SELINA

When you live in the opulent palace of Kyrene, it’s easy to forget what the real world out there looks like. In the palace, surrounded by my extended family of princes and princesses, dressed in bejeweled gowns and slippers embroidered with gems, having servants attend to my every need, I forget that most of the people in the world live hand to mouth.

Reality hits me right in the face as I hurry through the streets of the town, a hood pulled low over my face, the stench of sewage and trash mingling with that of unwashed bodies and animal manure. I’ve exchanged my silken slippers for leather bottines and my satin gowns for a woolen travel dress and cloak, and I still feel exposed to the wary glances of the passersby and the cold.

I never realized how warm the palace is kept for our comfort, so that we can stroll around its long corridors and lounge in the parlors dressed in fine fabrics that do little to protect us from the elements.

It’s what being a princess means, I suppose. Being kept apart, protected and cherished like a crown jewel. I used to love it, soak in the attention, send the servants to bring me my favorite snacks, my favorite flowers.

Not only a princess but one of the youngest in the palace, used to my cousins coddling me as I grew up. Playing with me.

Though, now I’m all grown up and the games have become reality.

See, flowers are my weakness. I have pots on my window sill, I ask for bouquets to be brought to me every day to arrange in vases.

But flowers are what got me in trouble in the first place, and that’s the least of it… because everything has changed.

Here is my confession. I did something really bad. A few weeks ago, I was in the haunted woods with my cousin Milhelmina. Our cousin Lily dared us to pick flowers there and I of course was all for it. I had heard say that rare flowers grow in the haunted woods—Fae flowers and goblin roses and though the tales say you’re not supposed to pick any, I wanted at least to see them.

Here is my confession. I did something really bad. A few weeks ago, I was in the haunted woods with my cousin Milhelmina. Our cousin Lily dared us to pick flowers there and I of course was all for it. I had heard say that rare flowers grow in the haunted woods—Fae flowers and goblin roses and though the tales say you’re not supposed to pick any, I wanted at least to see them.

Nothing wrong with looking, right?

That’s what I thought, too, but Milhelmina—Mina for friends… She was struck by a Fae disease. She started coughing blood and fading away. It happened almost instantly. By the time we were back from the woods, she was bed-ridden, and all the physicians the Crown called to examine her said the same.

There is no cure from Fae-shot.

I wasn’t struck down and I still don’t know why. After all, I was the one who picked that one flower, while Mina had only looked around. Had she picked flowers while I wasn’t looking? It’s possible.

Point is, I haven’t seen Mina in months. I’ve looked for her in the palace but can’t find her. Nobody seems to know her whereabouts. Someone told me she was taken away in the hopes of finding a cure. Others told me they think she died. I’ve mourned her. I’ve cried.

And as for me… I don’t feel like a crown jewel anymore. I don’t feel like the child princess I used to be. Something has shifted in me. Something has broken. Is this what it feels like, being an adult, facing the results of your actions and swallowing bitterness?

But that’s not all. Apart from the guilt I feel for surviving unscathed, I left something behind in the woods and I need it back. Urgently. My honor depends on it.

It’s something a suitor gave me as a token of his affections.

A prince.

A token I dropped in my hurry to leave that day. I must have dropped it. I’ve looked everywhere else I’ve been, and I sort of remember it snagging on a branch.

I should have made sure I had it as we ran back to the palace.

I should have stayed in the palace and not gone traipsing through the haunted woods.

I should havebeena jewel in the crown of Kyrene—quietly shining, modestly clad, encased in gold and silver, pretty and inoffensive, ready for any suitor to pluck and marry.

Instead, I’m going back to the woods where I messed up in the first place.

Being an adult means that when you act without thinking, you pay for the consequences…

The haunted woods are not located far from the capital. Once you exit the city gates and cross the stone bridge over the river Everos, you can see the wooded expanse on your left, a dark patch on the land, hiding a lake and the ruins of an old manor.

Beyond the river, the streets are made mostly of dirt and the houses are more sparse and humble, made of mudbricks and wood rather than stone. Fields and woods extend in every direction, and hills fringe the horizon, dark against the distant snow-capped peaks of blue mountains.

Haunted woods cover big parts of the kingdom. The Fae battlefields where the last battles of the Great War were fought are only a day or two away, if you ride your horse hard. Some say that no other kingdom has as many gates to the land of Faerie as Kyrene.

The land of Faerie sank under when the War ended, becoming another world parallel to our own, in the event we call the Sundering. Some say Kyrene is the kingdom closer to the center of the world, where the world pillar juts up, piercing the sky, the hinge around which the world turns.

Who knows for sure…

All I know is that the haunted woods of the Silver Mirror Lake are right ahead and that’s where I’m heading. Keeping my head low, my hood drawn low over my face, I fly down the road, glad there’s no cart or carriage around to stop and ask me where I’m going or who I am.

I should have taken a footman with me, I think, my bottines hitting pure dirt as I leave the old road and deviate into the tree line. I had considered it, for safety reasons—anyone taking a good look at my clothes or my face might recognize me or at least guess I come from a rich place and rob me, or worse. I’ve heard tales of girls being ravished off the road by lawless men and bandits.

But my mission is a sensitive one and servants like to gossip. Here I’m trying to retrieve the pendant my suitor gave me, not add fuel the any fire by having everyone know I’ve been to the haunted woods.

Not only will I be considered stupid but also amoral and looking for trouble. The Fae are known for their wiles and sexual appetite. It is said they like to lure any maiden or young man crossing their path deep in the woods, bespell them and arouse an unnatural lust in them. Many a girl has found herself with child after such an encounter, though to be fair, the tales often don’t quite clarify whether the man was Fae or human.

One shouldn’t listen to all the tales, but how to tell truth and lie apart? After all, Mina got sick.

I still feel bad for not believing it could happen until I saw her wilt with my own two eyes. But by then it was too late to undo the harm. Can’t reverse time and its outcome.

The trees are few and far between at first, the outliers, guards of the darkness lurking ahead. I brush by them, throwing my hood back as I venture under the canopy where the light hardly penetrates. Whispers follow me, birds flutter somewhere out of sight. My bottines thump dully on mossy stones and squelch in muddy earth.

The lake is close. The Silver Mirror, they call it. In the past, it was feared that it was a gate to Faerie, but since the King of Kyrene ordered a net of iron to be laid on the bottom of the lake two years ago, the appearances of the Fae have lessened and it is said the gate is now closed.

Still, I tread carefully and quietly, glancing around as I move toward the lake. There may be fewer Faeries but they are still here. I have my undergarments on inside out, for extra protection, and an iron bracelet on my wrist. I hope it will be enough to keep them away.

That day with my cousins we saw them. Small, dark sprites with long ears and tails, some of them with goat legs and fur. Lesser Faeries. Just as likely to give a human a disease and a curse as any Greater Fae. They seem to infest our world. It’s as if they reproduce like bunnies, these Lesser Fae, five sprouting where one was spotted.

But no sinister laughter sounds behind me. No songs or strange melodies. So far nothing. It all looks quiet.

The lake lies just ahead. That’s where I’d bent to pick a blue flower deep inside some brambles and had felt the tug on my pendant. Somewhere nearby, I’m sure. The cluster of weeping willows I can see seems familiar. I can almost hear Mina’s laughter, Lily’s hushed words. I can see us running from the cackling creatures that had leaped after us, chasing us away, trying to grab us.

One of them had leaped on Mina’s back. I’m not even sure she saw or felt it. He’d wrapped his hands around her neck.

But we’d escaped.

Ihad escaped. It looks like Mina’s life stayed in the woods. Later she said that she had returned and danced with the Faeries. Maybe that had been the catalyst? I don’t know.

What I do know is that I miss her. My vision blurs as I stop on the lakeshore, my hand resting on the trunk of a pin oak. One has to keep moving forward, right? Not remain still, caught in the past.

Which is why I need to find my pendant and go. Prince Iason, my suitor, seems like a nice young man. He’s coming to visit with his family soon and I have to be seen wearing his pendant when he does.

I can’t mess this up, too. Finding a nice and suitable noble isn’t easy, and as a princess, I have few goals other than finding the right prince to marry. Reading romances about dashing knights and damsels in distress hardly counts as an activity befitting a princess, neither is gardening and flower arrangement. Acceptable activities, perhaps, once one is married off, though the organization of balls and parties is more the norm, as is raising children.