“Run!” the lisping girl screamed.

The Children of Hamlin ran away from the woman in the veil, the way their ancestors wished their children had run away from the Pied Piper centuries ago. Although they hadn’t met the woman in the veil before, they suddenly felt they knew her. Her face was engraved in their deepest nightmares. They felt in their hearts that they had inherited her evil image from their parent’s nightmares, and their grandparent’s nightmares, but they didn’t know how this was possible.  They were running away from a great evil who pretended to be friends with Charmwill Glimmer.

Alone in the dark, the Queen of Sorrow pulled off her veil like a devil pulling off his mask. She wiped her dress off as if she’d become dirty sitting around the Children of Hamlin, and cursed them under her breath.

Her pumpkin coach arrived, and a short hunched man with a silver tooth hurried to open the door for her.

“My Magnificent Majesty,” the hunched man pulled off his hat. He wore white gloves and used a crooked cane to hold himself up against the weight of his hunched back, which resembled a sack full of dead children. Igor the Magnificent was the Queen’s driver.

“The best thing about you, Igor, is that your back is arched. It’s like you’re cursed to show your respects forever,” the Queen of Sorrow said mockingly. “I wish every one else working for me was like that.”

“Don’t worry, Magnificent Majesty,” Igor said. “They will all bow for you eventually,” he opened the door, and the Queen stepped up into her coach.

Inside the coach, sat her favorite mirror.

“How did it go, my Queen?” Bloody Mary asked. “Did you find out about the clue to the Anderson Mirror?”

“No, Mary,” the Queen took off her gloves, finger by finger. “But I learned a couple of other things that worry me.”

“And what would that be, Majesty?”

“Charmwill, although dead, communicates with the Children of Hamlin through some kind of candy that makes them dream of things he never revealed to them in his previous stories,” Carmilla said.

“I know this worries you, my Queen,” Bloody Mary said. “But you chopped off his head and buried him in the Sands of Time. We’ve got more important work to do now. Don’t you agree?”

“I sure hope so, Mary,” Carmilla said. “The other thing is that Charmwill never told them who he really is. I wonder why.”

“That’s interesting,” Bloody Mary said. “Charmwill was full of tricks.”

“I’m sure I’ll find why he chose not to tell them his True Name soon,” Carmilla said. “But let’s get back to the important stuff; I need to find the clue to the Anderson Mirror. I have to get my hands on its power.”

“Why don’t we start with the Huntsman? You have his Fleece now,” Bloody Mary said, laughing satisfyingly as the Queen turned her head to look at her. “Maybe he could lead us to it.”

“I already did. I sent him on a mission,” Carmilla smiled proudly, wrapping Loki’s red Fleece around her fingers. “And could you please look the other way, Mary? You’re disgusting.”

1

The Phoenix

The door of the Schloss sprang open, followed by a gust of a sinister wind spiraling in the hallways.

Snow White, sleeping in her coffin, opened her weary eyes. Her heart tightened in a strange way as if some invisible force wrapped a velvet rope around it and started squeezing. Something dreadful was coming her way.

The first recognizable voice was Fable screaming outside the castle.

“Don’t—” Fable shouted.

The sinister and howling wind ate the rest of Fable’s words like a cookie monster, protecting whatever evil was approaching Snow White.

“Wake up, Shew,” the wind laughed. Snow White wondered if she had just imagined the wind talk to her. “It’s time to…” the wind laughed again.

“Stop!” Axel’s voice splintered like shattered glass across the wind’s wings.

Axel and Fable. I remember them. They’re Loki’s friends.

Snow White had been waiting for Loki all day. He’d went to Candy House to meet up with the Crumblewood’s foster mother. He was supposed to return to the Schloss before sunset.  It was midnight.

Snow White heard someone enter the castle downstairs. Whoever it was, he or she were breathing heavily, smelling of uncanny evil—a scent Snow White had worn on her soul for years before Loki’s kiss.

I need to gather my strength and get out of the coffin.

Snow White felt weary, unable to step out of it. She needed to feed but had stopped herself all through the day, waiting for Loki. Although Loki’s kiss had unchained her from the castle’s curse, she still had to feed. Being a Dhampir didn’t mean she wasn’t partially a vampire. She was the granddaughter of Night Sorrow himself and the Chosen One whether she liked it or not. Saints and monks couldn’t take care of the evil that lurked in this world anymore, and spitting in the face of evil wasn’t a good girl’s quest. She had to be one of them, partially evil, and strong enough to face their darkness.

Snow White still had a lot to learn about who she was. Quenching her thirst without hurting people was one of her priorities.

As the intruder neared, she felt even weaker. If only someone had taught her how to use her Dhampir powers. She had been imprisoned in the Schloss for a hundred years.

“Prophecies suck,” she mumbled, grabbing the coffin’s edge. She gathered her strength and climbed out of it, limping her way through as if there was mud on the floor, she made it toward the foggy window. The window was closer than the door, and she was hoping she could see who was causing Fable and Axel to shout with such distress.

Before she could wipe the window with her hand, her foggy reflection sneered back at her. She saw herself in her white dress, the red ribbon in her hair, and her fangs drawn out.

It was a defensive reaction to the threat climbing up the stairs, she thought. How was she ever going to learn how to control herself? She felt the thirst for blood, but not enough anger to strike. If someone approached her, could she feed on them? Even if she had the strength to do it, she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to kill anymore. She had finally found Loki, and she planned to live happily ever after with him.

It’s all because of Loki’s kiss, her darker half whispered. Love is a terrible thing. It makes people vulnerable. Are you prepared to be vulnerable while the world counts on you to save them from Night Sorrow and Carmilla?

Snow White found herself raising her hands and touching her lips.

‘If you don’t believe me, ask your lips,’ Loki had answered her when she questioned if their love had been a dream.

The memory sent an electrical surge through her body, remembering what they had both been through to earn that kiss. Who would have thought that Loki, the dark Huntsman, who had slaughtered more people than he could remember, could be saved?

Where are you Loki? What’s taking you so long?

“Loki!” Fable yelled.

Loki is here? Where? What is going on?

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Loki,” Axel and Fable yelled outside. “You’re not yourself!”

Snow White wiped the fog from the window. She couldn’t see Loki outside, but she saw Axel and Fable running into the Schloss, still yelling at the evil approaching her.

What’s going on?

The evil, protected by the laughing wind, had already reached the hallway. Snow White could feel it. She could hear it taking confident strides toward her room. Whoever, or whatever, Axel and Fable were screaming at was at her door.

“Please, no,” Fable said again, climbing the stairs. “Don’t kill her!”

Is that Loki coming to my room? To kill me? Again?

The evil scent was Loki’s. She knew it well.

She wondered how it was even possible: Loki not remembering who he was. Snow White had been afraid to remind him or he surely would have killed her in the Dreamworld.