BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

dotted with the acne scars and freckles of my youth. So, I leave the room because if I grimace every time I see my reflection stare out at me from the looking glass I will never do anything else.

I head down to the lake I’ve always loved because it reminds me of home. It’s always been on the palace grounds but Henrí hates it so we never spend any time here. I think it’s because it reminds him how different we are, but the water calms me. The lake’s frozen over though, so I sit on the bench that’s made of this strange light-catching shattered glass material Henrí loves. There’s a huge window of it in the library.

I remember the first time I saw it.We walked in the library as the sun started to set and it glowed such a bright orange, set in its creamy off-white frame with such an intricate pattern of cracks and lines I couldn’t believe it was glass. Or, more accurately, frosted glass.

‘You can’t see through it, regardless of the weather,’ he told me in a hoarse, honey-laced voice. ‘The shards were all individually stuck together to create that effect. It’s very rare. I have to make it myself.’

He laced his fingers into mine as I asked, ‘How do you make it?’ He smiled and murmured something about showing me one day, only he spoke in this really low voice that was barely more than a silent breath of air with hidden undertones of words. I loved it because it gave me an excuse to lean in really close just to listen to him.

So, yes, it’s a pretty material, but it’s always so icy. I hate sitting on the benches. So, I start walking laps of the granite-enclosed rectangular body of water, listening to my kitten heels clicking evenly on the tiles and I stare at the wintery lake, colours rich with the first frost. I step straight into a small ditch and plunge headfirst into the holly bush.

‘Oh crap.’ I mutter, feeling the grey, spear-tipped leaves scratch my face and warm blood slowly trickle from the cuts. There’s a leaf in my hair. And a body in front of me with an arm crushed from where I fell. A

And the crushed arm shattered into small glassy pieces glistening in the slivers of light, escaping the dark trails from my shadow. Exactly like the window.

‘Fuck.’ I realise. Two voices echoing in my head. More precisely, one voice, saying two things. The first about liquid nitrogen. The second about that material. The material Henrí promised to show me how to make. Show was an interesting choice of word.

Most of all though, I mentally note the blond hair and fearful expression which doesn’t mask the face enough I can’t tell who she was. Aurora, local princess and celebrity, whose story the papers described as ‘a real-life fairy tale’ and ‘the stuff of dreams’. And then the press raised hell about her disappearance, only two days ago now. They could never get enough of her. I guess they’ll have to now. She’s lying here in her gold-seamed dress, stained with crusted blood that marks a faint, failed attempt to escape.

But, bloody hell, if she died a few days ago, and she’s been here for a few days that probably means she died here. And lived here. That means there were two of us at the same time. Possibly more.The bastard. Romance really is dead. Just as long as I’m not. Find the others. Warn them. Leave. Should be simple, right?

‘Except you already know how you die. Don’t you, Melusine?’