“She comes!” The wood-colored spriggan bowed before the queen, spindly limbs trembling to be this close to her darkness.

“At last.” The queen’s smile was a blade, her eyes black chasms.

The spriggan shook like bare branches in the winter wind. He was the least of his clan, and fully expected to be seized in those pale, deadly hands, broken into kindling, and thrown on the violet bonfire flickering behind him, his screams mixing with the flames as his essence was consumed.

But the queen dismissed him with a gesture, beckoning instead to one of her gossamer-clad handmaidens.

“Greenbriar,” she said.

The faerie maiden bowed her head, hair like moonlight dipping over her face, and moved with willowy grace to stand before the queen. Rising, the Dark Queen took Greenbriar’s hand and pulled her close. The blackthorn dagger pulsed in the queen’s pale grasp, an absence of light, of hope.

With one swift move, the queen plunged the thorn into her handmaiden’s chest, stabbing her to the heart. Greenbriar let out a keening cry that rose up until the stars themselves shuddered. Shaped by the queen’s need, powered with fresh-spilled faerie blood, the Realm opened an inexorable path beneath the mortal girl’s feet.

Hollow and lifeless, Greenbriar’s body fell to the mute grasses, her pale hair spread out around her like snow. Goblins hastened to bear her away. The musicians struck up a dirge, and the queen tucked her deadly thorn back into her gown.

“Now,” she said in a voice hard as diamond, “we await our guest.”