I Know You

24

The cottage in which she had once lived with her aunts was looking a little worse for wear. After all, it had been some months now since it had last been inhabited, and the indoor foliage was more than a little overgrown.

And naturally, her aunts were not there, which Aurora hadn't really considered – in her head, that was where they would always be. But now it became apparent that once she had moved on, so had they.

Sitting on the edge of the bed that was once her own, Aurora gazed around the room.

She had been happy here. True, she had known nothing else, but her aunts had done the best they could.

And yet, now, it didn't feel much like home at all.

There was only one place that did, and that was the moors, with the only mother she had ever known. The mother she had just let down so badly.

Flinging herself face first onto the bed, Aurora buried her head into the pillow and began to sob.

She didn't notice the raven sitting on the window ledge, watching her silently.

Ω Ω Ω Ω

"Aurora," a soft voice brought her from her slumber.

Somebody was shaking her shoulder gently.

Mumbling under her breath, Aurora tried to turn over, groggy in her sleep.

"Aurora!" the voice was more urgent this time.

A man's voice.

Familiar.

Turning onto her back, Aurora struggled to sit up, and her eyes widened.

Standing in front of her was her father.

The girl shook her head, horrified. "No. You're... you're dead."

"What are you talking about?" Stefan asked, chuckling softly. "I'm not dead. Anyway, I thought I'd find you here. Come on, it's time to go."

"Go? Go where?" Aurora asked, pulling her hand away as he reached out for her.

"Back to the castle," he told her.

"No. I don't want to," she told him, shuffling up to the top bed, out of his grasp.

"Of course you do. You don't want to stay here, do you?" he asked, moving closer to her. "You don't belong here, Aurora."

"But I... I don't belong in the castle..." she told him.

"So then, where do you belong? In the moors, with the fairies?" Stefan suggested, before tossing back his head and laughing, almost hysterically.

Aurora opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

"Come over here, I've got something to show you," her father whispered, turning away from her and moving towards the window, shrouded by heavy, floor length curtains.

"What?" she asked, nervously.

A moment of silence followed, before King Stefan finally turned to face her, laughing again.

He held something up in his hand – something large, almost the same size as him, and he continued to laugh – a strange, guttural noise.

For a moment, Aurora squinted in the dark to make the object out.

And then she saw it.

She realised what her father was holding.

A pair of large, ebony wings.

With that, Aurora began to scream.

Ω Ω Ω Ω