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O nce upon a time, in a world full of magic and secrets, there was a beautiful but lonely princess with hair as dark as the night, eyes as bright as the noontime sky, and skin as light as the moon. It was said that she was magical, that she was descended from an ancient fairy people. Rumors swirled that she could talk with the heavens and that flowers sprouted wherever she walked.

But she wasn’t always lonely, and she wasn’t always a princess. She lived with her widowed mother and her sister on the edge of a small farming village. She loved her sister dearly, and though they shared the same dark hair and ivory-colored skin, her sister’s eyes were the shade of emeralds by day and rubies by night—a most peculiar effect that the townspeople scorned. As the sisters grew, so, too, did rumors of the young girls’ strangeness. To keep their innocence for as long as she could, their mother moved them into an old, abandoned mill on the outskirts of town.

The widow worked long hours in the fields, harvesting flaxseed to sell the grain at the market; all the while, the girls spent their days building homes for the forest fairies among the standing stones, picking wild berries, and weaving golden crowns from the fields of drying flax. The princess would read to her sister stories full of romances, of noble knights who saved damsels and their passionate declarations of love. Sheltered from the town gossip, the two were none the wiser to their unconventional upbringing.

One day, they found a book in their mother’s belongings. The spine was tattered, with lettering that had long since faded away. Inside were stories about standing stones of reverence and power, places where magic waited patiently in the shadows, vast lands filled with humans who could change into any creature they wanted, and demigods who walked the earth. The sisters stayed up late into the night, reciting magical spells, dreaming of handsome princes and brave knights, while their lips and fingers turned purple from the wild berries they ate.

Blissful childhood days turned into months, the months into years, until one day, the princess was no longer a girl. Word spread quickly throughout the towns and villages that she had blossomed into an agreeable young woman. Soon, men from kingdoms near and far were knocking on the wooden door of the mill, asking for her hand in marriage. It wasn’t long until a handsome prince swept in and promised she could have whatever her heart desired, so long as he had her hand in marriage. She agreed on the conditions that she could visit her sister and mother, and that a handsome dowry would be left for them in her stead. But no dowry would ever reach her family, and the princess didn’t know of the jealous nature of the prince she was to marry.

The prince and princess’s wedding was the talk of the year, and no expense was spared for the prince’s beautiful new bride. Exotic flowers were imported, and there was food the likes of which the new princess had never heard. Nobles far and wide attended the event, and they complimented the prince on choosing such an exquisite wife. Presents and jewels, dresses and cloaks, and priceless heirlooms spilled out of the rooms set aside for the new couple to live in after the wedding.

When it was over, the new princess asked to visit her family, but the prince had become so besotted with her beauty that jealousy coursed through his veins. He refused to let his new wife out of his sight. Despite her pleading, he would always reply, “It would be unseemly for my wife to visit such a hovel.”

The jealous prince forbade her from leaving the castle and traveling to her childhood home, and he placed guards at every corner of the castle to watch her. Despair soon filled her days, and the prince, vowing to cheer up his new bride, showered her with gold, priceless jewels, and hand-stitched dresses that shone like the stars in the sky. And though she looked like the fairy princesses she had read about, she knew no tales would be written of her.

Months passed with still no heir or love born between the newlyweds. All the princess wanted was to see her mother and sister once more, but she was a prisoner in her new home, held against her will, dreaming of life outside of the castle. Slowly, her dreams faded, and the joy she had once felt in a heart that was all too eager for love dried up.

Soon, too, the land shriveled, much as her heart had. A terrible blight swept across it, sickening the crops and spreading disease throughout the kingdom. Once bustling, vibrant trade routes turned quiet and solemn, and markets that had been full of life now whistled as the winds swept through empty stalls. The lucky few left alive packed their things to move on to greener pastures, happily forgetting the pain they left behind.

Soon, the affliction leached up from the land and into the souls of those who had stayed behind. The sickness escaped no one, and eventually, the royal family fell ill. As the bells rang to notify the land that the castle had succumbed to a lifeless fate, lightning lit the sky in veins of silver.

And so it was that night the princess fled on the back of a horse.

While the people mourned the loss of their prince, a strange evil brewed in the darkness beyond the castle walls. It stalked the nights on a horse with eyes as red as smoldering coal and a mane as black as tar. The Ominous One sought out those close to death, offering them a reprieve from their pain in exchange for part of their soul.

The dead and dying lay in the bones of old homes while the princess pushed her horse farther and faster under lightning that webbed across pitch-black skies. All was darkness in these forgotten towns. No fires burned in the fireplaces, no lights shone in windows, no one stirred inside. Only the Ominous One moved within the ghostly halls, seeking, searching, yearning. But, time and again, the Ominous One would leave a town feeling hollow and unsatisfied—the souls too far gone for his saving. And, time and again, his anger—and his appetite—would grow.

The princess rode past the devastated fields of crops, past the derelict houses, and past the decaying bodies, driven by her only desire: to make it home. And as she passed the last house on the outskirts of the town she used to call home, her horses’ hooves thundering against the cobblestone road, the Ominous One stepped from underneath the eaves.

Inside the old mill, with its leaky roof and creaking stairs, herbs drying from the rafters, and broken shutters barely able to constrain the storm to the outside, the mother cradled the sister, bedridden and delirious from a fever that had lasted for weeks.

‘I have tried everything,’ the mother whispered, tears streaming down her face. ‘But she is so weak.’

The princess fell to her knees at the foot of her sister’s bed, cursing the stars above and the hellfire below for not being brave enough to leave the castle sooner. As her curses turned to tears, the princess knew she would do anything to keep her sister alive. She climbed into the bed, refusing the siren call of sleep until, at last, she could no longer keep her eyes open.

Soon, the house grew quiet, every living creature within its crumbling walls tucking in for the night. All that was left awake was the shifting wind, beating on the shutters, ushering in a new era of despair as the Ominous One closed in on the tiny, run-down old mill.

The Ominous One, eager for the living creatures that were so close, kept watch from the edge of the dying forest. It wasn’t until the sun crested the mountains in the distance that the Ominous One knocked on the door with a request and a black bag jingling with coins.

‘You will not enter, you will never own us,’ the mother said, refusing to take what the Ominous One offered. Her bleary-eyed stare was firm as the sigils on the wood of the door glimmered with defiance.

The Ominous One hissed, unused to meeting such resistance. ‘You have until the sun sets. I will return for her then.’

The tar-black horse whinnied as the Ominous One mounted, and it turned the horse toward the protection of the trees. They blended into the long shadows that formed before daylight struck.

‘Come,’ the mother whispered, waking the sleeping princess carefully. ‘We must talk.’

And so they did.

That morning, as the rain fell from the sky, so, too, did words from the widow’s mouth. She told her daughter that the fairy stories the princess had read as a child had all been real, lessons and incantations and spells crafted carefully by their own mother, and her mother before her, and her mother before her, should a time like this one come to pass.

So the mother and the princess gathered dried herbs into a satchel, along with a lantern and a blade, and carried the sister with the emerald eyes down the stairs and to the stone clearing.

Sheets of rain poured forth from the sky, but the standing stones shone in the distance, giants guarding a deeper secret from the mortals in this world.

The Ominous One stood at the old mill’s doorstep, while the princess laid her sister down in the center of the stone ring.

The princess drew the blade across her palm, while the sigils on the old mill’s door singed the exposed skin of the Ominous One.

The Ominous One assaulted the windows and the doors of the old mill, trying to get past the protective sigils, while the princess called upon the old magic with her mother’s careful incantations.

The princess screamed as she ripped open the sky before her and pulled forth the damp earth from an unknown land beyond, while the Ominous One roared into the downpour, unwilling to accept defeat.

The Ominous One yanked on the reins of the black steed, while the princess hefted her sister’s arm over her shoulder.

The princess squeezed the emerald-eyed sister and pressed a final kiss on her cheek before shoving her through the rift, while the Ominous One kicked the red-eyed horse into a gallop so their souls could finally be his.

The world snapped shut. Thunder roared overhead. Wind wailed through the dead trees. The standing stones shook. The princess fell to her knees, and the mother looked on as hundreds of small white flowers sprouted wherever the princess’s tears fell, the purity of her pain transmuting the soaked soil. The old magic had returned, and the Ominous One had seen it all.

And as the Ominous One crested the hill, having shuffled through the shifting sludge, the whipping winds, and the lethal lightning strikes, the magic within the circle broke. The rain never ceased, even when the land rumbled in agony as the stones began to shatter.

The mother would not lose another child. So as rocks flew in the air, she dragged the princess from the circle. One rock struck the mother in the back of the head, and she tumbled down the hill, taking the princess with her.

The princess slipped from her mother’s grasp and slid down the muddy embankment, landing at the base of an ancient willow tree. Its roots curled around her, protecting the princess from the flying debris as the old magic of the earth finished wiggling its way into the princess’s grief-stricken heart.

The storm cleared, and the forest was still. The aftermath of the stones’ self-destruction was not yet known when the Ominous One knelt beside the princess.

It is said that after the dead of winter, white snowdrops are the princess’s tears, and the keening sound you hear in the middle of the night before a storm strikes is the princess mourning the fate of her beloved sister.

And so it was that the lonely princess, who had once known the amber warmth of a mother’s love, who had once known the honeyed laughter of a sister while they played in the golden flax fields, became one with the darkness.