Kiss of a Rose

It had been 500 Years since the Great War, and Midgard had never quite recovered from the violence that scorched the Earth. Nox and her brother Mattheo have never known anything over than the poverty stricken world they call their home. Hunting and foraging to survive in a village within one of the few forests left on Midgard, the siblings have all heard the stories of the War. Tales of horror, violence and bloodshed between the two Fae courts who had used Midgard as their battlefield, destroying it in the process before disappearing back to their own world.

The fear had never left that the Fae would return, to reclaim Midgard, or to fight their next battle. The Fae mostly left Midgard alone, too busy with the dealings in Alheim to bother with the mortal realm. There were Fae attacks all the time, across Midgard. A silly mortal who'd tried to make a deal here and there, a Fae who'd gotten too hungry in Alheim and had crossed over to find an easy lunch, a Fae who'd stolen the pretty girl in town. So the fear remained and the stories continued.

Nox had never seen a Fae until the night she cut down the tree. She'd never wanted to, filled with the horrors of what the Fae were capable of. She knew the tales, of the good fae and the bad fae, the Seelie and Unseelie Courts and the war that had separated them. Not much else was known about the Fae Courts, other than that. No one who went to the fae realm lived to tell about it, until now.