The stairs grew narrower still. I was nearing the top. The night flower pricked me in my pocket as I went. I patted it to reassure myself it was still there, and did not look back.

Then, abruptly, I saw a figure sitting on the top curve of the stairs.

It looked like a person, but I could not be sure. It sat hunched against the wall, veiled in black, and its face stayed hidden inside its hooded cloak. I thought I could hear it humming.

If you see someone on the stairs, do not look at them.

I quickly turned my eyes down to the steps. My heart began to pound. Slowly, I started to make my way up again, pressing myself tightly against the opposite side of the stairs as I neared the figure. Behind me, the footsteps continued from the darkness swallowing the stairs.

The seated figure drew near. I could only see it as a blurry shadow from the corner of my eye. Everything in me screamed to look at it, but I forced myself not to as I quickened my pace. I wondered if I should run past the figure and risk provoking it, or creep slowly by and risk being within its grasp. I steadied myself against the wall. I had no choice. I had to keep going.

I could hear its humming distinctly now. It sang a strange tune, a song that changed from common time to notes that came in thirds, lighthearted notes mixed in with sharp, off-key bridges. The music reminded me of what I’d heard in the château, on the day I’d refused Hyacinth’s request.

I edged close to the figure, and then I was directly across from it, and my nightgown brushed silently against the ends of its robe. Goose bumps peppered my skin.

Careful, I told myself through my terror. If I tripped, I might fall down into the waiting grasp of the unseen creature following me. Hyacinth, help me. Where are you?

I slowly passed the seated figure. It did not move. The humming grew slightly fainter. The tower’s ceiling was close to me now—I was nearly at the top.

Then, the seated figure spoke. Its voice came out as a whisper that wrapped around me.

“Nannerl.”

At my name, I instinctively turned. The figure was looking straight at me, one of its bony hands outstretched from its robes. My eyes unwittingly settled on its face.

Under the shadow of its hood, the face had nothing but a mouth filled with teeth. “Will you play something for me?” it whispered.

If they ask you a question, do not answer.

Then it lurched forward, clawing its way up the stairs toward me. At its feet came another, each one stirred to life by the one before it. They were the same creatures that had glided around the tower and outside our home during my illness.

I broke my careful walk and ran. My feet slipped, and I fell hard against the wet stones. I gritted my teeth and scrambled up the stairs on my hands and knees. Behind me came the clatter of bone scraping against stone. The creatures were following in my wake.

Above me, the door to the top of the tower came into view, a heavy, rusted chain hanging on its knob.

My hands clawed at the closed door. One of the creatures on the stairs called out to me again. Nannerl. Its words hung, haunted and rasping, in the air. Won’t you give me the flower?

Through my panic, I remembered Hyacinth’s warning about the night flower.

Do not give it to anyone.

I took the night flower out of my pocket and began to crush it in my hands. Its thorns cut at my skin. I bit my lip hard until I could taste blood in my mouth, but I did not stop. The flower crumbled into ash, the petals hard and brittle, and the thorns turned into powder. The creatures crawled closer on the stairs, their voices turning into a cacophony of snarls. All I could see were their teeth.

I took the powder in my hands and rubbed it against the door’s chain.

Nothing happened at first. Then I saw the lock start to melt, the rusted metal turning into thick globs of liquid. It pooled at my feet in a bronze puddle. I pushed against the door as hard as I could.

The nearest creature reached out now and grabbed for me. I felt its bones close around my foot. A scream burst from my throat. I kicked out at it, forcing it to loosen its hold.

“Hyacinth!” I cried, and pressed both of my hands against the rotting wood of the door and gave it another mighty heave.

It swung open. I fell into a room with a floor layered in straw.

A worn clavier sat in one corner of the room. The scarlet sky peeked through a tiny window. And in front of me, curled in a ball in the center of the room, stirred a young girl who looked very much like myself, her hair in the same loose, dark waves as mine, her eyes the color of a midnight lake. Even her dress, a simple thing of white and blue, reminded me of the dress I’d worn when I first played for Herr Schachtner, on a day so long ago.

She sat up to look at me in horror.

“You have slain the river guardian,” she whispered at me. “You have cut through the thorns my father erected.”

The river guardian? But the thorns were not there because of the late king. Were they? I opened my mouth to tell her this, but no words came out.

I turned around at a sound behind me, sure it was the creatures on the stairs. But it was Hyacinth, his white skin still glistening wet from the river, his eyes narrow and pulsing as if freed of an ancient thirst.

The girl’s eyes skipped to him. She shrank away. “You helped him across,” she whispered at me.

And only then, as she met my stare, did the truth flash through my mind as surely as if she had sent the thought to me.

The familiarity of the sun symbol on the flags and the tapestries of the royal family. I recognized it because it had been emblazoned on the shield in the ogre’s house.

The queen’s high cheekbones had been the same cheekbones of the faery trapped in the grotto. The queen’s white-and-gold dress had been the same white gown clinging tattered against the faery’s slender figure, draping down to where her feet were molded into the grotto floor. Even her magic, what Hyacinth had called her terrible power of fire, was a gift from the Sun, who had cherished her.

The Queen of the Night was not a wicked witch, but the queen herself. The ogre in the clearing had not been an ogre at all, but the king’s champion, who had failed to find the queen and her son.

And Hyacinth . . . I thought of the river monster that guarded against him, the bundles of dead grasses tied all along the castle’s gates. They were the same grasses Hyacinth couldn’t touch in the clearing with the arrow, the same that were poisonous to him. The grass was protection for the castle, meant to keep him out.

Hyacinth was never the princeling of the kingdom, the queen’s missing son. He was the faery creature that had stolen the boy, the monster that the kingdom had tried to keep out.

I let out a cry. My arms came up to shield the girl. But Hyacinth leapt past me. And as I looked on, he lunged at the princess and devoured her.