She meant to destroy the mirror, to shatter it into a thousand pieces. It would have been safer to destroy all temptation of trading the princess's life for her own.

He wanted to stay, her heart whispered against the agony of self-inflicted isolation.

She had been powerful enough to send him away, but she could not cut the last thread of hope that he might return, that she might see him again. The longing, the regret, they burned in her eye, echoed in her chest.

Go to him, each heartbeat sang.

Leave Otherworld behind? The last masterpieces of the Dreamweaver hung from the rafters. In its repairs, the cottage bore the subtle touches of Faolan's lingering thoughtfulness. Her few bright childhood memories touched the world with golden nostalgia. These last weeks had bloomed with more happiness than Siofra had held in years.

She wondered if Caorthann had shared this dilemma.

The chance to survive in an unfamiliar world or the certainty of peace, surrounded by happy memories.

"I won't break the curse," Siofra rasped at her stubborn heart. Though that temptation still lingered, she forced the words from her lips. "The cost is too high."

Go for forgiveness, then. For love.

"No! If he knew the truth, how could he forgive me?" she argued, pacing the cottage in a stilted circle. It pained her to limp from wall to wall, but Siofra was too restless to tolerate idleness. The dull thunk of her heavy wooden leg countered the frantic melody of the pulse in her ears.

The crooked leg mirrored her gnarled hands, the horrible claw-like fingers, the spindly branches from her chest and shoulders. Considering her actions, could Faolan still see beyond the curse? Could he forgive such a monstrous creature?

How will you know if you don't try?

The circuit through the cottage brought her before the age-flecked mirror. Nearly consumed by the inevitable growth of the rowan-curse, the sharp heaviness of tears crept into her throat.

"I'm afraid," she whispered to the creature on the other side of the glass. Fear of the unknown, of unrequited love, of isolation, of regret. The truth of it seared. It turned smoke solid, heavy and cold as iron.

Her heart had no reply.

A broken moan ripped from her throat as she turned from her reflection. Her single eye burned with the predestined hopelessness, the frustration of her position, the shame of cowardice.

Turning to resume the punishing circles, Siofra's gaze fell upon the loom, the carefully folded fabric next to it. She moved toward it, arranged her wooden claws to pull its velvety comfort to her last piece of human face.

The work had been slow, but Siofra had finished the stardust weave before her last fingers also succumbed to the creeping petrification. The last rows were her sloppiest weaving, but they were done. She had completed it. For the gift of a name, she finished the three magical weavings.

Bring him the stardust, her heart sighed over the fear and shame.

Melancholy battled the hopeful pulse of the weaving, the stubborn pull of her feelings.

Barely louder than the silent insistence of heart, Siofra breathed, "What if he doesn't love me back?"

Love is built on risks.

It was not her heart that answered, but the memory of Faolan in each shimmering thread of the starlit weave. Filled with resolve, both fragile and unyielding, Siofra clenched her teeth.

"I'll go," she told herself, looking toward the silvery portal to the human realm.

"I'll try." She pulled the fabric to her breast.

"I'll tell him everything," she promised to her gruesome reflection.

And then I'll face what is to come.

With a deep breath, the quiet strength of the stardust near to her heart, Siofra gritted her teeth, closed her eye, and stepped through the mirror.

"Siofra?"

It was not the voice she ached to hear.

"Princess?" the weaver croaked.

The weaver expected to see the crooked slats Faolan described, to smell the earthiness of hay and horses. Instead of a weather-worn stable, Siofra found herself in a room unlike anything she'd ever seen. Sturdy stone walls, sumptuous bedding, a roaring fire. And in the middle of it, a tired but relieved princess whose dirty boots had tracked circles into the floor.

"Oh, Siofra!" she cried. "Faolan is gone!"

Gone? The word seemed to ring around the weaver with a strange echo. The impossibility of it made her repeat it, made her clutch the stardust tighter.

"He's been taken!" Taken seemed even more unlikely than gone.

"What do you mean taken?" she rasped, hollow. Her thoughts felt sluggish and simple in the shock.

"By a figure with a lantern that looked just like one of your wisp-charms. I tried to follow! I ran and ran into the darkness, to the edge of the forest."

Mind quickening, Siofra examined the princess. She wore eyes rimmed red with worry and bore scrapes and scratches along her cheeks. Instead of the hollow shock and dread that the weaver felt sprouting in her own chest, like an angry sun, illuminated by the roaring fire behind her, the princess radiated fierceness and determination.

For a moment, only the steady crackle of the hearth filled the silence. Siofra swayed on her feet. Which faerie would risk venturing so far into the human realm? Who had the power to spirit away a person without trickery or guile?

"She didn't want Faolan," Siofra whispered weakly.

The princess stared at Siofra with such intensity, the words continued to flow despite her shame to share the truth. First a trickle, then the fury of new snowmelt. The words flowed from Siofra's hoarse throat.

"She wanted you, princess. The Winter Queen. The one who cursed me. She takes humans for her court near the time of the Solstice, when the veil is thin. She came that day in the cottage, when I forced you through the mirror.

"She—she offered to undo my curse if I brought you to her. I was so glad you did not return. It made it impossible to betray you. I did not think she would leave Otherworld to look for you."

The princess frowned. There was no censure there, and yet apprehension uncoiled within the weaver's center. It threatened to break through her flimsy veil of control. This room of stone and iron, its human-ness threatened to suffocate her.

"Why would she take Faolan?" the princess asked calmly. As if she swallowed down her worry and fear, the future human queen's voice adopted a firmness that invited no argument. As Siofra's emotion vibrated—an angry swarm spiraling within her—the princess rose into fiery purpose. In the firelight, the hair sprung from her braid seemed to curl into an auburn halo around her head.

Though she grasped at the threads holding it together, Siofra's heady mix of fear and worry and hate finally shattered through her tenuous control.

"The same reason they want moonbeams and stardust! The same reason they steal children and weave curses! She wants what she cannot have!" Siofra shouted, panic cutting into her throat.

If the brittle emotion of Siofra's words surprised the princess, it did not show on her sculpted face. In the angle of her mouth, the softened fire of her eyes, contemplation and sympathy surfaced.

"How long have you loved him?"

New panic threatened to overwhelm her, her stiff wooden leg supported her trembling body from collapsing. Admitting to her fear, stepping through to the human realm, expecting the pain of spurned love—how had these things changed so swiftly to deeper terrors?

Siofra's heart hammered.

"I'm sorry," she said, unable to meet the deep, knowing violet of the princess's eyes.

What must she think? Did she pity the love of such an unfortunate creature? Did the princess loathe her for it?

"Why would you apologize?" the princess asked, moving to place a gentle hand over Siofra's, the wooden claws curled into the fabric. The weaver could not feel the warmth of skin against the numb bark, but the comfort seeped into her.

"He's not mine to love, princess," Siofra whispered, hesitantly meeting her gaze. "I sent him away."

Siofra paused only briefly before adding, "This is yours. Stardust. The last weave."

Steeling her heart, bracing for pain, she thrust the fabric towards the princess. In the princess's castle, loving Faolan had to be obscene, offensive. Clinging to the stardust, desperate for whisper-soft strength, felt just as indecent. But each thread had been spun from his hands. They had sat together, sharing stories and secrets with each new row on the loom. The surrender of the stardust was akin to carving out a part of her soul. Siofra hoped the princess might have the mercy to take it swiftly.

Understanding flickered behind those unflinching indigo eyes. The unexpected sympathy somehow cut deeper than the inevitable loss.

"He's not mine, Siofra," she answered gently. Her smooth, thin fingers traced the edge of the fabric.

As it was with the unearthly quality of dreamwoven fabrics, the princess's face rippled with wonder, her fierceness tempered. Her eyes swam for a moment, as if lost in the bittersweet song of a far away memory. Those perfect fingers tightened for a heartbeat around the starlit weave, but then the princess released it. She shook her lovely head.

"I don't need it anymore," she smiled, wiping away the unshed tears. "I want you to keep it."

"But the curse," Siofra protested. A sliver of her resolve had stemmed from the promise of breaking one curse.

"I think there might be worse things than curses," the princess replied, pressing the fabric back to Siofra's chest. "And I think you might need this more than me. Call it queenly intuition."

The stifled sob in Siofra's chest erupted into a strangled laugh. It was small and fragile, but despite the harshness of her throat, it almost rang sweetly. Like phoenix song or the breath of spring, a new warmth rose from despair.

As the brief shock of joy faded, Siofra held the weave tight for one last time. The princess's selflessness, her confidence, was inspiring, but she was mistaken. Curses could not be ignored. They started small, a fleck of ashy bark over the heart or a nonsensical demand, but they grew and consumed and destroyed. Siofra would not let her fall into the same trap. She could part with her last threads of Faolan for this. Soon she would not need them.

The princess was too quick, too surprising, for Siofra to interject.

"We need a plan," she said, determination lighting her stormy eyes. "A plan to rescue Faolan. I was debating going to Otherworld, but I wasn't sure if moving the mirror would affect where I ended up. Since you're here, lead the way, Siofra. Where is the Winter Queen?"

Set in the fire's glow and in the blaze of her confidence, Siofra almost let the passion overwhelm sense.

"It's too late," Siofra breathed, her heart cracking within her chest. "The Solstice will soon be upon us and he will be bound to her for eternity."

"I will not let her have him without trying! I will fight for him! Why won't you?" she growled, her words full of intoxicating passion. Aglow in the firelight, the princess held herself like a wild warrior queen, a lioness. It was tempting to fall into her words, to imagine victory.

But words could not change the truth.

"I am afraid!" Siofra confessed.

"Of course you're afraid! I'm afraid too. That can't stop us, Siofra. We have to try."

Desperate, Siofra appealed to reason. "You can't go, princess. It's too dangerous."

Siofra prayed she would see the dilemma, that she would see the promise of betrayal. Siofra might resist trading a life for her own, but she worried that there was nothing she wouldn't do to save Faolan from the Winter Queen's court. Otherworld was dangerous, but love was dangerous too.

"Saoirse," the princess said firmly. "My name is Saoirse. You will not betray me."

The weaver's heart dropped at the temptation, at the trust. Siofra could not be certain that the princess—Saoirse—knew what power she offered. Once in Otherworld, with a single word, Siofra could command her to walk straight into the reaching claws of the Winter Queen. She could command Saoirse to smile while laying her soul on a faerie altar.

"I know you'll do what's right, Siofra," she continued. Her tone lost the sharp edge of commanding inflection. It softened to something vulnerable, to something as smooth and cool and comforting as stardust.

Nodding, Siofra swallowed and decided.

"Wait until I signal that it's safe," she breathed, holding Saoirse's gaze until the princess nodded.

She wound her branch-like arms into the fabric, desperate for any strength and comfort she might glean from its threads. Princess Saoirse's elegant mirror, so much grander than her own, seemed to promise nothing but misery and hardship in her final days.

Love is built on risks.

Siofra repeated Faolan's words—a silent prayer—as she stepped through the glass and into the innocuous interior of her cottage. The hearth still popped with the occasional ember. Winter sunlight was only just leaving the sky. The cheerful colors of the fabrics, the spools and spindles of threads, looked wrong in the dying light.

The weaver turned around to push her hand back through, to pull Saoirse into Otherworld with her. In its glassy surface, Siofra stared at barren branches, the thick ashen bark, the sharp hands. A monster.

She raised her hand, and it sent a ripple of silver shimmers through the bolt of fabric she cradled in her arms. She met the reflection of her single black eye, the edge of the curse, her waning crescent of human face.

Instead of pressing her stiff fingers to the glass, Siofra hooked them around the wooden frame. With a mighty heave, she pulled the worn mirror to the ground. Silver and glass shattered around her in a cloud of shards, each piece reflecting glimpses of human and monster.

She knew she had made the right decision. She had done the right thing. She would face the unknown alone. 

Word count: 31,211