My eyes wandered to the singing woman. I watched her lips barely move, vapour spilling from her mouth. “It won’t work on me. I’m not greedy,” I objected, but the queen’s palms hitting the table caused me to jump.

“Yes, you are,” she said, and my vision filled with bright light bursting around a rectangle. My breathing raced as the rectangle shifted, the creaking of an opening door filling my ears. Through the opening I saw a familiar hallway—and Grandma.

My grandmother grabbed the wall for support, tilting a framed portrait of Sylvia and Quinn. She dropped her cane, her hand flying over her chest.

“Grandma!” I screamed, but the door slammed shut. “Wait, please let me go through—”

Tears fell on my fingers as the door swung back open, slicing my words. A boy appeared; his shaggy blond hair was drenched from the pounding rain where he sat against a brick wall. He was alone until a man encompassed by dark, curling smoke approached and knelt down. The boy lifted his head, revealing the face of my brother, but on a skinny, poorly dressed body I hardly recognized. The man murmured and held something toward Winston. It looked like a needle, and my chest tightened. As soon as Winston accepted it, the darkness around the man spread into ribbons like serpents, all rounding on where Winston was curled into a ball.

“Is this a real door?” I cried. “If it’s real, please let me go through…”

The entire scene vanished, leaving me back before the queen. The singing woman’s song became a screeching set of nails on metal, and I cringed.

There was no ripping of fabric in the heavens, no light bursting over my path, no paint-like colours swimming in the air, or white birds with rainbow eyes. But I dug deep for an old memory of being tempted once before in a dark forest, and to a being of music and light that had found me then…

“Stop.” My threat halted the last note on the singing woman’s tongue. “Or I’ll start singing back.” My lashes lifted, my eyes narrowed, my orb heated beneath my shirt.

She looked at me like I’d turned into a bear. I raised my trembling hands, gold and silver words forming across my flesh down to my fingertips. I could have cried. I wanted to shout at the words, “Where were you?!”

I stood, coming around the stump, eyeing the queen.

Suddenly, the queen grabbed her dagger and sliced. My hand flashed up and ice tore from the ground, a cold handle latching around my wrist as the shards constructed a shield. The dagger slammed into it, and she gaped.

I did too.

Our eyes met.