Fair Peril by Nancy Springer

utterly charming black velvet French hat.
    Emily.
    Trust Emily to do this thing in style. Emily, who had smashed a window even though she should have known the spare key was right there by the bushes in a hyperrealistic plastic dog-poop key hider Buffy had brought home from work. Emily, swooping like Ms. Musketeer through the night, buckle that swash. Emily, frog-rescuer and savior of an ensorcelled prince.
    All of this Buffy comprehended afterward, when she had time to feel ruefully proud of the kid. In the actual event, her attention, from the moment she waddled around the corner into the kitchen, was entirely taken up by the tableau.
    Emily, embracing Adamus tenderly, kissing him.
    Prince Adamus d’Aurca. Standing there in human form.
    Over six feet tall and buck naked, with the sheen of supernatural glory on every consummate inch of him. Sleek ballet-dancer legs and bunched buttocks exquisite with muscle, tapered torso, broad shining shoulders—he lighted up the kitchen with the glow of his transformation. Though his bare, beautiful feet touched the floor, he did not seem to stand; rather, he manifested, too perfect and otherworldly to be quite human, too lusty to pass as a naked angel lacking wings, much too sweetly flesh. Emily—even though the spell was unmistakably broken, Emily was still kissing him.
    Buffy stood struggling for breath at the sight of him. Then she found it and screamed.
    Shrieked, rather. An embarrassingly Victorian ululation, useless except that it startled them apart. She caught a freeze-frame glimpse of their two faces, Emily’s rose-colored gasp as she noticed her prince’s unclad midsection, Addie staring back at Buffy with no more expression than a wild thing and with beauty that threatened to stop her heart. That old Queen of Fair Peril sure knew what she was doing when she shaped him. Wide pagan mouth. Greek brow. Golden eyes—she saw them from across the room, those glittering gold-dust eyes pooled with midnight black. Addie: she would have known him anywhere.
    Standing there with the brand of faerie lips hot on his brow.
    The next instant the two of them, Emily and Adamus, fled like a pair of deer.
    Hand in hand, they darted out the door into the night. Buffy screamed again and stumbled after them, getting to the door just in time to hear the car roar away, speeding God knew where. No, probably God did not know. God had no place in that amoral kingdom. And Buffy could tell herself and tell herself that she would call the police, the National Guard, the President, and Oprah, that she would do whatever it took to get Emily back, but in her heart she knew: she was talking all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. No use. Emily belonged to the Realm of Fair Peril now.

Six
    Free! By all the gods and little red devils, how joy to fill a million hearts ensouled that one simple word. Free! She set me FREE. How the power had filled him, the power of a paradise of angels in her kiss. With awe, adoration, joy, Adamus gazed upon her as she sent the mechanical chariot scudding at dizzying speed through the night. Such power. This, then, at last, was his fated princess. Princess Emily. How beautiful she was in the half-light that kept flashing past from the tall lamps. Up until the moment she had lifted him in her hands, when the touch of her soft lips had flashed through him like lightning and turned him inside out, up until that moment he had not known, he had not understood—she had been just the daughter to him, the pale shadow, the second choice. His focus had been all on the mother, the thunder woman who fascinated and appalled him. But now—
    She felt his gaze and glanced at him, the soft contours of her face shaky in the changing light.
    â€œPrincess Emily,” he said, his voice shaky also.
    â€œShhhh.” She turned back to the large dark glass, the speeding lights. “I’ve got to concentrate or we’ll wreck.” But she kept