Rose lies on her back with her right arm hooked over her head and one leg dangling off the edge of the bed, unconsciously offering her foot as food for the kind of monsters that crunch cubes of ice between their molars, impervious to the cold and the frostbitten beauty of snowdrift souls.

I wait until I’m certain she’s asleep before I rise and inch backward, toes on the carpet, creeping, sliding, ready to slip back under the sheets at the slightest sign of her stirring.

“Stay here,” I whisper to Gabrielle as she stands to follow. “I won’t be long.”

I had plenty of chances to go back to the attic during the daylight today, even after hanging with Rose. Plenty of chances to return without my sisters, but I squandered every single one of them.

Later, later, later, I told myself. Then: Never, never, never. But later and never have converged, canceling each other out.

Now, now, now.

The smart thing would be to stay away, to forget, to pretend it never happened.

But.

Two nights ago I opened the forbidden door in my dream for the very first time, after years of reaching and grasping and waking with the taste of disappointment mixed with relief rusting in my mouth. And last night, I found a boy in the attic who claims to know me, and it can’t be a coincidence, can it? And though it seems impossible, I can’t help but wonder: In opening the door, did I somehow release him? Release him into my life, or worse, into the waking world?

I’ve always been sure there were secrets behind that door, and maybe now I can get some answers. Answers about the visions I’m cursed with, about the creatures I see, and how I can sometimes see my heart through my ribs. About the woods, and the witch.

And about the boy himself.

Gabrielle follows me anyway as I skulk out of our bedroom and into the empty hallway. We walk together up the stairs, but when I open the attic door, I step inside and close it quickly, shutting her out. She paws at the wood, scratching and whimpering, but I ignore her and walk farther in.

The room could be as small as a teacup or as vast as a universe, ever expanding. The door, the bed, the floor directly beneath—these are the only real, solid things in the absolute darkness. The heat spreads through the room like a rash, and already I am starting to sweat. I reach the bed, bend, and crawl backward, until I hit the wall. Eyes closed, eyes open—it makes no difference. But I keep them open anyway.

Even though I’m determined not to let him catch me off guard this time, his voice floats and twists like steam so that I don’t know where it’s coming from. When he speaks, I press my spine against the wall so hard, it hurts.

“Rhea Ravenna, you have returned.”

Again he uses my name like a spell, an incantation somewhere between sinister and sacred, demonic and divine.

“Who are you? What are you?” I lift my chin and take a long, steady inhale. “Why couldn’t we see you, when my sisters and I came earlier? Was it you, tugging on my hair?”

“You can tell yourself it wasn’t me, if it comforts you to do so. Pretend it was one of your sisters,” he says, and I feel the blade of his grin. I want him to answer my other questions, but he says nothing more.

“Where are you?” I say, disoriented.

“On the dresser,” he says. “Don’t worry. There are whole worlds between us.”

I can’t even begin to guess what he means by that, so I file it away for now. “You know,” I say, “I don’t think it’s fair that you know my name but I don’t know yours. I don’t even know anything about you.”

He sighs. “Oh, my sky, your name has been stuck in my throat for so long. You are an itch in my heart, an itch I have never been able to scratch.”

As he speaks, I feel it too. An itch. Not an ordinary twinge, not a sting of discomfort wriggling on dry skin. This itch has teeth, and it started as a seed I did not know was planted. A seed that is now, as his words water it, a sprout. A biting bud of tiny canines, crooked and corroded.

I put a hand to my chest and scratch my nails across my sternum, even though it doesn’t help. “An itch you couldn’t scratch—until now?”

“No. I can never scratch it, Rhea Ravenna, and that is the point.”

“Stop.” I drop my hands. “Stop saying my name like that.”

A pause. “Like what?”

“Like—like you know something I don’t.”

He grins. “But I do know something you don’t. Haven’t you been listening?”

“Yes, and you haven’t said even one thing that makes any sense.”

“You want to know my name?”

I nod, eager, even though he can’t see.

He says, “I propose that we play a game, you and I.”

“A game.” I exhale. “What kind of game?”

“A guessing game, of course.” A pause. “You like games, don’t you? Puzzles and riddles and rhymes.”

My heart itches, twitches, beats even faster. “What are the rules?”

The dresser creaks. Sways, as if a weight has been lifted. The Darkness stands, only a foot away. I know, because the space before me, around me, feels steadily warmer. And when he speaks, his voice is louder, nearer.

He says, “I will give you three tries to guess my name.”

“What?” I almost laugh out loud. “What are you, Rumpelstiltskin?”

He isn’t the least amused. “Rumpel—what? I don’t know what this means.”

“You’ve never heard of Rumpelstiltskin? Where are you even from?”

“The same place as you.”

“And what place would that be? Wonderland?”

“I suppose there’s wonder, and there’s land,” he says wryly. “But I would not call it wonderland, no.”

“That’s not what I— Never mind.” I chew my cheek, thinking. Is he actually serious about this? He wants me to guess his name? I mean, that doesn’t seem so unreasonable—for a fairy tale, for a dream.

“Only three guesses?” I ask. “What happens if all my guesses are wrong?”

“Then we both lose.” His voice is hard now, and I hear him grinding his jaw. “We both lose, and the game is over.”

I know I should keep to the questions I came here to ask, but I’m not quite sure how to steer the conversation back around. And maybe playing his stupid game is the only way I’ll get answers anyway. “Will you give me any clues?”

“Yes. In fact, I’ll tell you a story.”

“A story?” I say, and Renata’s voice, breathless, crawls like a spider through the back of my brain: The princess had magic and the others didn’t….But then she escaped by falling into a sleeping spell. The end.

Now that I think about it, the way she said it was strange. Did Renata mean that the princess escaped, and that was the end of the story? Or did Ren mean that falling into a sleeping spell was how the princess escaped the end—the end of her life, the end of the world, the end of the story itself? But how is it possible to avoid your own end?

I shake my head. “I don’t want to hear a story.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to refuse if I were you. It might be the only thing to help you remember.”

It’s so, so hot in this tiny room that he suddenly feels so, so close. Leaning over me.

I am not afraid, I am not afraid, I am not, not, not.

“All right, and if I guess correctly?” I raise my chin, staring at the Darkness, staring at nothing. “If I win? Will you show me your face?”

“If you win, I will give you a gift.” He whispers now, and it is I who lean closer this time. So close I can feel the heat leave his lips. “If you win, I will take your curse away.”

I let out a breath, a breath sharp and fast, somewhere between a stuttering sigh and a fracturing cry. And for a second the unnatural darkness surrounding him disperses, just enough that I can see the figure of a tall, thin boy—barely more than a silhouette. Jarred, my gaze falls down to the scream of blue veins beneath the blanched skin of his forearms, then up to the line of his jaw tensing as he jerks away from me, stepping backward to the center of the room. He knows I can see him—not well, not well at all, but I’m not supposed to see. I’m not allowed a glimpse, not yet.

Then the darkness swoops back in and congeals, glomming together around him, thicker and blacker than ever. Both of us are silent for a long while, trying to recapture what we let loose. What just happened? I don’t think either of us knows; he seems as surprised as I am.

“So you know? You know about my curse?” I say, half eager, half terrified. “You know about my visions?”

The darkness undulates, dips and eddies, but does not disband. Not again. The boy’s guard is up, and I will not breach it a second time. Not tonight, anyway. “Are you willing to play?” he asks.

I wrap my arms around my waist, trembling. “What do you know about my visions? Do you know what they mean? Do you know why I see things that aren’t there?”

“You will only know that, my sky, when you know my name.”

“Why do you call me that? Sky? And how do I know you’re even real?” I’m almost shouting now, but I don’t care. I stand, scrambling toward the door. “How do I know you can do what you say?”

“Will you play?” he hisses. “Yes, or no, Rhea Ravenna? Yes. Or. No?”

“Yes,” I snap, in a voice that could crack the sunlit sky in half, a straight clean break bleeding black and clotting with tiny tinsel stars. “Yes, I’ll play. I’ll play and I’ll win, and then—then I will know who and what you are.”

I find the doorknob with my fingers, and as I do, the nameless boy veiled in shadow whispers: “Ah, but you are wrong. You are wrong, Rhea Ravenna. By the end, when you win, you will know who and what you are.”

I wrench the door open and descend, hands on the wall to steady myself. Clawing, clambering. At the bottom, I trip to my knees. It doesn’t hurt, not as much as the malevolent itch still raging in my heart. I shudder, and shield my eyes with the backs of my hands in the sudden sphere of pale light, crushing after the density of the darkness.

Gabrielle is there, waiting for me, her eyes bright with anger. She wanted to come with me, to protect me. She’ll forgive me soon enough, I know, but now she bites at my legs. Hard enough to hurt but not to break the skin. She nips once at my knee and then starts toward the bedroom. She stops in the doorway. Come on.

I stand and follow. As I grasp for sleep, curled in bed with my back to Rose, Gabrielle beside me, a song skitters through my mind, over and over and over. Slow at first—and then fast, faster, fastest.

It goes like this:

I will take your curse away.

Away, away, away.

Your curse, my sky, my sky, my sky.

Your curse is mine, is mine, is mine.

Yours to give and mine to take.

I will take your curse away.

And all you have to do, my sky,

Is say my name, my name, my name.