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TELL FAIRY TALES TO VILLAINS (THEY’RE SURPRISINGLY GOOD LISTENERS)

ARABELLA

The echo of Kazimir’s rage mingled with the residual magic in the air. His parting words still rattled around my head: I might still need her. Every syllable dug sharp edges under my skin. In that moment, it was hard not to picture myself as a half-failed experiment lying on his workroom table.

Griffin and Thorne watched me as if I might shatter. I tried to look bored, and not as if my existence in the citadel had just been called into question.

“He really didn’t mean it quite like that,” Griffin said gently, hunched over his workbench. “The Dark Lord gets… intense when plans fail.”

I couldn’t help a dry laugh. “I noticed. How many people has he executed for disappointments like this?”

When Griffin and Thorne exchanged uneasy glances, I sighed. “Filling me with confidence here.”

“He rarely kills useful… assets,” Griffin offered, wincing at his own words.

Ignoring the unpleasant knot in my stomach, I moved closer to his table. On the cushion sat the object that supposedly caused all this trouble. The Heirloom of Dominion. Latent magic still clung to it.

“May I?” I asked, gesturing toward it.

Griffin hesitated only a second before nodding. I lifted the circlet, already half-convinced it would jolt me with eldritch lightning just to prove its worth. But it only felt cold and ordinary.

I turned it in my hands. A faint rose motif—thorns chasing thorns—twined around the inside. Worn with age, barely visible unless you held up to the light. “It’s… underwhelming,” I said at last.

“Ironic, I know,” Griffin said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “But it should work. The ritual was correct, the incantations tested, the newlyweds both present…”

“And yet it failed,” I finished, setting the Heirloom back on its cushion. “He mentioned spending a decade on this plan?”

“At least that,” Griffin said, looking relieved I’d changed the subject. “He hunted it before anyone started calling him ‘Dark Lord.’ Legend said it didn’t exist. But here it is.”

“And he found it where?”

Griffin’s eyes lit up with that storyteller’s glimmer. “He fought a chimera guardian with three heads. They battled for three days and nights?—”

“Is that true?” I interrupted. “Or just the story he tells?”

Griffin deflated. “Well, I wasn’t there personally. But Thorne was.”

At that, I glanced at Thorne, who inclined his enormous head in confirmation.

“So, a real three-headed beast,” I murmured. “And now we have a worthless circlet that refuses to cooperate.”

“It’s supposed to be powerful,” Griffin said, glancing anxiously at the door. “The texts were explicit about your bloodline and his dominion magic.”

My gaze drifted back to those tiny roses etched in the metal. Memories surfaced of petals, vines, and a fireside story I hadn’t thought about in years.

“Did it ever occur to him,” I asked, crossing my arms, “that there might be more to my bloodline than a single drop of heroic ancestry?”

Griffin stilled. “What do you mean?”

I brushed a fingertip over the engraved thorns. “Roses were always central to the First Hero’s power. And they weren’t just decorative. Have you ever heard of The?Hero’s?Garden ?”

He shook his head, and Thorne gave the barest tilt of curiosity.

Even though I was young, the story remained as sharp as the day my mother whispered the tale to me. I felt a tiny pang in my chest. My father had always mocked those tales, but they were a link to her I’d held onto.

“Will you tell it, my lady?” Griffin asked.

“All right,” I said, sitting on the table like a bard about to earn her supper.

“Once upon a time, when darkness shrouded the kingdom, there was a young man named Soriven who tended a garden at the edge of a village. Everyone feared the beasts skulking among the shadows, but Soriven kept growing his flowers. The villagers called him foolish.”

Griffin watched me with wide eyes. Thorne, too, shifted closer, like he didn’t want to miss a word.

“One day, the Shadow King’s army arrived.

The villagers had no warriors, so Soriven offered them seven magical roses, telling everyone to plant one by their door before sunset.

They scoffed, but desperation outweighed their doubts.

When night fell and the Shadow King’s soldiers marched in, each rose grew into massive thorny vines that burned any foe who approached.

House after house glowed with golden light. The army couldn’t break through.”

I picked up a few metal components from Griffin’s table, arranging them into a neat circle.

“Incensed, the Shadow King demanded that Soriven face him. Soriven offered one last rose as a token of peace. The King wanted to crush it, but the instant he touched the petals, something changed in him. His rage subsided—some say the rose let him see truth instead of darkness. From that day forward, the Shadow King was changed and helped heal the land.”

I slid off the table, suppressing a wistful smile. “That’s how Soriven defeated him, not by sword but by transformation.”

Griffin set down the tool he’d been clutching. “I’ve never heard that version. Everything we have says the First Hero vanquished the Shadow King with raw power.”

“It’s easier to pitch a story about a glorious battle than one about compassion,” I remarked drily. “You think Lord Blackrose researched that angle?” I lightly touched the circlet again. This time, a flicker of energy sparked under my fingertips. I jerked my hand away. “Did you see that?”

Griffin sprang forward with a muttered incantation. After a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t see any change. But... Maybe the nature of the hero’s power is different than we assumed.”

“Or maybe the Dark Lord’s approach is all wrong. The original hero used empathy and roses, not bare-knuckled conquest.” Even as the idea spilled from my mouth, it felt treasonous in this stronghold of villainy. Yet it also felt strangely satisfying to say it aloud.

Or perhaps, I thought but didn’t say, the Heirloom required something more complex than just my bloodline.

As the story went, the Golden Rose Fields of Solandris were originally planted from those first seven.

And it was those, not a convergence of ley lines, which were responsible for Solandris’s prosperity.

Griffin blew out an anxious breath while scribbling in a notebook. “He’ll figure it out soon. He may be… intense, but he’s brilliant.”

I heard genuine respect in his voice. And in that moment, I realized my curiosity about these people was a lot bigger than mere survival. “Why serve him?” I asked quietly. “Why stay in a place like this?”

He chuckled. “He lets me build things others deemed ‘too dangerous.’ In the kingdoms, I was an outcast. Here, my eccentricities help fortify a fortress. I’ve made wonders no highborn lord would ever dream of allowing.”

I thought of the roving lightning bridges, the biting black roses. Strange marvels, but marvels all the same. “I do understand what it’s like to be dismissed,” I admitted, surprising even myself.

Griffin’s gaze grew wary. “Your mother…? You mentioned her telling this story?”

My mood darkened at the memory. “She died when I was eight.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

It stung less than I expected to hear his sympathy. I ran my finger along the circlet’s smooth edge, the ghost of a spark tingling under my skin.

After she died, Father decided my only worth lay in how my bloodline could save our house from ruin, and he’d never allowed any of her stories to be told in his presence. Perhaps he never realized they might matter one day.

The circlet warmed against my skin before turning cool once more. Or perhaps, it was simply a story, and it’d felt good to tell it to people who seemed to appreciate it. Nothing more.