Page 52

T he vet clinic’s flickering neon sign buzzes loudly, casting a sickly glow across the dark parking lot. Tonight, Zylah is the last to leave the building.

Yawning and stretching as she steps through the back door, she hefts her shiny, frog-shaped bag over one shoulder like it’s full of rocks, waving to a human male pulling out in a low red car with no roof.

Gone are the scrubs she wore on her break, replaced by a black sweater that reads “Better Dead Than Alive” in peeling glitter across the front. Her strange, mortal-style skirt is short, fraying at the hem, paired with striped tights in garish, bright colors.

But it’s her loose auburn hair that makes my chest tighten around a sharply drawn breath. Long and wild, it tumbles down her back. No longer tied in twin coils that resemble horns. Instead, it flows, wild and untamed.

She seems tired and distracted, unconsciously humming a tune under her breath—one I’m positive she doesn’t know the origin of.

But I do.

An Unseelie lullaby, crooned over bloodless babes in bark cribs, swaddled in nettles and ribboned lace. A song mothers sing to ease the dying of their ill children. Zylah hums it like it’s of no consequence. But I’ll teach her its truth.

When she’s mine.

Orange hair. Amber eyes. Beautiful as a funeral rose.

Keys dangle from her hand—metal bones, a rubber bat with a missing eye, the name Zylah spelled out in cracked glitter, all jingling together as she strides through the near-empty parking lot.

She jabs the key into the door of her battered hatchback without looking around. Or checking to see who might be lurking in the shadows. Foolish girl. Another lesson she must learn.

My prize. My Mistress of dead things. Not the one I was promised, no. That offering was a trick. A bait-and-switch. Another prince’s chosen, never destined to be mine.

But this sharp-voiced, tender-limbed mortal who stitches broken wings and collects the dead like heirlooms?

She’s the one I choose.

This is the one I will take.

Keys half-turned in the lock, she hesitates. The air shifts, turns icy, her skin likely prickling. Something in her gut probably pangs, telling her to run. But she only shakes her head and mutters something about forgetting to eat dinner.

The car door creaks open… and she pauses again, frozen like a deer in the woods before the hunter’s arrow lands. She glances over her shoulder, eyes unfocused. Unseeing.

I step from the shadows beneath the oak tree. No antlers. No clip-clop of hoofs. No jangle of the Hunt behind me. Only clear, silent intent .

“Hello, Zylah,” I say, letting the shape of her name melt like butter on my tongue. “Remember me?”

The keys clatter to the ground. Her breath catches, eyes wide behind the glasses, lips parting before moving soundlessly.

She utters a single whispered word, hissed low and hostile: “ You .”

Then she throws back her head and laughs.

Thank you for reading Summer and Wynter’s story!