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The chime did not grow any louder the farther I walked, and yet I followed, as if I might find the source. But when I came to a clearing where the ground was covered in flowering convolvuli, the sound abruptly stopped. When the bell ceased to sound, its hold on me fell away, leaving me cold and alone in the middle of the Thorn Prince’s forest garden.

“Fuck,” I muttered, turning in a circle at the center of the clearing, but I could no longer tell from which direction I came. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder and the color drain from my face as a familiar voice spoke.

“Do I know you?”

A knot formed in my throat, and I tried to swallow it, but I couldn’t.

“Miss?”

I closed my eyes, torn between hope and horror.

I knew the voice, but I had not heard it in years.

“Darling?” Another voice joined the mix, and a sound escaped my mouth, so pained and so visceral, I could hardly hold myself up, bent beneath the anguish.

The voices were those of my dead parents.

“Darling,” my mother said in her beautiful, breathy voice. It brought tears to my eyes to hear it, a long-ago echo I could never recall. “Look at my face, and you shall know that everything will be okay.”

“Stop!” I said, choking on a sob that felt like a needle in my throat.

A cold hand touched my arm, and I tore away, squeezing my eyes shut tighter.

“Little one.” My father’s voice shook me to the core. “Listen to your mother.”

“She is not my mother,” I shouted, my voice raw and rough. “And you are not my father!”

“Ella.”

The new voice broke me. It tore my heart out and left a gaping hole, and the blood that I saw at my feet was not my own but that of my sister.

“Do not be afraid,” she said. “We are all together again.”

I knew not to, but I did it anyway. I opened my eyes and beheld her. My sister, Winter. She was nothing but a corpse, a skeleton adorned in rotting flesh with an arrow lodged in her breast.

I reeled away and broke into a run, and my family followed, their shouts shrill and resonate in the wood.

“Ella! Come back!” my sister called.

“We have come to take you home,” my mother said.

“Gesela! Stop running from your mother!” my father ordered in his gruff rasp.

“Go away!” I screamed and covered my ears. “Go away, go away, go away!”

I tripped, and when I hit the ground, I did not move. I felt as though my chest had been cracked open, the pain so great, I could barely breathe.

I sobbed, and my tears wet the earth beneath my head, and I only rose from where I lay when I felt something touch my cheek. I sat back and saw that it was a leaf. As I watched, the leaf sprouted a longer stem, and the stem sprouted a golden bloom, and the bloom opened to reveal a sleeping fairy. She was covered in gold. When she opened her eyes, she sat up and stretched and then smiled wickedly as she blew dust into my face.

“Fuck!” I heard Casamir curse, and the sound of his voice made my heart race in a way it never had before. I started to turn to him, but his voice cut through the air like a whip. “Close your eyes!”

His command was visceral, and I knew fairies well enough to trust him. I did as he had ordered, and a laugh sounded from the golden fairy, small and impish, though it quickly turned into a gurgled scream.

I covered my eyes with my hands, except that they were quickly ripped away.

“No, you must look! Look!” said a voice.

I could not see the source of the power that kept me from obeying Casamir, but I was not strong enough to resist. When I opened my eyes, I saw the Prince of Thorns holding the golden fairy within his clawed hand, teeth bared as if he were about to devour her.