Thorns & Twilight

Chapter 3: My Mother Sold My Soul Before I Could Walk

“I hope the alarm doesn’t go off.”

I said it out loud to no one and smiled at the gold trees above me, like I’d completely lost it.

I was sitting on the ground.

Soft, dark earth under my hands. A purple sky above me. Gold leaves made a chiming sound, even with no wind.

This was the same forest I’d been dreaming about since I was seven. Exactly the same, and really beautiful.

I pulled my knees to my chest and looked around, feeling quiet and happy. Like I’d finally caught the dream I’d been chasing for years.

The trees chimed back softly.

I took a slow breath and let it out.

“Okay,” I whispered to the forest. “I’ll take it. Just don’t let the alarm go off this time.”

The forest didn’t answer.

I sat there smiling for about thirty seconds.

Then I looked down at my hands.

Dark dirt was packed under my nails.

I pressed two fingers into the earth. It was soft and kept the shape after I pulled my hand back.

I looked down at my feet.

They were really dirty. Soil was packed between my toes, the kind you only get from walking on real ground for a long time.

I looked at my star pyjamas. They were damp at the knees.

I looked up at the sky.

Then at the trees.

Then back at the sky again.

“This is not a dream,” I said.

My voice sounded small in the quiet gold forest.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket with shaky hands. Turn the screen on.

No signal.

I opened my notes app and typed: Real ground. Dirty feet. Purple sky. Gold trees. No signal. No mirror. Not a dream. Figure out what to do.

I stared at those last words for a long time.

Then I stood up slowly and turned in a circle, looking for the mirror. For the dark frame. For the shop. For any way back to something that made sense.

But there was just forest. Everywhere. Endless, gold, and real under my bare feet.

The smile was gone now.

I heard a branch c***k right behind me. It was close.

I froze.

Another branch snapped to the right. Then I heard footsteps, slow and careful, coming from different directions.

They weren’t in a hurry. They knew where they were going, and they didn’t care if I heard them coming.

I turned around slowly.

Three figures stepped out from the trees and stopped.

Tall, wearing dark armor that caught the gold light strangely. Their faces were sharp and perfect, the kind of perfect that didn’t look human. Their eyes were pale. Their faces showed nothing.

They looked at me like I was something they’d been sent to collect, and they’d found me right where they expected.

The one in the middle looked me up and down.

From my face to my star pyjamas to my dirty bare feet, and back to my face.

“Human,” he said. His voice had an accent I’d never heard. Old. Older than any language I knew.

“You’re trespassing in the Twilight Court. You will come with us.”

I looked at the three of them.

At the endless forest behind me.

At my feet.

“I’m in my pyjamas,” I said.

He blinked once. “You will come with us.”

“Where?”

“The Twilight Court.”

“And if I don’t?”

The one on the right shifted slightly. His hand moved toward something at his side. I decided not to look at it.

“Okay,” I said. “Lead the way.”

The forest opened to gates.

The gates led into a courtyard.

The courtyard opened to a palace of dark stone and living vines, huge and ancient, against the purple sky. It was so beautiful, it made me go quiet for a second.

Fae moved through the courtyard.

Every one of them stopped and stared when I walked in.

Tall. Sharp-faced. Wearing colors I didn’t have names for. Looking at me like I was the most interesting thing that had happened all day.

I stood up straight.

I kept my face blank.

I’d spent nineteen years walking into rooms that didn’t want me and acting like I belonged.

This was the only skill I had, and I used it now.

Up stone steps. Through corridors longer than my whole street. Past walls that seemed to shift when I wasn’t looking straight at them.

At the end of the longest corridor, big doors appeared.

Taller than everything else. Darker and carved with patterns my eyes couldn’t hold. Every time I tried to focus, the design slipped away.

The guard stopped in front of them.

“The throne room,” he said.

My stomach dropped.

The same feeling I’d had at seven, in a social worker’s office, when they told me my mom wasn’t coming back.

I’d felt it before.

I’d survived it before.

I straightened my back.

The doors opened on their own.

The room was huge and cold and full.

Fae nobles lined the walls in silence. Every face turned to me the moment I stepped in.

They weren’t angry.

It was worse than angry.

They were curious.

I walked forward anyway.

The room was long. I heard every step my bare feet made on the stone. I felt every pair of eyes on me. I kept my chin up and my hands loose and kept walking.

And at the far end, a figure stood.

Tall, dark-haired and dressed in black.

He was so still it felt powerful.

Like he’d practiced staying still for so long that it felt natural to him.

He turned his head.

His silver eyes met mine across the room.

My feet stopped without me telling them to.

I knew that face.

I’d dreamed of it since I was seven. But never like this. In the dream, he was always at the edge of the trees. He was always far away, silent and watching.

Now he was three meters away.

Looking at me like he’d been expecting me.

Not today, just someday

He held my gaze for a moment. Then he picked up a paper from the table by the throne and walked toward me. The whole court watched in silence as he stopped two feet in front of me.

He held the paper out.

“Read the bottom,” he said.

His voice was low and clear.

There was no magic in it. Just words.

I took the paper with steady hands and looked at the bottom.

There were two signatures.

The first was neat handwriting I didn’t know.

The second made me stop breathing.

It was a small handprint. A child’s hand. The edges were uneven, like a seven-year-old’s fingers had moved. It was pressed into the paper in faded gold ink.

It was my handprint.

I looked up at him. “What is this?”

“A Blood Debt contract,” he said. No hesitation. No feeling. Like he’d said it a hundred times.

“Twelve years ago, your mother came to this Court. She borrowed power she couldn’t repay. In exchange, she offered collateral.”

I kept my voice flat. “What collateral?”

“You.”

The room went silent.

“She promised to repay the debt,” he went on. “She failed. Under Fae law, the debt passed to her daughter when she came of age.” He paused.

“By touching the mirror, you activated the contract yourself.”

I looked at my handprint.

Seven years old.

The same year she disappeared.

“So what does that mean?” I asked.

He looked at me with silver eyes that gave nothing away. Eyes that had watched me from the edge of a gold forest for years without saying a word.

“It means your soul belongs to the Twilight Court,” he said.

A pause.

“To me.”

The words hung in the air. The whole Court went quiet.

I stood there in star pyjamas, dirty feet, my mother’s signature in my hands.

I l

ooked at him and didn’t look away.

“How do I break it?” I said.

Something changed in his face for a moment. It was gone before I could tell what it was.

“There is one way,” he said.