Heather drew the long thorns out of her wrist and palm. Her skin swelled around their venom, sealing the pinprick holes shut so no blood flowed. She rubbed at the sore nodules and felt the sting of the poison spread. Pinching the long barbs between her fingers, she pressed the wide ends of the thorns into the spaces where her teeth had been—tasted the copper tang of blood and the earthy dust of the vine, felt a cold wetness flow down her chin and knew it ran red. She’d need fangs to get Estella back.

She reached deep into the bramble and caressed the vines, collecting the barbs in her arm, drawing them out and filling her mouth with them till her tongue bristled and the vines hung bare.

With her swollen arm, she pushed past the seeping ropes. The milk of their broken fibers soothed her punctures. As the swelling eased, the trapped droplets of blood sprang free and dried in hard beads, like studded armor.

The sweating flower fumed sweetness at the center of the bramble.

Heather knelt at the tongue of one petal and ran her finger through its amber juices. She rubbed the nectar over her eyelids. Numbness spread through her face.

She waited.

When the air above the flower danced with heat and its perfume drove the breath from her lungs, a wet rattle sounded from the flower’s center. The stamen wavered, scattering a red cloud.

Heather leapt onto the flower and thrust her hands deep into its sticky core. She hauled out her catch, pulling free a writhing pink form which she clamped in her jaw, trapping it in her nest of thorny teeth.

It stilled.

“Never in all of its blooming has this flower been reaped. Tell me, Thorn-Tongue, why do you pull me from my home?”

Heather clenched her jaw.

“I can’t help you if you won’t answer my questions, girl.”

Heather growled, but did not release her bite.

“I see,” said the creature. “But speaking of—how are your eyes?” He waved a hand with gnarled knuckles through a floating cloud of pollen. He twisted in her grip, peering back at her over her nose.

His face was pinched. A tangle of brow hedges hung over yellow eyes that sat deep along a hooked nose. “Just fine, I see, and shining with my honey.” He relaxed and hung slack in her mouth.

Heather lapped at the oily, sweet blood that coated her tongue and ran in rivulets through the thorns.

“I suppose we wait. Do you mind if I sing to pass the hours?”

Heather’s heart quickened. She did not know the creature would sing. She did not know this trick, or its counter. Her rapid breath stirred the bristles over the creature’s laughing eyes.