Aurora stood in the throne room and stared at the empty seat where her father should have been. The velvet was rotted through. The wood beneath showed water damage in dark rings. She had woken three days ago to find the castle held by people she'd never met, people who called themselves governors and chancellors and spoke of treaties she'd never signed. They told her the kingdom had changed. They were right. She needed to see how much, and she needed to find the faerie who had done this. Both things mattered. Both things were possible. She walked the halls alone, counting what remained. In the east tower she found the spinning wheel that had cursed her, still wrapped in thorns and roses that had grown wild through the floorboards. Someone had tried to destroy it. The wheel was scorched black on one side, but the roses had protected it, thickening until the wood was buried. She touched a petal. It didn't crumble. Whatever magic had put her to sleep was still here, alive in the wood and stone. The chancellors had built monuments to themselves while she slept. In the courtyard stood a wooden statue of a woman Aurora didn't recognize, carved with vines and leaves, hands pressed together like a saint. The plaque called her the Elven Princess of the Glade, protector of the realm during the dark years. Aurora studied the face. It was beautiful and empty. Whoever this woman was, she'd claimed Aurora's kingdom and made it into something else. The statue would need to come down, but that could wait. First, Aurora needed a place to work. She found it on the border of the forest, a spiraling tower half-claimed by thorns and roses that matched the ones around the spinning wheel. The door was unlocked. Inside, the rooms were bare but sound, the windows faced the kingdom in all directions, and the air smelled like growth instead of rot. She dragged a table to the center of the main room and spread out the maps the chancellors had left behind. The borders were wrong. The roads had been moved. But she had the truth of the land in front of her now, and she had a place to begin.

Aurora was marking roads on the map when she heard the crack of wood splitting. She went to the window. The thorns from the east tower had reached the courtyard, dark vines thick as her wrist pushing through the stone. They were moving toward her tower. She could see them spreading, fast enough to watch. She grabbed what she could carry. The maps went into a leather case. The journals she'd started went on top. She looked around for anything else that mattered and saw nothing worth the time. The thorns had already covered the statue in the courtyard, wrapping the carved woman until only her face showed through the vines. Aurora didn't know how long she had before they reached the tower door. She descended the stairs and pushed through the entrance just as the first tendril reached the threshold. The thornfield stretched across the forest floor ahead of her, a massive tangle of blackened vines that had consumed trees and brush alike. She could see a path through it, narrow but clear, leading toward the old castle gates on the far side. The gates were buried in roses now, bright pink blooms covering the stone towers. She ran. The path closed behind her as she reached the gates. Thorns sealed the way back to her tower, cutting it off completely. She pushed against the rose-covered iron and it held. She pushed harder and felt it give slightly, the metal groaning beneath the vines. On the third push it swung open. Beyond the gates lay open ground, untouched by thorns. She had lost her tower, but she knew now that the curse was still growing. It had forced her out, and that meant it wanted something. She would need to find out what before it spread further.

Aurora climbed the hill beyond the gates to get a better view. The sun was coming up over the eastern ridge, throwing pale light across the castle below. She could see the thorns clearly now. They had broken through the east wing's outer wall during the night, splitting the stone like rotten wood. The vines were spreading east, away from the castle, toward the fields where the village began. She counted the distance in her mind. If they kept moving at the speed she'd seen yesterday, they would reach the first houses before midday. She needed to warn them. The village had no reason to believe the thorns were dangerous until they'd already arrived. She opened her leather case and pulled out the wand she'd taken from her aunt's old chambers, the one with the flower carved into the handle. It still held a trace of magic, enough to send a signal if she used it right. She pointed it toward the village and whispered the words her aunt had taught her when she was young. A pale yellow light shot up from the tip, arcing over the fields before bursting into bright sparks above the rooftops. The villagers would see it. They would know something was wrong. But warning them wasn't enough. She needed to see how fast the thorns were actually moving, and whether there was a pattern to their spread. She walked along the hillside until she found what she was looking for: a stone formation half-buried in the earth, arranged in a circle with symbols carved into the flat surface. She'd seen it marked on one of the old maps as a summoning site, though she didn't know if it still worked. She stepped into the center and looked down at the castle and the fields beyond. From here she could see everything. The thorns spreading toward the village gates. The speed of their movement. The way they avoided certain areas and consumed others. She watched for an hour as the sun climbed higher. The thorns reached the village gates just before noon, wrapping around the wooden posts and climbing the frame. But they stopped there. They didn't push through. She could see people gathering on the other side, keeping their distance but not fleeing. The curse wasn't trying to destroy the village. It was marking a boundary. Aurora pulled out her journal and sketched the line where the thorns had halted, noting the gates and the position of the houses beyond. She didn't know why the curse had drawn this line, but now she knew where it was. That was something she could work with.

Aurora stepped closer to the carvings at the edge of the summoning circle. Most of them were worn smooth by weather and time, but one section was protected by an overhang of rock. She knelt down and brushed away the dirt with her hand. The symbols underneath were still sharp. She recognized the pattern immediately. A rose intertwined with a spindle, exactly like the one carved into the side of the cursed wheel in the east tower. She'd seen it on her sixteenth birthday, right before the prick that sent her into sleep. Her chest tightened. This wasn't just an old summoning site. The faerie had been here. She'd worked her magic at this exact spot, maybe even prepared the curse before bringing it to the castle. Aurora traced the carving with her fingers, feeling the grooves cut deep into the stone. The faerie had meant for this to last. She stood and looked around the ruins more carefully. The stone formations weren't natural. They'd been quarried and shaped, then arranged in a deliberate circle. Columns rose at four points, carved with more symbols she didn't recognize. Between two of the columns, half-hidden in the grass, she found a wand. It was different from her aunt's—longer, with vines carved into the wood and small crystals embedded along its length. She picked it up carefully. The magic in it was old but not dead. She could feel it humming faintly against her palm. This had belonged to the faerie. She was certain of it. Aurora pulled out her journal and sketched the symbol from the stone, then wrapped the wand in a cloth and tucked it into her pack. She had a direction now. The faerie had left traces, and those traces could be followed. She looked back toward the village gates where the thorns had stopped. The boundary made sense now. The curse wasn't random. It had been planned here, at this site, with intention behind every part of it. Aurora didn't know what that intention was yet, but she knew where to look for answers. She turned and started walking back toward the castle, her steps steadier than they'd been in days.