Page 6 of Blood of the Fairest

At this point, I'm not entirely sure if I'm even me in this strange place.

What was this evil lady's name again? Queen…Rhinestone? Whatever it is, she might be a ruthless monster who isn't bothered by a little blood, but I am.

I'm practically allergic to gore, so for a second, all I can do is peek through my eyelashes at the morbid scene sprawled around me in this cemetery. I flap my sticky hands uselessly like that will somehow get the red stain off of them.

When I brace my palms on the ground to try to get up, I accidentally touch a pile of guts.

Very real, cooled-off, slippery guts.

That last piece of sensory fuck no drags me further out of shock. More hot tears crowd my eyes, but I take a deep, centering breath and get up off my ass.

"Okay, Vera," I begin, because a therapist once told me that talking to myself out loud might help me process trauma better. Something about distracting the rational part of my brain, not that I feel like it exists at the moment. "You're somehow in another world. You're the evil queen. And you're standing in the most gorgeous cemetery ever with three dead guys that you somehow murdered with your own blood."

Using the B-word was a big mistake, huge, because it only reminds me of what else I just did.

I guess the silver lining is that I'm no longer dying of thirst.

I start to keel over, gagging again at the thought before I give myself a hard shake.

"No. Get a grip. We have bigger problems, so we're going to pretend that did not just fucking happen. You can curl up in the fetal position and cry later, after you've fled the scene of the crime."

If this isn't the most detailed hallucination ever, and I really am the evil MILF in Snow White's fairy tale, I'm not sure if she would get in trouble for murdering three men, even if it was in self-defense during an assassination attempt.

I'm not sticking around to find out.

Cold and shaken to my core, I trudge over to where the horses are still tied to the wagon.

"I've never ridden a horse before," I tell one of them, just to see if they're witnesses. If this is a Narnia situation with talking animals, I'd rather know now. "What are the odds that I can hop up on your back without dying?"

The horse whinnies, tossing its hair.

That answers that question.

Deciding I'd rather not tackle horseback riding and world-hopping all in one day, I figure out how to untie the three horses and free them. Then I grab the thin blanket from the wagon to wrap myself up against the spring chill.

Ignoring my bare feet, I leave the hauntingly beautiful glass-filled cemetery. I turn right to follow the wide dirt road in the opposite direction the Three Stooges were driving earlier.

Snow-capped mountains loom like sculpted blue waves in the far distance. In front of them, a castle rises from the mists. Even from this far away, it's imposing with its sharp conical roofs and even a couple of bridges connecting some of the towers.

That must be the evil queen's—or, I guess, my—castle.

Maybe the queen has a spare pair of ruby slippers stashed away that I can tap together three times to go home.

I still don't remember what I was doing immediately before waking up in this living hell, but there has to be some way for me to return to my world.

I just have to survive long enough as Queen Rhinestone to find it.

For what feels like an eternity, I follow this road over the hills through mist while humming the random tune that gets stuck in my head so often. Finally, I startle when the single, low, heavy toll of a bell crests through the air. Searching for the source of the sound, I spot what looks like the start of a medieval town further down this road.

A few seconds later, the bell tolls again. After another long pause, there's another.

I hurry down the path. Soon, it winds past cottage-like houses with exposed timber frames painted various pastel shades. The further into town I get, the bigger and more beautiful the houses become.

That's when I start to notice all the glass everywhere. Almost every window is filled with intricate stained glass designs. Shards clink together in reflective wind chimes hanging beside doorways. Blown glass ornaments decorate small trees lining the now-cobbled street. Mirrors of various shapes and sizes are hung on every single door I pass, polished to a shine.

I approach one of the mirrored doors, curious to see what the evil bitch I've apparently possessed in Snow White's fairy tale looks like.

Maybe she's hideous. Or maybe she's gorgeous but terrifying, or she's plain and unassuming, or⁠—