Penelope sat quietly in bed in that hour before dawn listening to the hushed rustle of wind through the Faewood’s canopies.

She had long spent her tears and was contemplating the day ahead, the same anxieties circling her mind over and again.

As she listened to the crickets chirping in the darkness beyond her window, her frayed attention drifted towards the forest.

Even here, she could feel the distant hum of the Darkwood’s anguish, as though it were reaching out for her, beseeching her. Yet the brush of its grief was laced with something more turbulent. A current of wariness. Mistrust.

The pressure of its wordless fury, its lament for help, for retribution, ached within her bones.

Penelope longed to help the forest. She wanted to stem the tide of its hurt, which she felt as deeply as though it were her own sorrow. Yet she didn’t know how.

Could she entreat with Grimwood at the Dark Moon Ball and ask them to stop their assaults? Penelope scoffed at herself. Would they even listen? With the way those Rangers had moved, with such deliberate and determined precision. Such practised ruthlessness... Penelope doubted it. Would her parents allow her to undertake such a campaign besides, if it disrupted whatever plans they might have for her?

Make them stop... the woods seemed to whisper across the fabric of night. Flashes of dreams from nights past, hazy half-remembered nightmares, invaded her mind. Visions of herself dressed in a gown of thrashing vines and poisonous flowers curled within her mind’s eye. Echoes of a crown of blood-tipped thorns adorning her head. A veil of burning mist enshrouding her shoulders. Make them...

Penelope shuddered, her mind disordered and heart heavy with apprehension and sleeplessness. The refrain plucked at all the strings of resentment stretched taught within her. Resentment at her family for their abandonment, their silence. Resentment at Ivy and all those like her, resentment for being shunned by the world of her birthright. At the ceaseless humiliation of rejection and poverty, the cruelties of false hope and unkept promises. At having all things taken, taken, taken.

She had buried these pains deeply within herself, quelled for years beneath the darkest earth of her heart with each effort to please. To prove herself worthy.

Now the bones of those hurts rattled under the swell of the Darkwood’s distant cry and the sting of newer wounds. They clamoured to rise in the face of her parents’ demands of her, and the implied threat to those she loved if she failed to meet them. To the Sisters’ honour and standing. To her own future.

The unfairness of it all burned in her veins. She resented the sheer enormity of power they had over her, the power she had been wrested of the moment she had been sent away.

The power she could claim back. If she were to only answer the invitation to do so...

Bloodied vines and trailing thorns... these weapons would be yours, Daughter...

Penelope shivered and drew her blankets around her, warding against the predawn chill and a rising hunger for violence.

She clenched her teeth against the urge to gnash them, curling her fists until her nails cut crescents into her palms.

You have bridled yourself too long... Unleash!

Overwhelmed, Penelope pressed her hands to her chest, trying to mute the burning tide of the forest’s rage. Of her own. She grounded herself in the question that had surfaced so often these past weeks.

What had the Grimwood Rangers even been doing, reaping ghosts? Capturing ferrifae? To what end? For what purpose?

Penelope drew in a ragged breath, quelling the nausea that the memory of the Rangers’ actions inspired. It had been like... like watching someone hunt a creature one limb at a time, while its mother had looked on, helpless and screaming...

Penelope stumbled downstairs as quietly as she could, reaching the bathing room just in time to retch into the sink. She pressed cold hands to her skin as she rinsed her face, feeling exhausted as her anger settled to a burning ember in her chest.

She needed answers. The future felt so murky and uncertain. She needed a clearer way forward.

The heart of the Darkwood thrummed with the promise of clarity, just beyond the reach of the cottage. Calling, beckoning...

With shaking fingers, Penelope scribbled a hasty note for the Sisters and left it by the teapot, then pulled a winter coat over her nightgown. Easing open the kitchen door to prevent the squeak of its hinges, she stepped into a pair of heavy boots by the back stairs and strode out into the night.

Fresh snow had fallen in the garden, blanketing everything in sight and erasing the footprints of the prior day. So close now to the dark moon, only the barest golden crescent hung visible in the clear sky. The moonflies flitting through the shrubs shone ever brighter with the waning of the moon, their opalescent glow bringing light to the forest when the moon itself could not.

The leaves whispered beyond the garden gate, a coaxing sigh that beckoned to Penelope’s deepest instinct.

She followed.

Penelope wandered shallow and familiar trails, cautiously circling the edges of the Darkwood’s grip until she found the shadows deepening, the crickets quieting.

Her heart beat louder in her chest, matching the drum of the Darkwood’s pulse as it reached for her.

There was no clear edge delineating the familiar forest from the Darkwood. They bled together, parts of a whole. Yet, as she walked across spongy rivers of black moss and stepped over gnarled limbs of hard wood, Penelope felt herself arrive at a sense of precipice. An undertow of deeper intent that, should she step further forward, would pull her to the heart of a whirling tide of power. She would succumb.

“What do you want of me?” Penelope whispered to the trees, her voice hoarse with fear and fatigue. She was beginning to question the choice to seek answers here. Yet the forest yearned for her, sought for her. And she found herself longing to answer that pull, to soothe the ache of it, despite her own trepidation.

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Her legs trembled as her foot inched forward, scraping over sodden leaves. Around her, the dim glow of lichen flared to guide her path.

Reclaim your place... Reclaim your Fate... You could rule all...

Images pressed into her mind, clear and sharp as glass. A throne of entwined vines budding with night flowers. Gleaming courts of gold and marble filled with crowds sinking to their knees, fear on their bowed faces. A sceptre of bone raised in command over a realm united under one rule. Her rule.

Our reign...

“No...” Penelope whispered, stepping back. “That isn’t what I want... I don’t want people to fear me.”

More visions cut through her mind. Horrors. Atrocities. Creatures torn to pieces, afraid and in pain. Grimwood’s Rangers burning trails through the woods, claiming paths that were never theirs. Devastating weapons of alchemy, crafted from the essence of the very creatures Grimwood snatched away, their deepest natures twisted against the mother that bore them. That mourned them. Violations.

Penelope sobbed, her breath hitching with grief and rage. A final image flashed through her mind of Penelope’s own defiance, howling for the forest to save a beloved whom she did not even truly know, yet had trusted all the same. One who had betrayed her honesty by withholding his own. Deceived her. Humiliated her. No different, in the end, than her peers, or her parents, or all the rest simply content to ignore her exile...

Penelope felt her rage crest and crash through her, a tidal storm that enlivened her senses.

She was done with feeling powerless. She was done with betrayal and humiliation. She would protect the raw, simple truths of trees who spun starlight into beauty. She would shepherd weaker creatures through trails safe for their darkness, away from songs of false peace and pretty predators that stole what was not theirs to cage. She would reign with the bare honesty of poison.

With a feral snarl that echoed through the dark, Penelope stepped forward.

She would build a new realm, one where moss and humble earth were no longer scorned. Where intent mattered more than etiquette and trust was shared like nectar. A realm where all were nourished, where all belonged.

For in the end, princess or peasant, all bones return to the earth... and the forest will keep their ghosts...

Vines encircled her legs, climbing the lattice of her body. Thorny stems shredded away her coat and nightgown, weaving themselves across Penelope’s chest in a corset armoured with rivulets of sap and deadly stars of nightshade.

The euphoria of new strength waxed like the moon in her blood. She had been so exhausted. So confused and defeated, adrift on the tides of others’ veiled intentions.

Everything she had craved for a lifetime, reunion with her family, her place amongst royalty, someone to love and be loved by... All her dreams had become so marred she no longer felt she wanted them.

Yet now, her path was becoming clear, vibrant with promise of power.

As ferns and velvet moss threaded themselves into a trailing gown, Penelope listened to the rising whispers of a forest at war.

She would answer the call of the woods... she would be its creature... a nightmare enriched with the decay of dead dreams.

And in return, she would have the power to make her own place.

“Penelope!” A voice screamed from the path behind her. It sounded distant, muted, as though carried against a torrent.

Penelope ignored it, stepping deeper into the woods with boots spiked in black thorns.

“Penelope!” The voice was closer. It sounded familiar.

Penelope paused, half turning towards it, something stirring in her chest beneath the acidic burn of hurt and hatred.

“Penelope, please! Please come to me. I know the path you wish to walk. It will only lead to ruin. I know.”

Penelope’s breath stuttered. That voice...

“Marmalade?”

The witch cannot help you... The forest howled its contempt, wind snapping through Penelope’s hair, now wreathed in a crown of thorns and bone-white flowers.

“Penelope...” the voice was a whisper, yet it cut through the gale.

“I want them to hurt!” Penelope growled, her voice jagged as the vines at her throat. “I want to hurt them!”

“Who, Penelope?” Another whisper, hushed and curious.

“My parents! My mother, who doesn’t want me. My father who smiled and then sent me away.” Penelope was choking on sobs, coughing out the words like noxious fumes. “Ivy, and Tristan, and everyone who mocked me, shunned me, ignored me for years while they lived in luxury. And I had everything taken away. Rosin and Heely had everything. Taken. Away! They’re stuck out here in the woods brewing basic tinctures and whittling wagons, barely making enough to keep the cottage upright. And for what?” Penelope spat, her voice laced with the yowling hiss of a wild cat. “For what?”

Penelope turned to face Marmalade, who was approaching through the winds with feather-light steps, hands raised in supplication.

“And Steph... Prince Steph fooled me. He made a fool of me. And Grimwood? They’re evil! What they’re doing, it’s beyond injustice, it’s sick. They all... they all deserve...”

“What do they deserve, Penelope?” Marmalade’s expression was cool, calm. Yet her eyes burned like star fire as she stalked forward.

“To suffer. To be torn asunder by the powers they mocked and sought to conquer. They shall be conquered in turn.” As she spoke, Penelope’s voice took on the sound of scraping bark and chittering predators, her teeth sharpening to points that itched within her mouth.

Marmalade reached a hand towards Penelope’s face. The princess gnashed her teeth and Marmalade stepped back, but did not flinch.

“Do they? Do they all? Do I?” Marmalade’s quiet voice dripped like honey across new wounds. Soothing. Stinging. The witch approached again, eyes aglow and searing.

Penelope whimpered, her resolve cracking, confusion muddying the clarity that burned like cold flame within her heart. The forest groaned, trees creaking around them, and the crystal light of wrath burned brighter within her, ringing in kinship with the forest’s fury.

“ALL!” Penelope shrieked, her voice splintering into the cry of a dozen wild beasts.

She flung out her arms, the vines encircling them lashing out in all directions.

A squeal of pain caught Penelope’s attention, breaking through the pounding red that was misting her vision as rage subsided to horror.

“Marmot..? Marmot!” Penelope made to move towards the quivering mass of brown fur cowering at the base of a nearby tree. Marmalade held up her hand and Penelope halted, holding her breath.

The anger within her burned away to sadness, to guilt. Marmot was whimpering as Marmalade cradled him, murmuring words too quiet for Penelope to hear.

As the acid storm of rage melted from Penelope’s bones, so too did the vines embracing her unfurl, falling to the forest floor.

Lethargy filled her, deep and weary, as she sank to her knees, draped in patches of moss and wilting flowers, heart racing with panic.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out when Marmalade finally stood. Marmot had scurried up Marmalade’s shoulder and was nuzzled around her neck, peering down at Penelope with confused betrayal. “I’m so... I’m so sorry.”

Marmalade regarded Penelope with hard, cold eyes for a moment, before she sighed and sank to a crouch in front of the trembling princess. “I know you are. The call of these woods... I hear it, too.”

“Is Marmot alright?”

Marmot gave a soft chitter and Marmalade smiled. “A sting. And a fright. But yes, he’ll be fine.”

Penelope heaved a breath. “I don’t know what happened... I woke from a nightmare and... I got so angry. I am so angry, that I... I just wanted them all to feel it. I wanted them all to hurt the way I have.”

Around them the forest crooned and cracked.

“I understand. I do.” Marmalade reached out her hand, cupping Penelope’s cheek in her palm. Penelope leaned into the touch, unable to meet the witch’s eyes, feeling wretched with shame.

“But I... I don’t want to hurt them, not really, I don’t...” Penelope glanced at Marmot, his dark liquid eyes wide and wary as he hid behind Marmalade’s hair.

“I want the hurt to stop. It all just... it all hurts.”

Penelope broke down sobbing as Marmalade cradled her to her chest, whispering soothing words. Around them the trees wept resin, the shadows curled into their hollows, and the gentle swell of cricket song returned.