Mercedes Lackey - Sleeping Beauty

They didn't have a week. Lily needed to get Rosa back to the Palace. If the King fell in battle, or even died of natural causes...it would be a race to figure out what to do next, at the very least, and having the actual, legal heir there would buy them some time.

She had just lit the ring of fire and begun the incantation part of the spell, when she spotted the two men,

one on either side of the clearing — and the moment she saw them, they spotted each other.

The one on the right must have been from the north, farther north than Eltaria's northward neighbor. He was kitted out in the "hearty, fears-nothing" style that a lot of them favored up there — bronze breastplate, greaves and armbands, and not much else in the way of armor, short-sleeved brown leather tunic and leather trews that didn't quite match, brown fur boots, a huge broadsword slung on his back instead of at his side as was common here, and no shield. He was blond, with his hair just on the attractive side of shaggy, a ruggedly handsome face with a square chin, high cheekbones and a broad forehead. He was also tall, incredibly muscular, and with that powerful aura that told Lily "The Tradition is going to pound this lad into his Fate like a blacksmith pounding a horseshoe." And if it weren't for the fact that there was acute intelligence in those guileless blue eyes, she would have dismissed him without a second thought except for how to get Rosa awake and out of there as quickly as possible, because he was going to be a complication. A Prince most likely. And not a stupid Northern Barbarian one. But probably a penniless one. A complication, and one she and Rosa did not need right now.

The first thing that struck her about the other man was the look in his eyes; the minute she saw him, she knew.This one is trouble. "Trouble" of the rakish sort. There was a merry devil in those green eyes, and the carefully tousled look of his long brown hair, the dashing set of his battered hat, only reinforced what instinct told her. For the rest — he was as rakishly handsome as the other was ruggedly handsome. He was somewhat lighter in frame than the blond, but then, nearly every man she had ever seen would be. His clothing had been very, very good once, but had seen a lot of hard wear. So, another Prince, probably, but one just as penniless as the first one. And on top of that, the sort of fellow who brought a swarm of problems in his wake. Another complication, and more dangerous than the first.

Had The Tradition at that moment appeared before her in a material form, Lily would happily have beaten it with a stick. Here they were, drawn in without a doubt by The Tradition itself, and without a doubt they both wanted Rosa. They wouldn't listen to reason and how many more problems were they going to create besides the ones they brought with them? She didn't know which Paths they were following, and inserting themselves into all the problems of this Kingdom could bring down disaster on everyone!

The two men saw her, then saw each other. Since she looked like herself, she was clearly not a threat, and for the moment, they dismissed her. But both of them recognized a rival when they saw one. Their reaction was instantaneous; they both rushed for the stone slab where Rosa was.

When the blond recognized that the dark-haired one was likely to get there first, he put on a mighty effort, jumped like a horse heading over a fence and threw himself in the air. But not at Rosa; at his rival. He managed to tackle the man just as he was about to cross the circle of fire and both of them went tumbling into the underbrush.

Lily continued the spell, because the last thing she wanted for either of these fellows was to awaken Rosa with a kiss. Once awakened by her spell, Rosa would be much less vulnerable. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the two men wrestling each other; they rolled around on the grass like a couple of boys — this is more like a tussle than a serious fight. It seemed that neither of them wanted to hurt the other, so their efforts were confined to one attempting to get free and the other pulling him down. They weren't even trading blows. And there was a lot of shouting from both of them. The blond seemed desperately to be trying to make a bargain of some kind. The other was having none of this, yelling "Bugger off! I saw her first!"

Lily was not going to allow any of this to distract her, and she had three hundred years in spell-casting behind her to give her every ounce of the discipline she needed. She sketched sigils in the air with her wand and punctuated each with a twirl that sent a swirl of dustlike sparkles soaring through the air. This was something of a signature touch for her; it was a characteristic of the magic that most with Fae blood had, for Fae magic was visible even to ordinary folk. This was why stories were full of references to "fairy dust." As the men wallowed and shouted at each other, she concentrated on her magic, as drift after drift of sparkling power wafted over Rosa, and the scent of roses, violets and lilies intensified.

She finished the spell with a final arc of power that hung over Rosa like a rainbow dissolving into mist; she knew that it had worked when she saw Rosa's chest move. A few seconds later, the sleep spell wore off by itself.

For one moment, the men were silent, and in that silence, Rosa coughed.

Both men froze at the sound. Their heads turned as if they had been pulled by the same string, and they stared at Rosa, who was just raising her hand, slowly to her head. Her eyes weren't open yet, but her eyelids fluttered. Lily sighed in relief. Whatever happened now, the men were both too late for The Tradition to make a hash of this.

Evidently however, they didn't know this, or else they thought they were still in time to work the Traditional awakening. Both scrambled for purchase on the slippery grass. The dark one was just a bit faster than the blond. He squirmed away and leapt desperately for the groggy Princess, leaving the other grasping at where his heels had been.

Rosa did not so much fall asleep as...well, drop into oblivion. Her last thought, as she felt something very strange start to happen after drinking the potion, was to wonder,was I tricked by Queen Sable into believing she was Godmother Lily, who was impersonating Queen Sable, who —

Then, there was nothing.

Next, like a very heavy wagon being pulled by straining horses finally starting to move, hair by hair, she was aware the way a plant was aware, then her thoughts slowly formed again, floating up out of the dark pool of nothingness, following the path they'd been on when she stopped thinking altogether.

— was pretending to be Old Maggie, who was really —

She coughed, and her spinning thoughts came to a dead stop. So she hadn't been tricked? She realized she was awake again, and lying on something hard and flat, laid out neatly with her hands folded on her chest. She felt warmth on her skin that felt like sunlight, smelled flowers, heard someone running — And then, out of nowhere, felt a mouth mashed against hers and a pair of hands on her breasts.

There was a single moment of feeling strangely tingly and an unfamiliar pleasure that warmed her in a way the sun did not.

But only a moment. Then she was galvanized with outrage. Her eyes flew open; all she saw was the cheek and brown hair of someone she certainly did not know, who was taking liberties that no one other than a husband had any right to take. Rage added to outrage. She did the only thing possible for a spirited young woman under such circumstances.

All in an instant, she made sure of where his groin was, which wasn't at all difficult considering how he was sprawled all over her. And she brought her knee up into it with all her strength. She was someone who had spent all of her life dancing, riding, walking, not a weak little thing that spent her days reclining on a couch, embroidering or listening to gossip. Her legs were strong, very strong.