A dangerous bargain

At dawn, the palace was nothing like the stories.

There were no cages in the courtyard, no bones beside the gates. Only roses, pale as winter, climbing the walls of a kingdom that should not have existed.

The prince waited at the far end of the hall. Between us lay a contract written in a language my hands somehow remembered.

“One season,” he said. “Stay until the first snow, and your village will be safe.”

I thought of the lantern still burning in my mother’s window. Then I picked up the pen.