. Three hundred fucking years old - she really should have known better than to jinx herself.
A/N: To be continued soon!
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