The landscape is black with ash, the ruins of a city spread out around me, obscured by sizzling clouds of smoke. I can't breathe without my lungs screaming in protest. The smell of death is overwhelming. Yet I walk forward, undeterred.
Only one tower remains standing, glinting like polished gold, its blue fingers reaching recklessly into the empty sky. At the very top, the queen rests in her glass coffin, the most beautiful woman in all the land, trapped in an endless slumber while her kingdom burns.
The monster circles the tower, a massive beast of searing flame and dark feathers, long body arched predatorily as it digs its talons into bones and rubble. It has its torn and broken wings half-raised as though it still believes it might fly, if it only tries hard enough.
The dragon-like creature swings its neck in my direction, revealing the face of a man, human lips pulled back in a snarl. "HEY. YOU! What do you want?" it snaps at me.
My grip tightens on the hilt of my silver dagger. I step closer. "I know who you are," I tell the beast.
"If you think you do," it says in a gravelly whisper, "you're wrong." Flames lick across the surface of its body. It crouches before me, and in its blue eyes I see a wild, hopeless sort of pain. The kind of pain that fills oceans.
"I know what you're here for," I say. "And I can help you."
It starts to laugh, a sound that builds like cracking thunder. "What could you possibly do to help me? You are no one."
"I am a ghost," I say. "There is no place that I can't go. I will slip into that tower and bring her down to you."
The beast is silent. Its claws scratch against the debris at our feet. A soft wind moans through the sharp remains of a once great city.
"And what would you want from me, in return?" the dragon asks, its voice a low, aching thrum.
I take another step towards the towering creature and raise a crystalline knife, the weapon glowing like a tiny sliver of the moon. "The boy you stole. Give me his heart."
The dragon roars, rearing onto its back legs-
And I'm woken by a shower of dirt falling from the earthen roof of the cave and landing on my face, silty and slightly wet. Something is scritching and skittering right above my head. I jolt upright and yelp when the top of my skull whacks into a low-hanging root.
"Ow!" I mutter a curse, rubbing my head.
I hear a squirrelly cackling and look up to see a small fae creature hanging there, beady black eyes staring at me. In the darkness I can just make out a sort of bulbous humanoid body and long, pointy-nosed face. "Pretty girl," it chitters, reaching a frog-like hand towards my hair.
I duck away from it. "Go away!" I hiss. "Ugh. Can't you see I was trying to sleep?"
It's been difficult, sleeping. I'm not used to lying on the hard ground, tucked against the rocky walls of a cave. Someone is always moving about, messing with the low-lit campfire or coming back from their shift watching the perimeter. Even when my companions are quiet, the forest itself is loud. Birds, insects, the howls of distant wolves. Something is out there making noise at all hours. And now, this thing. One of the recent arrivals to our hide-out. Somehow, these small woodland fae keep finding us, and once they do it's impossible to get rid of them. They seem particularly attached to me, which makes it that much harder to get any sort of peace.
Aisling lifts her head from the crumpled jacket she's using as a makeshift pillow and squints over at me in the dim light. "You alright, kid?" she mumbles.
