Deep in the Bavarian woods, where the faerie realm touches on the human world lies Schloss Mondschein. Owned by a corrupted human family, the castle is the playground of the Fae. The human staff are their toys.
Servant's daughter Andromeda Arendt h...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Lurking in the darkness was second nature to Andromeda, so finding a hideout spot for the night wasn't too difficult. She curled up like a weasel in the opening under a tree root in one of the side tunnels of the belly ... and then instead of the sleep she intended, she bawled her eyes out.
She didn't understand how she could be so angry at someone and at the same time, miss them too ... ma, pa, Marian ... North. They had all failed her.
Marian and North deserved each other, and though the idea of putting them in the same sentence without her being involved stung like a bee-sting in the fold of one's knee, she only needed to add the memory of Marian's twaddling about their 'cause' to spit on the whole thing.
Ma and pa were a different story ... she had to get them out. What else was left for her?
When Sasha and her breakfast train buzzed by, Andromeda pinched some bread from the last cart without drawing the faerie's attention. Easy like a breeze for the phantom of Mondschein. She had to force herself to chew and swallow it down though. Was this the same bread as the one she had eaten over the past few days? The taste was bland and the texture so-so.
The last bite wasn't swallowed when the tunnel came abuzz with servant faeries commuting to their workstations in the upper parts of the tree. Andromeda drew up her hood and slipped into the stream as if she was one of them. When they arrived at the upward shaft, she flicked a bit of faerie dust around her person and whizzed—with a bump and a hiccup—to the upper part of the hawthorn. She got off at flight deck level and found a hiding place in the storage area.
She watched them leave ... exuberantly dressed Fae in gilded sleds and carriages, shifter dogs, wolves, and deer with the glow of the morning light reflecting on the brilliant, crisp snow as their majestic backdrop. And finally ... the High King, looking splendid and almighty in a layered fur ensemble on an immaculate white Pegasus. In his wake, his Fae guards threw a buzzing protection shield around the hawthorn, and then all was quiet.
The few Fae that had stayed behind were easy to circumvent but stepping into the mirrored hall was challenging beyond compare. She needed to see her parents but at the same time dreaded the sight.
The hall was vacated. Instead of the guards outside of the throneroom, a thick cluster of vines and thorny flowers had completely overgrown the doors. Yet, there was no silence, no peace. Dozens of trapped humans sang their misery to each other in the enchanted mirrors.
"Ma? Pa?"
The music went on as if she hadn't spoken, as if she wasn't there. Their gazes turned awkwardly upward, her parents couldn't see her. Would they even be able to hear her?
"Ma? Pa? Please?" She banged her fists against the mirror. "Please."
Her mother was only inches away. "Ma? It's me!"
Her mother kept singing, her song so eerily, Andromeda came to doubt her mother was still actually in there. Could this be a trick? An illusion? Was she looking at her mother's ghost?
