The Thorn Bride

The thorn wall rose before him like a prayer gone septic.

Prince Garrett stood at the forest’s edge and studied the thing that had killed three men in as many months, killed them badly, killed them in ways that made the survivors who watched from a distance go mad or mute. Black wood twisted into geometries that hurt to follow, each branch splitting and splitting again until the division itself seemed violence, seemed refusal. Barbs longer than fingers curved inward, hooking nothing, waiting. The wood wept. Not sap, but something thicker, something that caught the last daylight and held it like a promise of infection.

Garrett steadied his breathing and hummed three notes under his breath, an old song his brother had taught him, and did not look away.

Three brothers had come before him. Not his brothers, thank God (his brother was six years dead, buried in the garden where they’d played as children, where Garrett had promised to be the hero Roland never got to be). Three brothers from the western kingdoms, sons of kings and dukes, each braver than the last. Their bodies hung in the thorns now, pulled inward, muscle and bone threaded through the briars until they became part of the barrier itself. Architecture made from the failed.

Garrett could see an arm, there, pale and mottled, fingers splayed in permanent reaching. The hand still wore a signet ring. Further up, a jaw hung open in a scream that had been cut off mid-breath, lower mandible resting in a cradle of black wood. A ribcage opened like praying hands, bones bleached white, and inside the cavity something moved. Something small. Pulsing.

The thorns had not killed them quickly. The thorns had made art of them.

“Right then,” Garrett said to the wall, because talking to himself (to the dead, to his brother’s memory) helped, always had. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He drew his sword. Roland’s sword, properly, the one their father had given Roland on his sixteenth birthday, the one Garrett had claimed after the fever took him. The blade caught the dying sun, clean and sharp. He had kept it that way for three weeks of travel, honing it each night by firelight, preparing for this moment, humming the old songs, pretending Roland was still alive to sing them with him.

Because the legend promised a princess, beautiful beyond measure, cursed to sleep until true love’s kiss could wake her. Because his kingdom expected a hero and Garrett had spent six years trying to become one. Because he had trained for this, bled for this, dreamed of this since childhood when the bards first sang of the Sleeping Beauty locked in her tower, trapped in a slumber that had lasted a hundred years while the world moved on without her.

Because someone had to try. And if not him, if not the brother who’d promised Roland he would make their family name mean something, then who?

Garrett studied the wall, searching for weakness. The thorns were uniform in their horror, seamless, woven tight enough that even light struggled to penetrate. But there, to the left of where the largest body hung (a knight, judging by the rusted pauldron fused to his shoulder), the briars seemed thinner. A breach, perhaps. Or the suggestion of one. A path that might be cut.

“There you are,” he whispered, and touched the first thorn with his blade.

It sang when the sword met it. High and crystalline, like a scream compressed into music, like a choir of sopranos reaching for the same impossible note. Then it bled.

Not red. Not blood as he knew it. Something clear and viscous that smoked when it hit the ground, that smelled of copper and rot and something sweeter, something that made his head swim if he breathed too deeply. Honey left too long in the sun. Flowers at a funeral. His mother’s perfume on the day they buried Roland. He stepped back, adjusted his grip, and cut again. The thorn parted with a sound like tearing cartilage. Like a lover’s sigh. Like meat pulled from bone. More of the clear fluid wept from the wound, and the whole wall shuddered with something that felt disturbingly close to pleasure.

Alive, then. Truly alive.

Garrett set his jaw and kept cutting, humming between his teeth, pretending this was normal, that walls didn’t breathe, that his brother wasn’t dead, that heroes won.

It took an hour. By the time he carved a gap wide enough to squeeze through, his arms burned with exhaustion and the blade was slick with the thorn-blood. The smell had grown stronger, almost intoxicating, sweet enough to coat the back of his throat like honey, like rot, like desire. His head felt light. His thoughts kept drifting to the princess, to her beauty (the legends said she was perfect, said men wept at the very description of her), to the moment he would wake her, would see her eyes open, would earn the grateful kiss of true love conquering all.

Focus. Roland’s voice in his head, the way it had been when they were boys and Garrett would drift off during sword lessons. Focus, little brother, or you’ll lose more than the match.

“I know,” Garrett muttered, and pushed through the breach.

Thorns scraped against his armor, catching, pulling, and for a moment he felt them tighten, felt the wall recognize him as food, as future decoration. Then he was through, stumbling into the courtyard, and behind him the breach sealed with a wet, organic sound. A door closing. A throat swallowing.

No going back.

Garrett turned to face the castle and felt his breath catch.

The courtyard was worse than he’d imagined. Everything gray, leached of color, as if the curse had drunk the world’s vitality and left only ash. The cobblestones were cracked and uneven, buckled by growths that pulsed faintly with their own wet light. The fountain in the center was dry, cracked, filled with something that might have been water once but had long since thickened into paste. Gray-green and viscous. Statues of saints and kings lined the approach to the castle proper, their faces eroded smooth, their hands reaching out in gestures that could have been blessing or warning.

But there was color. Just not the kind that belonged.

Purple-black growths clustered where wall met ground, pulsing with bioluminescence, breathing in rhythm with the wet sound that came from deeper in the castle. Veins of something red and fibrous spread across the cobblestones like roots, like capillaries, like the vascular system of a body turned inside out. The castle itself, looming three stories above him, was wrapped in them. Stone and flesh intermingling until it was impossible to say where architecture ended and organism began. The walls were sweating. The windows were dark, but not empty. Things moved behind them. Slow. Patient.

The silence was absolute. No birds. No wind. Just his own breathing (too loud, too fast) and the wet, rhythmic pulse of something beyond sight, something deep within the castle. A heartbeat, perhaps. Or breathing. Or both.

And beneath it all, filtering down from somewhere high above, the sound of singing.

A woman’s voice. High and pure. Wordless but beautiful. Mournful. It tugged at something in his chest, made him want to move forward, to climb, to reach her.

The princess. Singing in her sleep, calling out across the years of her imprisonment, waiting for someone brave enough to find her.

“I’m coming,” Garrett said to the air, to the song, to the curse. “I’m coming for you.”

He forced himself forward. The legend said the princess suffered, that she slept in torment, trapped by a curse born of jealousy and spite, waiting for someone brave enough to break through the thorns and wake her with true love’s kiss. He had come too far to falter now. Roland would have kept going. Roland would have been fearless.

The castle doors stood open. Not invitingly. Yawning was the better word. Like a mouth frozen mid-swallow. Like a throat waiting to receive. The wood was black with rot, swollen with moisture, and as Garrett approached he saw that it was covered in something slick, something that caught the fading light with an oily sheen. The growth pulsed. Breathing. The door was breathing.

Garrett hummed three notes (the old song, the one Roland loved) and stepped through.

The entrance hall had been grand, once. He could see the bones of it in the architecture, in the vaulted ceiling and the broad staircase that ascended into darkness at the far end. Tapestries hung on the walls, or what remained of them. Most had rotted into lace, and where they were intact, the images were wrong. Figures with too many limbs. Mouths opened wider than faces. Eyes in places eyes should not be. And in every scene, subtle but present, a woman’s face. Beautiful. Sleeping. Waiting.

The floor was slick with something organic, something that squelched wetly beneath his boots and released a smell of decay so profound it seemed to have texture, seemed to coat his tongue, seemed to settle in his lungs with every breath. Garrett breathed through his mouth and kept moving, kept humming, kept pretending he wasn’t terrified.

That was when the first hound came at him from the shadows.

It had been a dog, once. A hunting hound, something large and noble, something that had loved its master and slept by the fire and dreamed dog dreams of running. But the curse had remade it into a nightmare of elongated limbs and exposed muscle, skin peeled back to reveal the machinery beneath. Wet red meat and white bone and the silver flash of tendon. Its skull was stretched, jaw distended, teeth chattering against each other like castanets, like laughter, like screaming. Around its neck, impossibly, hung a collar. Leather, rotted almost to nothing, with a nameplate that read VICTOR in tarnished brass.

It moved wrong. Too many joints in the legs. Movements that bent in directions that defied anatomy, that made Garrett’s eyes hurt to follow.

But fast. God, it was fast.

The creature hit him before he could raise his sword, jaws snapping inches from his throat. Garrett twisted, felt something tear in his shoulder (not deep, not yet), and threw the thing off with a strength born of pure panic. It landed badly, all wrong angles and exposed bone, and came at him again.

This time Garrett was ready. He brought the blade down in a brutal arc that opened its side from shoulder to haunch, a cut so deep he felt the sword scrape bone. Blood sprayed. Red at first then darkening to something closer to black, thick as tar, and the smell of it was overwhelming. Sweet and rotten and wrong in ways that made his stomach clench.

The hound screamed. Not a dog’s cry but something higher, more human, more aware. It thrashed, trying to stand on legs that would no longer support it, and from its ruined throat came sounds that might have been words. Might have been please. Stop. Run.

Garrett ended it with a thrust through the base of the skull.

The silence that followed was worse than the fight.

He stood over the body, breathing hard, and felt a twist of guilt in his chest. The creature had been monstrous, yes. But it had also been a victim. Trapped in this place, twisted by the curse, suffering. He whispered a prayer for it (the same one he’d said over Roland’s grave) and moved on.

“Two more of you, then,” he said to the hall, because he’d counted three sets of paw prints in the filth. “Come on, then. Let’s have it.”

They came.

Two more hounds, each as horrible as the first, each still wearing the collars of their former lives. Names: DUCHESS and LORD, aristocratic names for hunting dogs, names that suggested a household that had loved them once. They attacked in tandem, coordinated, trying to flank him, and Garrett killed them both but not before DUCHESS got her teeth into his left arm, tearing through the leather and into the muscle beneath.

By the time the second fell, his sword arm was shaking and his armor was slicked with blood. His and theirs both. The bite on his arm burned, throbbed, bled more than he liked.

Garrett stopped to catch his breath beside what had once been a marble column. Now it was something else, something that seemed to breathe, stone shot through with veins of pulsing crimson, with fibrous growth that looked disturbingly like muscle tissue. The heartbeat sound was louder here, coming from deeper in the castle. Regular. Wet. Expectant.

He examined the hall more carefully, trying to understand. Heraldry hung on the walls, faded but still visible. A noble house, prosperous and proud. Goldenhall, perhaps, or Thornkeep. One of the great families from before the curse, before whatever had happened here had happened. What had the legend said? A jealous fairy, spurned at a christening, had cursed the infant princess to die on her sixteenth birthday. But another fairy had softened the curse, changed death to sleep, sleep that would last a hundred years or until true love’s kiss could wake her.

But looking at the decay, at the way the castle seemed to have become a living thing, at the way everything flowed upward toward the tower, Garrett wondered if there was more to it. If something had come from within, not without. If the doors had been locked not to keep invaders out, but to keep something in.

He shook the thought away. Speculation helped nothing. The princess needed saving. That was enough. That was all that mattered.

From above, the singing continued. Wordless still, but somehow closer, somehow more present. It made his head feel strange, made his thoughts slip sideways into territories that felt less like thinking and more like dreaming.

A sound drew his attention. Weeping. Soft and broken, coming from a corridor to his right. Human weeping. Or something that had been human once.

Garrett followed it, sword ready, humming the old song between his teeth for comfort, for courage, for Roland.

She had been a woman once. A handmaiden, perhaps, or a lady-in-waiting, someone young and pretty who’d worn silk and danced at feasts and dreamed of marriage and children. Now she was fused to the wall, flesh and stone melted together in a union that defied nature, that made Garrett’s gorge rise. Her arms, too many of them, reached out from the corruption in pitiful grasping motions. Fingers splayed. Nails broken and bloody. Her face was still visible, still human, twisted with anguish. Eyes wide and wet with tears that had been falling for decades, for centuries, for however long she’d been trapped here. Her mouth opened and closed, forming words he could almost hear.

“Please,” she whispered, and this time the voice was clear. Desperate. Human. “Please... don’t... go up... don’t go to her... please...”

Garrett stepped closer, pity warring with caution, with the knowledge that everything here was dangerous, was wrong. “I can help you,” he said, though he had no idea if it was true. “I’m going to break the curse. I’m going to save her. Save all of you.”

The woman’s eyes widened. Focused on him. And in them Garrett saw not gratitude but horror. Recognition. Terrible understanding.

“No,” she whispered. “Not save. Not curse. She is the curse. She is the trap. Please, please, don’t go up, don’t kiss her, she’ll eat you, she’ll EAT YOU LIKE SHE ATE US ALL.”

The words dissolved into shrieking, and her arms lashed out, no longer pitiful but violent, grasping at him with fingers that ended in bone spurs, trying to grab him, trying to hold him, trying to stop him from climbing.

Garrett jerked back, barely avoiding her grip. “I’m sorry,” he said, throat tight, and drove his sword into the only part of her that still looked human. Into her chest. Into what he hoped was her heart.

Mercy. It was mercy.

She went still. The arms fell limp. And from her ruined mouth came one last word, barely audible.

“Fool.”

Garrett stood there, breathing hard, trying to process what she’d said. She is the curse. She’ll eat you. The curse was madness, clearly. The corruption had twisted not just bodies but minds. The princess was the victim here, trapped in sleep while her castle decayed around her, while her servants became monsters. Of course they would be mad. Of course they would say terrible things.

He moved on. Had to. For Roland. For his family’s name. For the princess who waited above.

The pattern repeated. A guard, armor fused to flesh, wielding a halberd rusted black with age and blood. The fight was brutal, close-quarters in a narrow hallway where Garrett’s mobility counted for nothing. The guard was strong, impossibly so, and every blow rattled Garrett’s teeth in his skull, sent shock waves through his arms, through his wounded shoulder.

But this guard was different. He fought, yes, but he also tried to speak. Tried to warn.

“Turn back,” the guard rasped, voice wet and broken. “Turn back, boy. This is not rescue. This is feeding time. You are meat. You are MEAT.”

Garrett blocked another blow, riposted, found an opening. “You’re mad,” he said, and meant it, needed it to be true. “The curse has made you mad. I’m sorry.”

He drove his blade up under the helmet and into what remained of the man’s brain. The guard fell. Garrett fell with him, landing hard on his knees, gasping. Blood ran hot down his left side where the halberd had found the gap between breastplate and tasset, scoring a deep cut across his ribs. The wound was deeper than the one on his arm, deeper than he liked, and when he pressed his hand to it his palm came away slick and red.

Not fatal. Not yet. But painful. And bleeding.

Garrett tore a strip from his cloak and bound the wound as best he could, fingers shaking, humming the old song to keep the panic at bay. Then he forced himself to stand.

The grand staircase loomed ahead, ascending into shadow.

It was vast, spiraling upward into darkness, wide enough for ten men to walk abreast. The banisters were carved wood, ornate and beautiful, but as Garrett approached he saw that they had become something else. Ribs. Curved like ribs, yellowed like old bone, still attached to something, to a structure that pulsed wetly beneath the stone. Between them hung something that might have been membrane once but had dried to translucent parchment, stretched tight, and through it Garrett could see veins, could see the shadow of organs, could see the castle breathing.

The steps themselves were no longer stone. They had a texture, a give, that made Garrett think of skin stretched over muscle. Of flesh under pressure. Each step he took made a sound. Wet. Organic.

Like walking up a throat.

He did not want to climb these stairs.

He climbed them anyway, humming, always humming, keeping Roland’s memory close.

The smell grew stronger as he ascended. That same sickly sweetness he had first encountered in the thorn-blood, but richer now. Cloying. Overwhelming. It made his head swim, made his thoughts slip sideways into strange territories. He found himself thinking not of the battle ahead but of the princess. Of her beauty (the legends said she was perfect, said men wept). Of the softness of her lips. Of the way she would look at him when she woke. Of the gratitude in her eyes. Of the way she would kiss him and he would finally, finally be the hero Roland never got to be.

Focus, his brother’s voice whispered. Focus, little brother.

“I am focused,” Garrett muttered, but he wasn’t. Not really. The smell was in his head now, in his blood, making everything feel distant and dreamlike and perfect.

The sound of singing drifted down from above. Clearer now. A woman’s voice, high and pure, and this time he could almost make out words. Almost.

Come to me.

I’m waiting.

I’m hungry.

The princess. Singing in her sleep, calling to him. He would save her. He would.

The courtiers came at him from above.

They had been nobles once. Men and women of rank and refinement. People who wore silk and drank wine and made witty conversation at feasts. Now they were something else, something that made Garrett’s gorge rise, made his mind refuse to process what he was seeing. Three of them, fused together at the torso, flesh melted and reformed until they moved as a single grotesque unit. Six arms. Three heads, faces slack and empty, eyes milky white and blind. They wore the remnants of finery. Silk and brocade rotted to scraps, hanging from their shared body like funeral shrouds, like the clothing of corpses, like a wedding dress torn to pieces.

They shambled down the stairs toward him, moving with an eerie coordination, and from their three mouths came a sound that was definitely words. Definitely human. Definitely desperate.

“Don’t go up,” they moaned, all three voices layered, harmonizing in terrible unity. “Don’t go up. She’s not sleeping. She’s waiting. She’s WAITING. Turn back. Turn back. TURN BACK.”

One of their many arms reached out. Not to strike. To grasp his shoulder. To pull him DOWN, away from the summit, with a desperation that bordered on frenzy.

“Please,” one of the heads whispered, and the voice broke on the word. “Please. We were like you once. We were princes. We were heroes. We believed. And now look at us. LOOK AT US. Turn back while you still can.”

Garrett froze.

For a single, crystalline moment, he believed them.

He looked at their faces, at the humanity still visible beneath the corruption, and he understood. They weren’t attacking. They were begging. They were trying to save him. And if they were right, if the princess was the trap, if everything he’d been told was a lie, then Roland had died for nothing and Garrett had spent six years training for a suicide mission dressed as heroism and he was about to throw his life away for a monster that would eat him and add his armor to a pile and wait for the next fool to believe the legend.

He could turn back. Right now. He could fight his way back down the stairs, back through the horrors, back through the thorns. He could live. He could go home. He could give up.

But that would mean Roland died for nothing. That would mean admitting he wasn’t the hero he’d promised to be. That would mean failure.

And Garrett had not come this far, had not bled this much, had not killed these pitiful creatures, to turn back because they were mad with desperation and he was tired and scared.

The singing called to him. Wordless again, but beautiful. So beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” Garrett said, and raised his sword. “I’m sorry, but I have to try. For Roland. I have to try.”

The courtiers’ faces crumpled. All three at once. And in their eyes Garrett saw not anger but grief. Not hatred but pity.

“Then we’re sorry too,” they whispered.

The fight was chaos. The creature moved with unsettling grace despite their corruption. Arms lashed out from unexpected angles, grasping, pulling, trying desperately to drag him DOWN, to pull him away, to save him despite himself. One grabbed his ankle with terrible strength, pulling, and Garrett had to kick free, had to drive his blade into the central mass, had to feel it sink deep. Blood poured out. Black and thick as tar. The courtiers screamed, all three mouths at once, and in that scream Garrett heard words.

We tried.

Forgive us.

You’re next.

They collapsed. Garrett stepped over them, breathing hard, and kept climbing. Kept humming. Kept moving toward the singing that called him up, up, up.

By the time he reached the upper landing, he was bleeding from a dozen wounds. The cut on his ribs had reopened, soaking his left side in blood. His shoulder throbbed. His arm burned where the hound had bitten him. His sword arm trembled with fatigue.

But still he climbed. Still he hummed (the song was all that was left of Roland now). Still he moved toward the singing.

The singing was louder now. Closer. The words clear.

Come to me, my love.

I’m waiting for you.

I’m so hungry, my love.

So hungry.

The final guardian waited for him at the top of the stairs.

It had been human once. A guard, perhaps, or a knight charged with defending the tower. A protector. Now it was something else entirely. Huge. Easily eight feet tall. Body encased in plates of chitin that gleamed wetly in the dim light, that clicked when it moved, that looked sharp enough to cut. Human anatomy was still visible beneath the insect armor. Muscle and bone fused with carapace. But twisted. Elongated. Transformed into something that belonged in nightmares.

Its face was the worst part. Still human enough to recognize. Eyes wide and aware and desperate and sane. Mouth stretched around mandibles that clicked wetly as it moved, that wept clear fluid, that looked sharp as razors.

It stood between Garrett and the tower door, and when it saw him it made a sound that was absolutely, clearly, desperately words.

“Don’t go,” it said, and the voice was human. Educated. Noble. “Please, in God’s name, don’t go up there. She is not cursed. She is the curse. She is the trap. She is the PREDATOR. We were the castle’s people. She came here. She made this. She MADE US. We have tried to stop princes from reaching her for a hundred years and we fail every time and I am so tired of watching boys like you die. Please. PLEASE. Turn back.”

Garrett’s hands tightened on his sword. The words were clear. Were sane. Were impossible to misunderstand. But the smell was in his head, the singing was in his blood, and above all else he was so close. So close to being the hero Roland never got to be.

“You’re mad,” Garrett said, though his voice shook. “The curse made you mad. I’m sorry. I have to save her. I HAVE to.”

The creature’s eyes filled with tears. Human tears. “Then I have to stop you,” it said. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

It lunged.

The fight was brutal. The thing was strong, inhumanly so, and fast despite its size. It drove Garrett back, step by step, mandibles snapping inches from his face, claws raking across his armor, leaving gouges in the steel. Garrett blocked, parried, dodged, but it wasn’t enough. A blow caught him across the shoulder, chitin edge sharp as any blade, and he felt something tear deep in the muscle, felt warmth spread down his back.

He fell back, desperate, vision swimming, and saw his opening.

The landing was old. Rotted. Where the creature stood, the boards sagged under its weight, groaning, threatening to give. Garrett feinted left, drew it forward, and threw himself aside. The creature lunged, missed, and its weight came down hard on the weakest point.

The floor gave way.

The creature fell, crashing down through splintered wood and corruption into the darkness below. The sound of its impact was wet and final and somehow relieved.

Garrett lay on the landing, gasping, bleeding, staring up at the ceiling. His body screamed for rest. Every wound throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat. His vision swam at the edges, darkening, threatening to take him.

But the door was right there. Ten feet away. Ornate wood, carved with a scene from the legend itself: a princess sleeping in perfect beauty, a prince arriving on horseback, true love conquering all. The door handle gleamed gold, untarnished, perfect.

“Almost there, Roland,” Garrett whispered, and forced himself to stand. Forced himself to walk.

And as he walked, something strange happened.

The corruption stopped.

At the threshold of the tower, the flesh-walls and pulsing veins simply ended. Cut off as cleanly as if by a knife. Beyond, the tower was pristine. Stone walls, clean and smooth and gray. Torches burning in sconces, casting warm light, smelling of beeswax and honey. The air was different here. No longer thick with rot and sweetness. Just... clean. Normal. Safe.

Garrett stood at the threshold and felt reality tilt.

Had he imagined it all? The horrors below, the twisted creatures, the body horror that had assaulted his senses for what felt like hours? This was so normal. So untouched. So perfect. He looked down at himself. At the blood covering his armor, at the wounds that throbbed and bled. Still real. He looked back. The corruption was still there, pulsing wetly in the shadows, breathing, waiting. Still real.

But this tower. This pristine, perfect tower.

It felt wrong in a different way. Wrong because it was too right. Too clean. Too safe. As if the horror below had been a test, a filter, and now he had passed into somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that operated on different rules. Somewhere that didn’t care about the blood on his hands or the warnings he’d ignored or the truth that was becoming harder and harder to deny.

Somewhere that simply waited.

Garrett felt something in his chest that might have been doubt or might have been understanding, but the singing was so loud now, was coming from just beyond the door, was beautiful and mournful and hungry, and he was so close, so close, and he could not stop now, could not turn back now, because to stop would mean admitting that everything he’d done was wrong, that Roland had died for nothing, that he was not the hero he’d promised to be.

So he turned back to the door. Studied it. The carving was beautiful, detailed, almost loving in its execution. The princess’s face was serene, delicate, perfect. The prince’s expression was determined, heroic, exactly how Garrett felt (or wanted to feel, or needed to feel). The tower around them was whole and perfect and exactly as it should be.

The legend itself, rendered in wood. The story he’d come to complete.

Garrett’s hand found the handle. Gold, untarnished, warm to the touch. His blood left smears on its perfection, red against gold, real against ideal, and for a moment he felt ashamed. He should have been clean for this. Should have been whole. Should have been the perfect hero Roland deserved.

But he was here, and she was waiting, and that would have to be enough.

“For you, little brother,” he whispered, and opened the door.

The chamber beyond was perfect.

Afternoon light streamed through tall windows, golden and warm, though some distant part of Garrett’s mind noted that it should be night by now, that the sun had set hours ago, that this light was impossible. But it was here anyway. Illuminating a room that belonged in a dream. In a story. In every fantasy of rescue and romance Garrett had ever imagined.

The chamber was circular, spacious, beautiful. The walls were hung with tapestries of silver and blue, depicting scenes of courtly love. Knights and ladies. Happy endings. The floor was polished wood, gleaming, perfect. Fresh flowers stood in crystal vases on side tables. Roses and lilies, the kind that bloomed in summer, though it was autumn outside, though the flowers should be dead, though everything should be dead. Their perfume was gentle and sweet and made Garrett’s head swim in the most pleasant way.

And in the center of the chamber, on a bed of white silk and silver posts, sleeping, lay the princess.

She was beautiful.

Garrett had heard the legend all his life, had listened to bards describe her loveliness in songs and stories, had dreamed of her face in the way young men dream of glory and love and meaning. But nothing, nothing had prepared him for the reality.

She was young, perhaps nineteen or twenty. Hair the color of midnight spread across the pillow like spilled ink, like dark water, like the night sky before stars. Her skin was pale, flawless, smooth as porcelain or pearl, luminous in the golden light. Her face was serene in sleep, delicate features arranged in an expression of perfect peace. Of innocence. Of vulnerability that made Garrett’s heart clench with the need to protect her, to save her, to be her hero.

She wore a gown of white silk that seemed to glow in the afternoon light, that draped across her body with the kind of perfection that belonged in paintings, that suggested softness and warmth and everything good in the world. Her hands were folded across her chest, slender fingers intertwined, and on one finger gleamed a ring of silver and sapphire.

She was breathing. Softly. The gentle rise and fall of her chest the only movement in the stillness, the only sign that she was real, was alive, was waiting.

Garrett stood frozen in the doorway, suddenly aware of how he must look. Covered in blood and filth, wounded, exhausted, reeking of violence and death. And here she was. Untouched. Perfect. Trapped in sleep for a hundred years while the world moved on without her, while her castle decayed, while her people suffered.

He had done it. He had fought through the horrors, climbed the tower, reached her.

He was the hero of the legend.

Relief crashed over him so powerfully that his knees nearly buckled. It was real. It was all real. She was real. The creatures below had been mad, had been lying, had been trying to stop him from saving her because the curse had twisted them, had made them part of the trap. But he had won. He had WON.

“I’m here,” Garrett said to the silence, to the sleeping princess, to Roland’s memory. “I’m here. I’m going to save you.”

He crossed the chamber slowly, reverently, leaving bloody footprints on the perfect floor. A trail. A history. A record of the price he’d paid to reach her. He reached the bed and knelt beside it, suddenly nervous, suddenly aware that this was the moment everything came down to, the moment the story became real.

His hand, shaking with exhaustion and emotion and blood loss, reached out to touch the white silk bed-curtain. The fabric was soft, impossibly so. Like touching a cloud. Like touching a dream. For a moment he simply held it, marveling at the texture, at the contrast between this beauty and the horror below, at the fact that something so perfect could exist in a place so corrupted.

He looked down at the princess. At her face, so close now he could count her eyelashes (dark, long, perfect), could see the faint blue veins beneath her pale skin, could see the way her lips were slightly parted in sleep. She was warm. He could feel the heat of her even from here, could smell her perfume beneath the flowers. Roses and something else. Something sweeter. Something that made him want to lean closer, want to breathe deeper, want to close the distance between them.

His hand moved to her face, hesitant, gentle, and brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

Her skin was soft. Warm. Real.

“I’m here,” he whispered again. “I’m going to wake you. I’m going to break the curse. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

She did not respond. Did not stir. But that was the nature of the curse, wasn’t it? She would sleep until the kiss. True love’s kiss, the legends said, though Garrett wondered how love could be true when they had never met, when he knew nothing about her except her beauty, when she knew nothing about him except that he’d come for her.

But magic did not follow the rules of sense. Magic followed its own logic. And the legend said a kiss would wake her. So he would kiss her. And she would wake. And everything would be worth it.

For Roland. For his family. For her.

Garrett leaned in.

The kiss was gentle at first. Chaste. A whisper of contact. His lips barely brushing hers. Soft and warm and perfect. For a moment nothing happened. She lay still. He waited.

And then her lips moved. Just slightly. Responding. Kissing back.

It’s working, Garrett thought, and relief flooded through him again, stronger now, overwhelming. The curse was breaking. She was waking. He had done it. He had DONE it.

He kissed her again, deeper now, less chaste, feeling her lips part slightly, feeling her breath against his mouth. Warm. Sweet. Like honey. The moment stretched. Extended. Became something more than a simple kiss, became intimate in a way that made his heart race, made his wounds fade into insignificance, made everything else disappear until there was only this, only her, only the moment of rescue and romance and hero earning his reward.

Her lips moved again. Pressed against his. Parted further.

And then something else pressed against his mouth.

Something hard.

Something sharp.

Something wrong.

Garrett pulled back slightly, confused, and the princess opened her eyes.

For a heartbeat, for a single frozen moment of crystalline clarity, he thought they were normal. Brown, perhaps, or blue. Beautiful. Human.

Then his mind caught up to what his eyes were seeing.

They were not human eyes.

They were compound eyes. Insect eyes. Thousands upon thousands of facets, black and gleaming and utterly alien, reflecting his face back at him in a hundred broken images, in a hundred versions of himself. All trapped. All doomed. All realizing the truth too late.

Her face was the same. Still beautiful. Still perfect. The bone structure was still delicate. The skin was still flawless. The lips were still soft. But the eyes were wrong. Were so fundamentally, impossibly, horrifyingly wrong that his mind refused to process them, refused to accept them, refused to believe what they meant.

Garrett tried to pull back further. Tried to move. Tried to breathe. Tried to scream.

But her hands shot up before he could do any of those things. Before he could move. Before he could think. Too fast. Impossibly fast. Faster than anything human could move. And they seized his face, his head, fingers digging into his cheeks, into his jaw, into his temples, holding him with a strength that was not human, had never been human, could never be human.

He was trapped. Completely. Absolutely. And he understood, in that moment of frozen horror before the pain began, that he had been trapped since the moment he touched the thorns, since the moment he believed the legend, since the moment he decided to be a hero.

She smiled at him.

Her mouth opened. Lips pulling back. Not far. Not too far. Just enough to show teeth.

White, perfect, human teeth.

And Garrett felt a flicker of hope, desperate and irrational, that maybe he was wrong, maybe the eyes were some trick of the curse, maybe she was still human, maybe he could still save her, maybe—

Then her mouth opened wider.

Too wide.

Much too wide.

The human teeth were a facade. A lure. A lie. Behind them something else unfolded, emerged, revealed itself with the terrible patience of a predator that knew its prey was already caught. Mandibles. Chitin and blade-edges, black and gleaming and sharp. Hidden behind her perfect lips. Hidden inside her perfect mouth. And they opened like a flower blooming, like a trap springing, like jaws that had been waiting a hundred years for this exact moment.

Garrett tried to scream but her hand covered his mouth, muffled the sound, muffled everything. Her compound eyes stared at him with insect indifference. With hunger. With patience. With something that might have been satisfaction or might have been nothing at all because she was not human and had never been human and all the emotions he saw in her perfect face were just more lies.

“Shhh,” she whispered, and her voice was beautiful. Was the voice from the singing. Was everything he’d imagined. Gentle. Almost loving. “Shhh. It’s all right. You did so well. You fought so bravely. You’re perfect. You’re exactly what I needed.”

Then the mandibles closed around his face.

Pain.

Pain like nothing Garrett had ever imagined, like nothing his body had been built to withstand. The mandibles dug in, cut in, peeling back skin and muscle with surgical precision, with methodical efficiency, with the practiced ease of something that had done this before, had done this many times, had done this to prince after prince after prince for a hundred years.

She was eating him. Eating his face. Eating his flesh. And she was fast, so fast, impossibly strong, and he could feel every second of it. Could feel his cheekbone splinter under the pressure of her bite. Could feel his blood pour hot down his throat, tasting of copper and salt and terror. Could feel her tongue (not human, segmented, wrong, WRONG) slide across the exposed bone of his skull, tasting him, savoring him.

Garrett thrashed. Grabbed at her arms with all his remaining strength, trying to break free, but his strength was nothing compared to hers. Was a child’s strength against a predator’s. Was prey in the jaws of something that had evolved over eons to kill exactly like this. His sword was gone, dropped when he knelt, lying on the perfect floor just inches away but might as well have been miles. His hands found her face, her shoulders, tried to push her away, but she did not budge. Did not hesitate. Did not stop.

Her mouth worked. Tearing. Chewing. The sound was wet and terrible. Cartilage crunching. Flesh tearing. Bone splintering. And through it all her compound eyes stared at him with insect indifference, with hunger, with the cold satisfaction of a predator feeding.

He could taste his own blood. Could smell his own meat cooking in the acids of her saliva, could feel the warmth of it spreading across what remained of his face, could feel pieces of himself coming away, disappearing into her throat. His right eye was gone. He could feel the socket, empty and screaming, could feel her tongue exploring the cavity, scraping the last bits of tissue from the bone.

And in those seconds of perfect, crystalline, agonizing clarity before shock or blood loss could steal his consciousness, Garrett understood everything.

The legend was a lie. Had always been a lie. Had been crafted, been spread, been maintained as a lure. A fishing hook baited with heroism and romance and glory. And he had swallowed it whole.

The castle was not cursed. It was a trap. A feeding ground. A killing floor. An abattoir dressed as a fairy tale.

The creatures were not monsters. They had been the castle’s people. The staff and guards and nobles who’d lived here when she arrived, when she made this place her hunting ground. They had been corrupted by proximity to her, by years or decades or centuries of trying to stop her, of being forced to serve her web, of retaining just enough humanity to try warning the prey that came, to try pulling them back, to try saving them from the same fate.

And he had killed them all. Had killed every soul that tried to save him. Had slaughtered his only hope because he believed the story, because he needed to be the hero, because Roland was dead and someone had to matter.

The princess, the beautiful sleeping princess, was not a victim.

She was a predator. Ancient. Patient. Perfect. And he was not the first. Was not special. Was not the hero. Was just meat. Just another meal in a cycle that had no end.

Garrett’s vision began to darken at the edges. The pain was too much, too complete, too absolute. His mind started to retreat from it, started to slip away into the darkness that promised peace, promised an end to the agony, promised reunion with Roland.

But before the darkness could take him, before shock could steal him away, he felt her pause. Felt her mandibles stop their terrible work. Felt her pull back just slightly, just enough to look at him with those compound eyes that reflected his ruined face in a thousand broken pieces.

She looked at him. Through him. Into him.

And she spoke.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Voice gentle. Almost loving. Almost kind. “You tasted like hope. Like courage. Like everything beautiful in the world. Like a promise kept to a dead brother. Thank you for coming to me. Thank you for believing. Thank you for being exactly what you needed to be.”

She tilted her head, studying him with those alien eyes.

“They all taste different, you know. The princes. The heroes. Some taste like ambition. Some taste like desperation. Some taste like nothing at all, just hollow men chasing hollow glory. But you? You tasted like love. Like grief. Like a boy trying to keep a promise to someone who could never know if he kept it.”

She leaned closer, mandibles clicking softly.

“That’s the sweetest taste of all.”

Then she resumed feeding.

This time, Garrett was still conscious for it. Still aware. Still feeling every piece of himself being torn away, being chewed, being swallowed. He felt his jaw come loose. Felt his tongue severed. Felt his nose crushed between her mandibles. Felt her teeth scrape against his skull, working methodically, efficiently, taking her time, savoring every bite.

He tried to scream but had no mouth left to scream with. Tried to pray but had no voice left to pray with. Tried to think of Roland but his mind was fragmenting, dissolving, slipping away piece by piece along with his flesh.

The last thing Garrett felt, before the darkness finally took him, was her tongue sliding across the exposed bone of his forehead, tasting the last of him, cleaning the plate.

Then nothing.

Then peace.

Then Roland, waiting in the dark, asking why it took so long.

The chamber was silent except for the wet sounds of consumption.

Efficient. Methodical. Unhurried.

When she was done, when there was nothing left of Prince Garrett but cooling meat and shattered bone, but blood on white silk and silver, the princess rose from the bed with fluid grace.

Blood covered her. Soaked her white gown. Painted her perfect face. Dripped from her mandibles. Coated her hands. But she was still beautiful. Still perfect. The blood only made her more so, in the same way that a mantis is beautiful, in the same way that a spider is beautiful, in the way that any predator is beautiful when it is doing what it was made to do.

She crossed the chamber to a corner Garrett had not seen, had not noticed in his focus on her, in his focus on being the hero. Armor lay piled there. Dozens of sets. Hundreds, perhaps, stacked in a heap that reached nearly to the ceiling, that represented a century of hunting, a century of princes who believed in legends, a century of meals.

Some were ancient, rusted through, barely recognizable, from kingdoms that no longer existed, from eras so old the languages they spoke had died. Others were newer, still gleaming in places, still bearing the heraldry of families who waited for sons who would never return. Different styles, different eras, different kingdoms. Each set had belonged to a prince, once. To a hero. To a young man who believed in stories, who believed in romance, who believed that courage and skill could conquer evil.

The princess added Garrett’s armor to the pile with care, almost reverence. She arranged it neatly, respectfully, the way a collector might arrange a prized specimen. The way a hunter might mount a trophy. The way a predator might mark another successful hunt.

Scratch marks covered the inside of the door. Deep gouges in the wood, made by fingers that had realized the truth too late, that had tried to escape, that had clawed at the wood until nails broke and fingers bled and hope died. Some of the marks were old, worn smooth by time. Some were newer. Fresh. Garrett’s, from the moments before his strength failed and she pulled him back to the bed to finish feeding.

The flowers in the vases were not flowers. They were egg cases, silk-wrapped and pulsing faintly with developing life, with the next generation of whatever she was, of whatever she had always been. Soon they would hatch. Soon they would need to feed. Soon they would need to find their own castles, their own legends, their own hunting grounds.

The afternoon light was not sunlight. It was something else, some bioluminescent glow produced by organs Garrett had never seen, by biology that shouldn’t exist, by evolution’s answer to the question of how to make prey feel safe. How to make the trap look like paradise.

The princess returned to her bed. Arranged herself in the sleeping pose, hands folded, expression serene, every detail perfect. The blood began to fade from her skin, absorbed or dissipated by whatever mechanism allowed her to maintain her disguise, to reset the trap, to wait for the next hero. Within minutes she was pristine again. Perfect again. Sleeping again.

Beautiful.

She closed her eyes, compound lenses hidden behind human lids, human illusion restored, and settled into her centuries-old wait.

The legend would spread again. It always did.

Three months later, in a kingdom two hundred miles to the east, a merchant returned from travels near the cursed castle.

He had seen it from a distance, he said, through the autumn mist. Had seen the thorn wall, the castle rising behind it, had seen what looked like a figure moving in an upper window. Beautiful, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure from that distance. A woman, perhaps, with dark hair. Waiting for someone.

The story spread through the taverns, through the markets, through the courtyards where young men gathered to talk of adventure and glory. A merchant had seen her. The princess. Still alive. Still trapped. Still waiting.

The legend evolved, as legends do. The merchant’s glimpse became a sighting. The sighting became a confirmation. The confirmation became a quest. And young men, brave and capable and hungry for meaning, began to dream of thorns and towers and true love’s kiss.

In the castle of the eastern kingdom, Prince Julian sat in his father’s hall and listened to a bard sing of wonder and tragedy.

Of a castle wrapped in thorns. Of a princess sleeping for a hundred years. Of the brave heroes who had tried and failed to wake her. Of a curse that could only be broken by true love.

The hall listened in rapt silence. Women wept. Men leaned forward. Children stared wide-eyed. When the song ended, Julian stood, nineteen years old and strong and trained for war, his hand on the sword at his hip.

His brother’s sword. The one they’d given him after Thomas died of the plague. The one he’d sworn to use for something that mattered.

“I will go,” he said, his voice ringing with conviction, with youth, with everything Garrett had felt. “I will be the one to break the curse. I will save her.”

The hall erupted in cheers. His father embraced him, pride evident in his eyes. His mother wept, but smiled through her tears, knowing her son was brave, knowing he would succeed where others had failed.

Three days later, Julian rode out at dawn, accompanied by six of his best knights, by a priest to bless the journey, by a bard to record his triumph for the ages. The kingdom watched him go, hope and admiration in their hearts, certain that this prince, this hero, would be the one to finally break the curse.

The thorns would part for him, as they always did.

The castle would welcome him, as it always did.

The creatures would try to stop him, and he would kill them bravely, heroically, certain he was fighting evil.

And in her tower, in her perfect chamber, surrounded by afternoon light that was not afternoon and flowers that were not flowers, the princess dreamed.

She dreamed of footsteps on the stairs.

Of blood on her lips.

Of the legend, spreading, calling, luring.

Of a sword’s hum in the darkness (she had heard it, Garrett’s old song, and filed it away among all the other quirks and habits of all the other heroes she’d consumed).

The legend was hungry.

And she was patient.

She had all the time in the world.

She was perfect.

And the princes would keep coming.

They always came.

The End

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And they all fucking lived happily ever after, right? Not here. That’s not how this story goes. I have a tendency to twist and corrupt cherished memories. You should bail out now while you still can. Because I’ve got plenty more of these, and it only gets worse from here.

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