Disclaimer: This story is completely original. All characters, settings, and events are spawned from my own mixed up little mind and may not be used, copied, or adapted without my express written permission. Do not steal my story!!!

6.

"Long ago, fairy tale creatures and magic were as everyday and commonplace as the sun rising. Grand adventures, damsels-in-distress, magical transformations, knights, spells… it was all so alive, so vibrant! Everything depended on the Princesses, however. There was no more devastating blow than when the Princesses started disappearing. With each—"

"Why?" Toby interrupted, and Verum blinked at her. Verum was sitting on Toby's window seat, and Toby was sitting on the floor against the wall in her bedroom. The dragon was lying on the bed, a blanket draped over him. "Why did they disappear?" Toby prompted.

"Well, obviously we don't know or we would have done something about it. Now stop interrupting and let me tell the story."

"Sorry," Toby said, falling silent. Verum gazed towards the ceiling as if collecting her thoughts before plunging back into her story.

"With each one we lost, more of our people lost their vibrancy and fell into a sort of hibernation. Those of us who were able to remain awake searched desperately for the Princesses, going to the far reaches of the world and looking everywhere. We moved the Princesses who were left to safe locations – Bellephon's aerie, the selkies' city of Bluurble, everywhere were we thought they couldn't be touched. They still continued to fade away, without even a trace as to where they'd gone. Then our last Princess remained, only a fraction of our people still alive. We took her to the safest place we could think of – the Fae Court, on Avalon."

"Avalon? As in, King Arthur Avalon?"

"Yes and no," Verum said patiently. "King Arthur didn't really exist, you see. When the Princesses started disappearing, the Fae, who were, of course, the last of the people to sleep, being the epitome of the fairy tale world, sent their Court Scribe, Murmurling, to the humans. She was trying to find someone to take the place of the Princesses, you see, but she failed, and all that was left was a good yarn that the humans thought up."

"Oh."

"Now, will you be quite so I can continue?"

"Sorry."

"Anyway. The last Princess, Rosalinde, stayed in the Fae Queen's own bedchamber, guarded by the fairy princes. The entire Fae Court was on guard. And then, one morning, she was gone."

"So much for your protections," Toby snorted, and Verum shot her a glare.

"She was surrounded by thousands of Fae! It's just impossible that someone got to her!" She looked vexed for a moment, then shook her head, regaining that peaceful calm of hers. "With the last Princess gone, the Sleep took over the rest of our country, and all of our people fell into slumber. Magic faded from the world, and our country was forgotten and resigned to myth and lore… until now." Her eyes glittered like a cat's in the darkness, her gaze intense as she looked at Toby.

"You're the crack of sunlight, Princess, over the horizon. Your presence makes the Sleep's hold wane. They're waking up. They're all waking up."

"I'm not a Princess!" Toby half-yelled, frustrated. "No one is listening to me! I'm not even remotely royal! Do you see courtiers or a castle? Do you see a crown on my head? No! I'm not a Princess!'

"Maybe you weren't," Verum said, unflappable. "But you are now. You were crowned."

"A high school drama queen dumped spaghetti on my head in front of the entire school! How is that even remotely close to being crowned?!"

"It met all of the criteria," Verum replied, still calm even in the face of Toby's near-hysteria. She raised the fingers of one hand and counted off on them. "You must have the ruler of the place perform a ceremony in front of an audience and then award a crown. Ruler, ceremony, audience, crown. You met all four criteria. In the eyes of my country, you're a Princess."

"That's ridiculous. Julie doesn't rule the school and she didn't even mean it. She was just humiliating me!"

Verum regarded Toby patiently. "What would have happened if the…" She wrinkled her nose in the strangest 'I'm-thinking' gesture that Toby had ever seen. "… principal, is it? What would have happened if he had come in? Would she have backed down?"

"Well, he would have stopped her… I think…"

"Official title is not the only way to rule a kingdom," Verum said, folding her hands neatly in her lap and smiling at Toby in a way that only irritated the brunette. "She is seen by all of the subjects – all of the other students – as being in charge of the school regardless of what the principal or teachers say, so she counts as the true ruler of the school."

Toby stared at Verum. She couldn't think of anything to say. What about all of the Princesses in the world, all the actually royal ones? Why her? Surely she hadn't been the first student bullied by being given a mocking title. This was all so unreal, she could hardly wrap her mind around it.

"So… what… what does this… being a princess mean? I can't rule a country, especially not one where things like dragons ripping your house off its foundations happen all the time! My mom'll kill me."

"Oh, no no no," Verum said with a tittering laugh. "The Fairy Queen takes care of ruling. As a princess, however, you're more like.. the person that things revolve around. Whether you like it or not, our people –"

"Your people."

"—are going to come to see you, to talk to you, to bask in the simple power that we get just from your presence."

"More of you are coming?!"

"Oh yes. Probably droves and droves more." Verum looked positively delighted at the concept. "You see, we've all been asleep for oh so very long. And we're all ready for a good romp again, to get out and stretch our proverbial and literal wings. You can't imagine how happy we are to have a Princess again, after oh so long!"

"Then why do I get a fairy godmother-in-training?" Toby asked, exasperatedly. She didn't mean it in a mean way, and immediately regretted saying it when a furrow crossed Verum's forehead. The young woman looked down at her hands and Toby sighed. "Look, I didn't mean…"

"It's all right. Look, you must be very tired, Princess. It's been a terrible long day. Why don't you let me check your mattress for peas and then you can get some sleep."

Toby eyed Verum. The woman hadn't answered her question, but she sensed there was something there that Verum wasn't quite ready to talk about. And she was pretty tired… She decided to ignore the part about the pea – the Princess and the pea, hah – and instead glanced at the still-slumbering young man taking up her bed.

"Where're you gonna put him, then?"

"On the floor," Verum said, with that smug, nearly wicked little smile again. And that's exactly what she did.