Cai Finley Aies Hall May 16th,20XX

A single look at Jake’s face was enough to know how he was feeling. Betrayed, shocked, regretful?

But that might have been in response to my tone.

Mei showed no other reaction to the revelation but a small noise of acknowledgement. It was unexpectedly Akseli that had something to say.

“If she’s a witch then didn’t she just choose to chase down her roots? I had a fairy father so it didn’t happen to me, but some of my brothers that were raised in the human world often get over-enthusiastic in discovering their ‘fairy roots’ as they call it.”

It was a reasonable assumption and one I would have run with if it were about anyone else but Sparrow. I knew she was still safe since she hadn’t used the ‘wish’ I gave her, and the protective spells were still active and well, but it was still out of character for her to pull a disappearing act when she had commitments in the human world.

The mission objective had suddenly shifted from rescuing her to bringing her back home for Will to deal with.

Jake didn’t agree with Akseli’s suggestion and quickly rebutted.

“Maybe so, but she wouldn’t leave everything without letting people know. Even if it was only will she told. Are you sure that she’s a witch?”

He directed that last question back to me and waited for a response. I could see a faint glimmer of hope in his eyes that I would deny my original reveal but it looked like I would have to disappoint him once more.

“There is no way that I would have mistaken it. She’s a newer witch, but a witch none the less.”

“The question now... is what you're going to do about it?”

The atmosphere cooled with Mei’s frosted question.

“Well, I have to get her back, I promised her older brother that I would do so, and it's no less than she would do for me.”

“You’re going to the middle of hostile territory, with only a human as a companion, to rescue someone that doesn’t need to be rescued.”

I coughed and drew Akseli forward. It was time for him to make himself useful.

“Well, I was planning on taking Akseli with me.”

The incredulous expression on her face simply couldn’t be done justice by words alone and I wished I could have immortalized it into a picture, but now was hardly the time.

“Cai, I’m being serious.”

“As am I, Mei.”

Of course, I wasn’t being serious in the least. The best-case scenario would be if she came with us but I couldn’t very well ask her to abandon her responsibilities and go play retrieval with us.

This was more me playing dumb about the squad of fairies that had saved me last time I’d been ambushed by the witches.

I could see her wrestle with the desire to stop me from going and the fact that she couldn’t even if she wanted to. She finally struggled out a single sentence. A request.

“I don’t want you to go. I can help you find someone to go in your stead but I can’t get behind you going in person. It’s too risky.”

There was so much subtext to our conversation that we all agreed to leave unspoken, but Jake who had silently struggled to keep up with us finally lost patience and asked,

“Why exactly can’t Cai go? Why do the witches hate him so much?”

Akseli absentmindedly answered Jake before I could glaze over things and the truth was suddenly out of the open.

“Isn’t it because he’s the prince? If they can manage to get rid of him before he can marry General Ruan then they’ll be able to put the queendom in a weak enough state to comfortably launch an attack.”

I tried my best not to be too offended by the look of total shock on Jake's face and even patiently listened to him verbally process it all.

“Why would Sparrow know a fairy prince? And you’re a general? Like the type that goes to war and all?”

Maybe he hadn’t put it together since he had only been in the pavilion, which was nice but nothing spectacular. I was sure that if he’d seen the full palace there would have been no doubts in his mind.

“Anyway, I have to go. I already gave my word.”

“And did this word say that you, in person, had to retrieve her? Or was it that you would guarantee her safety upon return?”

I held back a scowl as she identified a good reason to keep me behind and started to race through the many different reasons why she should let me go.

Honestly, it wasn’t like I needed her permission but there wasn’t much I could do if she chose to have her soldiers ‘protect me’ by hindering my journey. I also didn’t want this to become a source of conflict between us.

“Mei-“

She suddenly heaved a heavy sigh and ran her hands through her hair in that same unfairly charismatic way.

“Two days. Give me two days to wrap things up here and we can head out. Does that sound fair to you?”

All of my plans and excuses suddenly disappeared from my mind as she suddenly compromised with me. Or no, rather than compromising, this was her giving in to me wasn’t it?

“Ah-. Oh yeah, two days is nothing! I can wait!”

Again, Jake, I don’t need you looking at me like that.

“I’ll need to officially accept my two Aides so they can run the place in my absence, and Akseli will have to stay behind as well. Will that be okay?”

My crown almost fell off with the enthusiasm I nodded with but I was too pleased with this outcome. I wasn’t exactly sure why she had suddenly decided to come with me but I chose not to think about it too deeply.

“Anything you need-“

“You also have a lot of responsibilities to deal with your highness. I hope that you won’t take them too lightly and try your best to wrap them up before we set out.”

I nodded again in response, but significantly less enthusiastically. It looked like there was a sort of twisted fate between me and paperwork after all.

“And Finally. We can’t have a human walking around here but we also can’t leave him here.”

Jake, who had been lost in thought until now suddenly perked up at being the subject of conversation and held up two hands.

“It's okay to leave me here. I don’t mind. It would be a lot better if I could return to the human world.”

Mei rejected the idea faster than I could.

“Impossible. It's lucky enough that you survived unprotected travel in the first place but doing so again would only be tempting death. It will take about a fortnight from today to gather all the materials to get you back home and we are departing in two days. We also can’t run the risk of someone discovering you in our absence. Cai seems to know you from the human world, Akseli is used to humans since he has a lot of half-human brothers in his household and as for me... I trust Cai’s judgement of you. Other fairies though may not be as kind or understanding.”

Well, it was about my time to shine.

I brought out my mother’s notebook that I kept in a side pouch and began to flip through the spells for one I’d seen earlier.

It was a bit embarrassing that I’d forgotten to ask it how to fix Jake earlier but what passed was best left in the past.

He was already dressed in some of my clothes, although they were a bit tight on him, so he didn’t look too out of place and his short-cropped hair could be lengthened with a simple spell.

The main issue would be the wings.

There were those called the wingless. Those who had either lost their wings in battle or from recklessness but they were rare and were generally more susceptible to being affected by Royal’s magic. Seeing one in the palace would only draw too much suspicion.

Mei seemed to have thought as much and started to organize a background for him.

“As for an identity, I’ll have him become a redeemed son of the Ruan Family. It’s a bit high profile but all of Akseli’s siblings are decently well known and we can’t call him another son of Belphoebe. I’ll have people think I wanted him as your second Aide.”

Honestly, Jake resembled Mei enough to pull it off. It wasn't a similarity I had noticed until they were right by each other but they had the same intense eyes and dark brown hair. They also had similarly athletic builds and their height differences weren’t too far apart either.

All I would have to do was to lighten his dark brown eyes into a bronze-like Mei’s and designed the wings I gave him to resemble hers.

I’d keep the same pattern, since Mei’s sister’s wings had borne a similar pattern to hers but changed the colours around, switching the beige elements for a darker brown but keeping the bronze and lighter brown parts.

“As for a name… what’s your middle name?”

“Kiorn.”

An odd look splayed across her face and she suddenly softened her attitude towards Jake but she didn’t say anything in particular and just nodded approvingly.

“That works. Kiorn Ruan”

Akseli brought over another large piece of parchment and laid it out in front of me as I sketched a prototype of the wings I wanted to make. I ripped a page out of the diary and handed it over to him

“Akseli, can you draw these out? Make them about the same size as mine… no- slightly bigger. Only by half an inch or so.”

Technically they should have been about an inch and a half bigger but the difference wouldn’t matter. I’d already accepted being shorter, but something in me wouldn’t forgive a large gap in wing size as well. A small smile played on Akseli’s face as he drew, but he, very wisely I might add, kept his mouth shut.

I couldn’t directly give Jake wings unless I used a wish. It would essentially be going against nature to give humans wings, and things made by wishes tended to be pretty permanent.

What I wanted to do was to make a pair of detachable wings.

Since Fairies mainly relied on magic to fly and not on our actual wings I wanted to make a version of the flying platform toys Mei had shown me earlier. The wings themselves would have an illusion spell printed on them but the flight spell would be built into them.

They would need a lot of maintenance and flight wouldn’t be smooth, but that was something I could work on.

I tended to walk around a lot and Akseli had gotten used to it as well, although he would fly when he was tired, so Jake could avoid flying without looking too weird.

Two days. It wasn’t a lot, it wasn’t a little either. I hoped nothing went wrong.