Liza’s thoughts were sluggish as she followed the bobbing light deeper into the forest. She no longer felt fear, though curiosity and self-preservation weaved through her mind. She had a vague sense of familiarity and comfort but also of malevolence and injustice. As they moved deeper into the woods, she again became aware of the presence of others around them. She could feel their gazes on her, almost hearing their thoughts. Excitement simmered in the fae forest this night.

Overhead, lightning flashed. Sheets of it covered the sky, as if a great battle were being waged in the clouds. Perhaps there is, she thought. Something was happening up there, something beyond the natural. She waited for the thunder, but it never came. Between flashes, she noticed that the sky was beginning to brighten with a new day. Would the night really pass? Liza had begun to think that she was lost in perpetual night, a place so dark that the light of the sun could never reach it.

As the forest lightened from dark to dim, Liza saw motion in the trees around them as the curious fae drew nearer. She no longer felt malice from them, only a sense of long-awaited anticipation. The trees parted before them, and Liza followed Darius and the light bearer into a large clearing of trampled dirt. The brown area was like a bruise in the beauty of the woods.

A wave of nausea swept through her as she stepped into the clearing, as did a deep dread that would have sent her scampering back to the safety of the trees if only her body obeyed her mind. Instead, she continued her steady pace to the center of the open space.

Darius and the light bearer had remained in the trees, leaving her alone. The forest surrounding the clearing was alive with fae creatures. She could feel them staring at her. For a time, she stood there, nauseated and trembling as the gray sky grew brighter. Finally, two figures stepped from the trees across from her and approached. They were female, with pale, almost translucent skin and short, dark hair matted to their heads. They stood about a head shorter than Liza and had green eyes that were too big for their faces. Each wore a simple dress, one the color of the dirt upon which they tread and the other the green of the forest.

As the fae women neared Liza, they split up and circled her, one to her right and the other to her left. The one wearing green came back around to face her while the other remained behind, and they began to undress her. Their touch was gentle and methodical, in no rush. They continued until she stood completely naked and shivering for all to see. She knew she should feel embarrassed, exposed as she was, but for the most part she felt detached, a mere spectator of the night’s events.

The fae women circled her once more, their gazes sliding over every inch of her body, knowing smiles on their pale faces. When they met again in front of her, they walked back to the tree line and disappeared, leaving her again alone in the center of the clearing.

“You are the Princess.”

Liza flinched at the voice that spoke from directly behind her. The voice was male, deep and strong. Her nausea intensified at the sound as the numb part of her mind gave way to the fear of her rational self.

“The Prince has waited long for this day, for the time that the curse would be lifted and he would take his rightful place in the world.”

Liza heard excited voices coming from the forest.

How many are out there? How many are watching me right now?

She flinched again at a touch from behind. Callused fingers ran down her back, along her spine. The touch was cold, causing goosebumps to rise on her flesh. The fingers moved away, and a robe was slipped up her arms and over her shoulders. Arms wrapped around her from behind, pulling the robe across her naked body and tying it in the back. The robe hung to her knees and was light in weight yet warm.

Again, she stood alone in the center of the clearing.

A hush settled over the forest. The gray light of early morning began to fade until the world around her was blanketed in complete blackness. Liza shuddered and realized that she had control of her body once more. She spun in a slow circle.

Nothing but darkness wherever she looked.

Light flashed, and she looked up to see a mass of clouds boiling overhead. Then the light was gone, and she was plunged into darkness once again. Something brushed against her leg, as though she had walked through a spiderweb. Then she felt it on her hand. She stepped back, but the darkness confused her senses and stole away any sense of direction.

More lightning cracked the sky, and Liza shrieked as a grotesque face materialized inches from her own. As quickly as it had come, the light vanished, but the image of the face floated before her, purple and covered in open sores that oozed pus. She stumbled back, hands waving out around her. She felt another touch, this time on her neck. She screamed and stumbled, almost falling. The light flashed again, and she was surrounded by pus-dripping faces. They leered at her, forked tongues lashing out, tasting her exposed flesh.

Liza’s mind gave in to the terror, and she broke into a stumbling run. She didn’t care that she was completely blind. Didn’t care that there was nowhere to run. Her primitive sense of self-preservation told her only that she had to flee, to hide, to escape.

Around her, she heard laughter at her futile thrashing. She put her hands over her ears and continued forward, all the while feeling the tongues on her skin, the cackling in her ears. Another flash of lightning.

They were everywhere now. There was nowhere she could turn, no space that was not filled with rotting faces. Their breath washed over her, rancid with decay. Her stomach could take no more, and she would have vomited had there been anything in her stomach. Instead, she heaved as acidic bile burned her throat. She stumbled and fell to her knees, covering her head with her hands.

Another flash of light.

A snake slithered from between her knees. She jerked back. It raised its head and hissed at her.

Darkness again.

Liza’s mind screamed for her to move, to run, but she could only kneel in the dirt. Hide her face from the ghouls that surrounded her. The leering faces. The stench. It was all too much. They were all over her now, touching every exposed part of her flesh. She cried out and felt something touch her lips. She closed her mouth tight and moaned. Her mind slipped toward insanity. She welcomed it.

Another touch, freezing cold on her chest beneath the robe. Liza’s fingers moved to the pendant that still hung from her neck. She grasped it in her trembling hand. As her fingers closed around the pendant, the laughter and hissing that surrounded her gave way to singing that filled her mind. Ancient and long-forgotten words of some familiar yet unknown language brought her back from the brink of the dark chasm into which her mind had been about to plummet.

She lifted her head and stared at the lightning-streaked sky. She kept her gaze on the clouds, refusing to acknowledge whatever might be beside her.

Liza stood, pendant still clutched in her hand. She was still afraid, but the terror had subsided to a more manageable feeling of helplessness against the unknown.

“Enough!” The command from her own mouth caught her by surprise. The forest fell silent. Something stirred within her, something that had remained dormant since eons past. For the first time in her life, Liza felt fully whole, fully alive. All fear was pushed aside by a confidence that birthed courage and strength. What she had touched when protecting Jacob at the bar now came to her in force.

She lowered her gaze from the flashing sky to the gray-shadowed forest around her. More than ever before, she could sense those within, thousands of them, wondering what would happen next.

She wondered as well.

A breeze stirred through the clearing, burgeoning into a wind. Her skin told her the wind was cold, but the cold did not bother her. She was warmed from within. She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sky before lifting her arms out to the side. The wind flowed around her, then beneath, lifting her by the arms.

She felt weightless, floating as the wind came at her from all directions. Her hair whipped around her face, and her robe flapped against her body. The wind carried with it scents that had been picked up along the way to this place—rich, healthy smells that spoke of life and abundance as well as dank, putrid smells of death and decay. In her mind, she could see the wind, see the scents it carried. She knew that these scents were not born of the lands the wind had seen but of the land’s inhabitants.

Liza opened her eyes. Thick fog hid the world from her. The fog swirled in the wind but remained around her like a cocoon. The lightning continued to flash, no longer above her but all around. Her skin prickled with its power.

She felt no sensation of movement but knew that she had been lifted into the swirling clouds. Here, the smells of life and death were more distinct. She realized that her earlier impression of a battle in the clouds had been accurate. This was where the two sides converged, slamming against one another with enough power to rend the fabric of reality. The power flowed around her but did not touch her. She was not a part of either of them—not life, not death. This knowledge stirred discomfort in her, but she knew there was nothing to be done about it.

The mist felt heavier, more ominous. The calm that Liza had felt since rising above the valley floor fell away. Fear surged in its place. She felt the cold now, the cold and wet of the air around her. The lightning had gone dark, yet power surged through the air. Something approached from the depths of the cloud, something terrifying beyond imagining. Its hate and scorn hit her like a physical attack, sending shudders through her body.

The thing’s hate intensified as another presence fell over her, even more terrifying than the first. This one hid its emotions better—or did not have them at all. She was aware of the vastness of it, of the incredible power that flowed from it, but little else. The attention of the two beings crushed her beneath their gaze.

“The time has come.” The voice boomed from the darkness of the mist. Or was it in her head? She was beyond knowing.

“The time has come,” the other voice agreed.

“The instrument has been chosen from ages past, of yesterday and today and times not yet seen.”

“The instrument has been chosen.”

The voices surrounded her, similar to one another yet different enough that she could tell them apart. That she was the instrument they spoke of was beyond dispute.

“The sacrifice is prepared. The stage is set.”

“Choose wisely. The fate of worlds rests on your puny shoulders.”

“Not hers alone.”

“The others are worthless, lost in their own miseries. These creatures are little more than weak animals.”

“And yet they have been chosen from beyond time.”

“So be it.”

“So be it.”

The god-like beings vanished, leaving Liza hovering like a boat battered by massive waves. Then she was falling through the gray mist of the clouds as lightning once again exploded around her. She screamed, her voice torn away by the raging wind that no longer supported her. She fell out of the cloud into vast darkness, knowing that at any second she would be broken by the ground that rose up to meet her. Faster and faster she fell, her body tense with anticipation.

As suddenly as it had begun, her fall stopped, her scream the only sound. She closed her lips to stifle the scream, her breath heaving. She felt solid ground beneath her back and grass beneath her twitching fingers. As her breathing settled, the scent of flowers filled her senses.

Finally, she opened her eyes to see twinkling stars in a clear sky. Some of the stars appeared closer than others, and one flew past her face like a flaming hummingbird. She sat up and found herself on top of a grass-covered mound that rose ten feet or so from the forest floor. The mound was in a clearing, smaller than the one she had been in before, and the ground around it was covered in a mist that gleamed a soft blue.

Again, the fiery glow buzzed by her face. She followed it as it swooped around the mound before darting toward the trees. Liza pulled herself to her knees and looked around. More of the blinking creatures hovered around the edges of the clearing. Again, she gazed up at the clear sky. It was empty, and yet the clearing was lit as though by a full moon. She returned her attention to the mist-covered ground. The light either came from the mist itself or something below it.

Liza stood. She considered waiting atop the mound for daylight, but who knew if daylight would ever come to this place. Had it not been daybreak when she’d been taken up to the clouds only to find darkness upon her return to the ground? She considered that these thoughts fit smoothly in her mind, though they should have been alien and frightening.

She only wished she could understand what it all meant.

The creature buzzed past her face again, twice circling her head before flying off in the same direction as before.

It wants me to follow it. But to where?

Liza walked down the mound until the fog covered her bare feet and ankles. She was surprised at the familiarity of the feeling of damp grass beneath her feet. As she stepped onto level ground, the scent of flowers grew stronger, and she saw that the floor of the clearing beneath the mist was covered in blue-tinted flowers. Her leg brushed against one, and a searing pain shot through her as the flower’s touch burned like acid.

She jumped back to the safety of the mound and inspected the wound. It was already blistered, like a burn, but that appeared to be all. The ground was covered with the flowers in all directions. How was she to follow the fae creature if she was trapped?

She walked the edge of the mound until she came to a narrow path through the flowers, just visible beneath the mist. The path wound in the opposite direction of the creature that wished her to follow it.

As Liza stepped onto the path, a shadow rose from the flowers to her left. The fae creature was slight and stood about as high as Liza’s shoulders. It had skin the hue of the flowers and dark hair that disappeared into the mist around its legs. It wore a dark shift that hung loose over its body. The face was that of a pretty young woman with almond-shaped eyes that shone in the illumination of the mist. Like the flying creature, she pointed away from the path.

“I cannot go that way,” Liza said. “The flowers hurt me.”

Still the fae creature pointed in the other direction. It did not speak, but its face clearly displayed its displeasure with her words. Liza took another step along the path. The fae matched her pace but stayed in the flowers, never entering the path. Another of the creatures, identical to the first as far as she could tell, appeared on the other side of the path several yards away. It, too, pointed in the opposite direction. Liza turned to look back upon the safety of the mound and saw two more of the fae behind her, both in the flowers away from the path. All four of the creatures looked unhappy with her actions.

“I can’t walk through the flowers,” Liza said. “I have to stay on the path.” The tremor in her voice betrayed the fear and uncertainty she felt at being surrounded by them. That part of her mind that had opened to Tír na nÓg tickled with a memory, but she could not bring it up enough for it to be of help. There was something important here—she simply did not know what it was.

She continued forward, following the path toward the trees. More of the creatures surrounded her, all still as statues and pointing the other way. Liza’s anxiety heightened as she neared the edge of the forest. Nothing felt right, not the path nor the field of flowers. Both ways felt wrong to her. She did not see any other options.

I can’t walk in the flowers. They can’t walk the path.

There was meaning in that. Something important. Liza took the pendant in her hand and felt its warmth spread through her.

What am I missing?

Movement in front of her drew Liza’s attention. She looked up to see someone step out of the forest onto the path before her.

Not someone. Herself.

Liza stared at the figure who stood only a few paces away. It looked just like her, wore the same robe, even had the burn scar on its right leg and the scratch on its left. It was like looking into a mirror.

“Who are you?”

“Who do you think I am?” The woman’s voice sounded like Liza’s own.

“You look like me.”

“I am you.”

Liza shook her head. “No, you can’t be me. There is only one of me.”

The other Liza smiled. “Really? Why?”

“It’s the way things are. Reality.”

The woman took a step closer. “That would depend on whose reality you are speaking of, wouldn’t it? I have waited a long time for you to come, Kiari. Longer than you could know.”

“Who are you?” Liza asked again.

The woman took another step closer, standing only a few feet away now. “I am you. You are me. We are one.”

Liza wanted to turn and run, but she could not take her eyes from the other her. The feeling that something important was about to happen grew stronger. She knew she could not run from it.

The other Liza stepped up to her and wrapped her in a gentle embrace. Liza felt the warm breath on her neck. Then the woman pulled away enough to look into Liza’s face before giving her a light kiss on the lips. In that brief moment, there was a connection between them, and everything became clear.

Liza knew who she was and the knowledge filled her with dread.