Summer

1. THE SEVEN – 7 AM

Snuggled. Cradled. Entombed.

Beneath a heavy, suffocating mound of goose-down pillows wrapped in cold silk, Summer peels away her Royal Blue Velvet eye mask. She plucks the silicone earplugs from her ears, and immediately, The Silence of the Castle rushes in to fill the void. It is a heavy, ancient silence. A silence that presses against the eardrums like deep water. She slips her pale arms into a long, blood-red velvet dressing gown, her reflection in the darkened mirror looking less like a bride and more like a wound.

She shuffles across the sprawling expanse of the mahogany floor, her bare feet shrinking from the icy touch of the wood, toward the massive white casement windows. The Castle is a stone beast, holding its breath.

On cue, as if summoned by the striking of an invisible, melancholic clock, THE SEVEN march out. They emerge silently from the crumbling stone of the caretaker's cottage and move toward the West Wing. No modern hard hats. No steel-toed boots. They are wild things, possessing long, scruffy hair and unkempt, tangled beards. It has been days, perhaps weeks, since they have slept. It has definitively been a lifetime since they last washed. The scent of them—sweat, wet earth, and crushed stone—drifts up to her balcony. Yet, they work with a feral, terrifying twinkle in their eyes. Drilling, hammering, and banging with all their dwarf might, chipping away at the rotting foundations of her gilded cage.

Summer unlatches the heavy iron lock of the window. She forces it open to allow the fresh, crisp morning breeze to cut through the stuffy, stale air of her renaissance bedroom. The room smells of dried lavender, old wax, and The Waiting.

She leans over the stone parapet to take a better look at the SEVEN men. With their rusted hammers, splintered buckets, and heavy iron spades, they diligently and vibrantly tear the Castle apart for her, day and night.

Since moving in the day after her picture-perfect, flashbulb-blinded mid-May Wedding, Summer has survived only by watching THE SEVEN follow their daily rites. Her life inside the Castle is hyper-controlled, utterly uneventful. Her life is a terrifying, luxurious Mundane. Observing them in secret for the last SEVEN months has been the only tether keeping her from sprinting barefoot into the freezing, jagged maw of the dark winter night.

She is Snow White in a mausoleum. Day and night, Summer fantasizes about their secret, unique powers. In her mind, they are not mere contractors; they are her sweet saviours, destined to tunnel through the stone and whisk her away into the blinding light of a Happily-Ever-After. Other times, as the shadows grow long and clawed across her bedroom floor, she imagines they are His wicked slayers, sent by the Castle itself to bury her in the walls while she sleeps. Either way, she is deeply, desperately grateful for their presence. Their busy, dirty lives, their imagined stories, and their rhythmic banging keep the creeping madness at bay. They keep her from climbing onto this stone ledge and throwing herself into the courtyard grave below.

2. SNOW WHITE – 8 AM

The heavy, bruised fog covering the estate begins to lift, rolling back like a damp shroud. A singular, piercing ray of morning sun peeks through the grey. It catches the perfect, fancy- intense seven-carat pink diamond on her left hand. The stone erupts in a blinding, fractured prism of pink light, stabbing her sleepy eyes and bolting her to The Reality That She Is In.

Summer narrows her eyes against the glare and marvels at the fairest land. As far as her eyes can see, it is all hers, and it is all a prison. The perfectly trimmed secret maze gardens that twist like green intestines; the endless, skeletal rows of dormant grapevines; and, at the furthest outskirts of the property, The Border. It is a boundary meant to keep everything inside, forged from the most profound, impenetrable, blackish-green pine forest she has ever seen.

She does not know what lies rotting in those woods. She has never been permitted to venture that far. She knows that Paris is only two hours away. She can feel it, vibrating in the distance, awaiting her return. She remembers The Before. The thumping, bass-heavy music. The blinding strobe of the cameras. The dizzying, narrow runways that once formed the spine of her life. It was that life of hollow glamour that had delivered The Prince Charming to her, wrapped in tailored suits and cold, calculated delight.

But after all she now knows, after the coldness she has experienced, would she ever be able to go back? Could she un-drink the poison?

Summer drifts away from the window and sits at her antique, gold-leafed vanity. The mirror is tarnished around the edges, speckled with black mould like a disease. Her two best friends await her on the cold marble top. Two pre-filled plastic syringes lie parallel next to her velvet jewellery box. One is thick with Progesterone, the amber oil designed to force her body to keep His baby alive. The other, the doctors whisper, is The Miracle Potion—a synthetic, burning cocktail designed to sculpt the genetics, to override the natural order and create the superhuman heir that The Prince demands.

Her nosey handmaiden—a girl no older than Summer, yet possessing the cold, dead eyes of a zealot forever pleasing His Highness—always places the needles in the exact same geometric alignment just before Summer wakes. The Ritual. Summer has endured so many of them that she no longer flinches. With numb, mechanical precision, she wipes her upper thigh with alcohol, pinches the pale flesh, and drives the steel into the muscle. The burn is the only thing she feels all day.

How happy she should be. She is an incubator for a dynasty. The most promising little boy, meticulously selected in a sterile laboratory, is currently taking root in her dark womb. The Prince had made The Rules clear from the very beginning. The first two permitted to grow inside her would be boys. Strong. Unblemished. Until the youngest boy turned four, there would be no talk, no thought, no dreaming of a little girl. Only after two boys had been secured would she be allowed the daughter she so desperately starves for. A girl to be her mirror. A girl to hold her hand in this dark den.

She expects Him tomorrow. The Prince. He will arrive like a sudden frost to take her to her doctor for more probing, more measuring, more checking of the structural integrity of his vessel. He was there, standing in the shadows of the clinic, to ensure the right male egg was implanted. But he did not hold her hand. He did not brush the hair from her sweating forehead. He did not tell her it would be alright. That is not His Style.

Since that clinical day, he has retreated into the dark, vanishing into his corporate empire, waiting for his first heir to pop out like a minted coin. Maybe when the blood is washed away, things will change. Maybe once he sees her holding the boy, playing the Good Mummy, he will finally play The Father in this gothic charade. She will love his boys. She will bring them up admirably against the creeping damp of the stone walls. Perhaps His Highness will suddenly learn to smile.

He will stay the weekend to audit her progress, to ensure she has been an obedient, quiet little girl, and then he will vanish back to his business engagements abroad by Monday morning. Two whole days together. How will she cope with the suffocating silence between them? They have barely spoken since he drove her through the iron gates and made this decaying Castle her home.

Down in the courtyard, The Foreman marches to the front of the pack. Summer believes his round, cracked spectacles and long, flowing white beard make him the wisest of the bunch. Even though she has heard him stumble over his English when arguing with her terrified interior designer, she has seen how he commands HIS SEVEN with sharp, guttural barks in their native tongue.

They look up to him with a feral devotion. In her starved, isolated eyes, The Foreman has become the all-wise, the all-knowing anchor. He is a father to the wild men, and in the dark theatre of her mind, a father to her. One by one, she watches them waddle inside the heavy oak doors to begin the day’s destruction at nine.

Now, they are out of sight. Swallowed by the Castle. But never out of her mind.

3. THE CASTLE – 9 AM

The Tiler scuttles out the back door clutching his first broken tile of the day. He is the clumsiest of the lot, a twitching, nervous creature. On average, he sneaks out into the gardens with shards of broken ceramic tucked into his ragged pockets several times a day. Summer has never actually witnessed him break anything, but from her high tower, she has been lucky enough to watch him bury his failures in the dirt. She has never heard him speak a single word. She deeply appreciates his silence. It is a soft, thoughtful silence, unlike the crushing silence of the house.

She knows she should have reported him to her husband months ago. The bleeding of funds, the fractured, obscenely expensive Italian tiles—it might be the very reason their endless renovations have dragged on like a chronic illness. But it is their Little Secret. She relishes the guessing game it forces her to play to pass the hours: How many pieces will he break and bury today?

Once, a mysterious fire had broken out in the caretaker's house. From her high vantage point, peering through the casement glass, Summer had seen The Tiler standing near the flames, his hands covered in soot. He was the one who started it. But his sweet, soot- stained face and shy, trembling mannerisms made it too easy to forgive him. Too easy to keep this dark spark between them. So many secrets in just six months. The Castle is bloated with dirty little secrets she must hide in the folds of her velvet gown. Mysteries are the only things keeping her heart beating.

Summer strips off the nightgown and puts on the shapeless, muted clothes laid out for her by the handmaiden. She steps out of her bedroom and begins her daily wandering through the dark, cavernous corridor.

The corridor is a physical weight. It is haunted by the Hideous Ancestors. Dozens of towering, oil-painted family portraits stare down at her from the peeling damask walls. They possess nasty, pinched faces. Frightfully deformed features—heavy brows, cruel mouths, and eyes too close together, ruined by centuries of aristocratic inbreeding. Looking at their sallow, painted skin, it is no wonder His Highness was so desperate to find a young, beautiful outsider. He was looking for magical, fresh blood to scrub all these monstrous, rotting genetics away. She is the bleach for his family tree.

She cannot wait for her dwarfs to drag their hammers up to this floor. She cannot wait for them to rip the plaster from the lath, to tear down these rotting walls and make the monstrous, staring eyes disappear.

With over twenty-four bedrooms, ten sitting rooms, and double the staff moving like silent ghosts to manage the estate, Summer initially had her hands full trying to understand how this sinking Titanic stayed afloat. In the early days, designing the renovations for their "growing modern family" had consumed her. Before he proposed, he had drawn up the contract: Four Children. No more, no less. So, the West Wing renovations commenced first. They needed a nursery, a playroom, and a classroom. More importantly, these rooms needed to be located as physically far away from The Prince’s private chambers as the architecture allowed. Therefore, the sprawling, drafty West Wing was sacrificed to his future heirs.

Summer understood the transaction now. The main currency of their marriage was her beauty. She knew that if she let that beauty fade, if the Castle drained the light from her skin, he would throw her away like a broken tile. A proper, state-of-the-art indoor gym and a heated lap pool were currently being ripped into the East Wing extension. It is where she plans to spend most of her days, running on a treadmill to nowhere. None of these things— the obsessive calorie counting, the forced fitness—were ever necessary to her in The Before. These were the neuroses her Mother had cared for. But now, trapped in this gothic bargain, keeping her flesh taut has become her desperate, singular obsession.

She descends the grand staircase to the ground floor. Walking through the main entertaining areas, she is hit by it. Dracula's Stench. It is a smell of wet ash, decaying velvet, and metallic, dried blood that lingers in the floorboards, as if a monster had been a permanent resident here for the past five centuries. It all has to be gutted. It needs white paint, blinding light, modern glass.

She steps into the music room. It is a cavern of dark mahogany and depressing, melancholic echoes. If these walls could sing, Summer thinks, tracing her hand over the cold wood panelling, they would scream. There are bodies buried alive inside the mortar.

The dining room will be the last to change. It is too vast, too dreary, too soaked in shadows to ever invite any of her vibrant, hollow fashion friends over. Oh, how they keep calling. How they keep pestering her digital ghost on social media. She checks her phone, staring at a designer's rendering of the new nursery, a cold, sterile digital file titled image_ee68c4.png, before opening her messages. Ever since she stopped posting six times a day, the outside world has started to smell the rot. Occasionally she replies, typing lies to the ones who once felt like friends: All is good! We'll have you over soon. We've been so busy making babies.

In the first few months, Summer had sat at the head of the massive table with architects and interior designers, proudly overlooking the blueprints while His Highness was missing from her side. At first, she mistook his absence for trust. Her Mother had warned her over the phone: It’s a good sign, Summer. Don't ask questions. Be a good girl. Keep your mouth shut. He wanted her to build a nest. But now, six months in, with the walls torn open and the dust settling in her lungs, his total abandonment does not feel like a good sign. It feels like a burial. No one needs or wants her input anymore. The architects bypass her. The handmaiden orchestrates her day. Even her Mother is suddenly always too busy to answer the phone. Summer is entirely alone with her SEVEN dwarfs.

The silent, spectral Butler pulls out a heavy, carved chair in the dining room and gestures for her to sit. Breakfast is served.

The Diet is the law. Everything placed on the silver tray is fresh, organic, stripped of joy, and meticulously proportioned so her body remains an optimal, sterile incubator for the nine months ahead. The Doctors and The Nutritionists are the high priests of her body now. No sugar. No red meat. No ice cream. No soft drinks. A sweeping, punishing No to nearly everything. Even during her most ruthless modelling days in Paris, Summer never endured such a militant regime. She used to eat anything and remain long, thin, and alive.

And then there are The Pills. Her day is punctuated by the swallowing of pills. Green ones for folic acid, white ones for calcium, red ones for things they won't fully explain. Her biological clock has been hijacked, composing a chemical symphony that changes rhythm depending on which tablet she is popping. She dances in her head to its dizzying, drug- induced beats. Yes, she wears the title of the Madam of the House, but she holds no keys. She has no say in how the beast is run, and even less power when His Highness is away. She sees the way the estate staff looks at her from the corners of their eyes. She isn't fooling anyone. They know she is a commoner. Worse, an American. Just a pretty, imported vessel.

Suddenly, the lights go out.

The hum of the refrigerators dies. The Castle is plunged into a suffocating, pitch- black darkness.

Instantly, the air changes. The staff are triggered into a state of high alert. Ever since she began the aggressive course of fertility injections, the mandate was absolute: Nothing is to happen to Summer. His Highness had explicitly ordered the staff to keep her practically bedridden while he was away. He wants all her eggs, her entire genetic potential, hoarded for himself. In an emergency, she is the priority asset to be secured. In the dark, they treat her not like a queen, but like a glass vial on the verge of shattering. Like a woman already on her deathbed.

A match flares. The Butler appears from the shadows holding a single, flickering candelabra. He does not speak, but firmly takes her elbow, guiding her slowly, agonizingly out of the dark dining room, through the heavy doors, and out onto the stone patio.

The morning sun hits her skin. Vitamin D, the doctors had commanded. Only the Sun will make the vessel strong. The Butler insists she sit in the wrought-iron patio chair and remain strictly seated until the darkness inside is cured.

She exhales, the breath pluming slightly in the crisp air. She has been confined inside the belly of the beast for far too long. It is overwhelmingly lovely to be outside. To be momentarily discarded, left alone to simply look at the sprawling, overgrown gardens.

From around the corner of the West Wing, The Electrician comes sprinting out onto the lawn. His hair is a mad, frizzy halo of static, and a devilish, booming laughter erupts from his chest. He has blown a main fuse and has, evidently, been electrocuted yet again.

Whenever Summer hears his wild, contagious laughter echoing off the ancient stone, she cannot help but laugh aloud herself. It is a desperate, slightly hysterical sound. She finds it beautifully, darkly hilarious how he constantly seeks out the live wires, finding new and inventive ways to get shocked each day. She only prays it doesn't take him days to fix the grid this time. Once, early in the renovations, the Castle had plunged into darkness for an entire week. The staff had locked her in her room the whole time for her "safety." She had sat in the suffocating dark, watching the shadows dance, burning through hundreds and hundreds of candlesticks, waiting for the dwarfs to save her.

4. THE PRINCE – 10 AM

The Carpenter steps out of the gloom, sneezing with the violence of a dying man. He exhales a cloud of ancient, pulverized wood and the dried, powdered rot of centuries. Finishing off her first and only allowed coffee for the day—a bitter, black thimbleful—Summer observes his bloodshot eyes and the raw, irritated flesh of his nose. She knows that he will now sneeze all day long, hacking up the ghosts of the Castle. She wonders why he ever took this job, why any of them did. He spends more time wiping his face with a filthy rag than he does swinging his hammer.

"Bless you," Summer whispers to the glass pane each time his shoulders heave. She casts the words down into the courtyard, a desperate currency, hoping that one of her blessings might bounce off the cobblestones and rub off onto her own cursed life. It wasn't Love at First Sight. Love was a concept too large, too messy for The Arrangement. Her lips were as red as freshly sliced roses the day His Highness was presented to her on her twenty-first birthday. Summer hadn't taken any notice of him. He was a shadow in a tailored suit. Too old, too severe, and she was still too sweet, too strictly pruned by her Mother’s shears to recognize the heavy, wet weight of his intentions. That, she supposed, was precisely why he remembered her more than a year later. Why he sent the black cars. Why he chased the scent of her naivety.

He wanted something Pure. But by the time he finally cornered her, she was not the same porcelain doll he had met at that birthday gala. The Road, The Circus of Fashion, the glamorous, flash-blinded Whorehouse of the runway had tarnished her soul. The edges of her spirit had begun to curl and brown.

Her hair was dyed as black as polished ebony when she finally surrendered and allowed him to take her out during Paris Fashion Week. She was exhausted. Tired of the strobe lights, tired of the hollow, echoing parties she had to navigate alone, surrounded by wolves with expense accounts. She was ready for an Anchor. Yes, he was a notorious predator of young women; but her Mother did not care about the teeth. She only cared about the gold they were capped in. He was a French Aristocrat. Old Blood. He would elevate them from the mud. But, sooner or later, a King must take a Queen, because a King must have an Heir.

Her days on the catwalk were already numbering themselves. The Clock of Flesh was ticking. Younger, tighter, firmer girls with vacant eyes and desperate mothers were flooding the ranks, snatching her campaigns, accepting the diamonds from her admirers, stealing the Sugar Daddies that were supposed to be Forever Daddies. Her Mother, smelling the rot of aging, was right. Summer needed to secure the ring now, or end up an old, discarded hag haunting the VIP lounges.

Play this one safely, her Mother had hissed into her ear, gripping her arm tight enough to bruise. He is French, so you cannot be loud. You cannot be too American. You must be the whisper. You make him wait. You be the Virgin Snow. Summer had played the role with such terrifying, hollow perfection that it led her straight down the silk-draped aisle and into the cold expanse of the Wedding Bed.

Leaving the window, Summer sneaks away from the mansion and slips into the forbidden, overgrown orchards. The Castle grounds are a rotting Eden. Walking past the grand, empty stables, a memory surfaces, sharp and uninvited. She remembers the day His Highness first brought her here. Her skin had been as white as crushed snow the afternoon she finally permitted him to make love to her in the sterile, air-conditioned stateroom of his superyacht. The transaction was complete. The very next morning, he had whisked her here in the deafening roar of his private helicopter. The first kingdom he showed her was not the house, but these stables.

He loved horses. He loved the domination of massive, powerful beasts.

She had fallen in love with the smell of the hay, the warm, muscular heat of the animals. She had pictured herself here, laughing, mud on her boots, escaping the heavy silence of the Castle. She possessed a fierce, unexpected passion for them, even though she had never sat in a saddle. When the handsome, sun-browned Trainer offered to teach her how to ride, joy had bloomed in her chest like a sudden weed.

She now knows that the joy was her first crime. His Highness did not like the way The Trainer looked at her. He did not like the flush in her cheeks, the way her breath caught with excitement at another man's instruction. Jealousy, she realized, was the black mold that ran through His Highness’s veins. It was the reason he had never settled down; he could not bear to share even a fraction of a smile.

A week after she moved in, her handmaiden whispered that The Trainer had been expelled. Vanished. Replaced. All the staff managing the beasts were now female, invisible, and silent. And the stables themselves were declared a Contaminated Zone. Out of bounds. Locked away. He promised she could learn to ride, but only after she delivered him a second son.

I am doing this for your own good, Summer. I don't want you to break. You are far too precious a vessel to me.

He didn't want the astronomical odds of conceiving perfect, genetically superior boys ruined by a shattered pelvis or a traumatic fall. At first, it sounded like a blanket of warm, protective love. But it was not a blanket. It was a shroud.

It wasn't long after that realization that she found herself walking down the aisle of the estate’s private chapel, tears blurring the stained glass, saying I Do to a stranger’s shadow. In the glossy pages of the tabloids, Summer was declared The Luckiest Woman on Earth at twenty-three. Her hollow friends choked on their jealousy. She had snapped up the wealthiest, most elusive bachelor without batting a mascaraed eyelash. Her Mother had wept tears of absolute, victorious greed.

Summer should have recognized The Flaw when she realized a man of his vast empire had never married, never sired a single bastard child. But her Mother had framed it as the ultimate triumph. No ex-wives. No complicated trusts. No competition. Your firstborn gets the Kingdom.

How catastrophically wrong she had been. There would always be competition. An endless, revolving door of naughty and nice women waiting for him in the penthouses of every port city he visited. And once the ink on the marriage certificate dried, Summer’s passport was effectively revoked. She was grounded. Confined to the Castle until the First Heir was safely extracted from her womb. To keep you healthy and strong, he had lied smoothly. Six months into this gothic sham, she understands it has nothing to do with Love. It is Quarantine. He is locking the incubator in a vault.

"My lady!"

Summer flinches. The Handmaiden is rushing into the orchard, her footsteps silent on the damp grass. Before Summer can protest, the girl reaches out and forcibly takes the woven basket from her hands. It is filled with perfectly round, blood-red, juicy apples Summer had meticulously gathered from the lowest branches.

Summer reaches for the handle, her knuckles white. "I can carry them."

The Handmaiden steps back, her eyes flat and dead. "You are not permitted to carry weight, my lady."

The Handmaiden seizes Summer’s elbow with a grip that borders on martial, steering her away from the trees and back toward the stone prison. Summer has tried, in her desperate, starving loneliness, to crack the ice of this girl.

"Is the electricity working yet?" Summer asks, her voice trembling slightly. "Yes, it is, my lady." "Great. I... I would like to bake an apple pie today." "I will inform the Head Cook to prepare the apple pie for you." "No," Summer pleads, the desperation leaking out. "I want to do it. I would like to try to cook for His Highness myself." The Handmaiden does not break stride. "Until you are a Mother, it is mandated that you relax. You are to leave everything else to us. Your only task is to grow."

They reach the courtyard just as The Plumber bursts from the Castle's heavy oak doors. He is stinky, soaked in blackish water, smelling of sulphur and centuries of decay. He collides with Summer, and for a fleeting, electric second, they share a moment of frantic humanity. She admires his rosy, dirt-streaked face and his shy, apologetic smile. The Plumber is, without question, her favourite of the Dwarfs. He spends his days chest-deep in the Castle's bowels, unblocking arteries that have been clogged since the Renaissance.

And he is a finder of The Lost Things. He discovers forgotten treasures trapped in the rusted iron pipes—things flushed away by panicked queens and sickened countesses. Treasures that Summer finds a way to sneak into her own pockets. She keeps them hidden beneath her four-poster bed, stuffed inside a leather suitcase that is perpetually packed and waiting for the night she finally summons the courage to flee. Her most prized possession is a tarnished, ruby-encrusted tiara from 1876. It belonged to a forgotten princess relative who was locked in the West Wing until leprosy ate away her face and her life.

She knows The Plumber knows she steals his finds. As the Handmaiden pulls her away, the wet, dirty man gives Summer a quick, conspiratorial wink before plunging back into the dark to hunt for more blockages.

5. THE MOTHER – 11 AM

Back in her suffocating bedroom, Summer presses her forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching The Roofer. He is sprawled flat on his back on the precipice of the slate roof, fast asleep in the weak midday sun. She longs to join him in that oblivion. To close her eyes and never wake up from this gilded, never-ending nightmare her Mother had auctioned her into.

This is not the first time she has observed The Roofer napping on the edge of the abyss. He is up there most days, a careless gargoyle. She is profoundly amazed by how unafraid he is of the drop. Of slipping into the gravel grave that is always, always lurking in the shadows below. She wonders what demons chase him at night that leave him so exhausted during the day.

Her Mother’s singular, obsessive goal from the moment Summer took her first breath was to Marry Wealth. Wealth was the bleach that would scrub away their petty, common troubles. Summer was raised exclusively on Prince Charming and Happily-Ever-Afters. They were the only theology her Mother permitted in the house. At fourteen, before her bones had even finished growing, her Mother shoved her violently into the meat grinder of the modelling world. Summer never saw the jaws of the trap. She only did what she was told. At sixteen came The Sculpting. Her Mother purchased her the perfect, aristocratic slope of a nose and two perfect, symmetrical breasts. Everything on the outside must be flawless, Summer. External perfection is the bait for The Prince. Her Mother operated as the puppet master. She did all the talking, all the vicious negotiating, all the relentless flirting. She took all the late-night, vodka-soaked meetings with photographers and agents that brought her stumbling back to their hotel rooms in the early hours of the morning.

When the demand for Summer’s face spiked and she began traveling America, her Mother unilaterally pulled her out of high school. "No billionaire wants a smart girl," she had spat, packing Summer’s bags. "They want them travelled. They want them worldly. Books will just give you wrinkles." Summer had harboured quiet, desperate dreams of reading literature. Of lockers, of Prom, of the mundane sanctuary of college. But her Mother had never finished school because her belly had swelled with Summer. And so, Summer was forced to inherit the sacrifice. She played along, swallowing the lie that education was a waste of a pretty face.

By eighteen, she was idolized in Asia. By twenty, she was conquering the European circuit. This was the hunting ground. This was where her Mother had intended for them to end up all along. By this point, Summer was acutely aware that her Mother had pulled countless strings—and stroked countless egos—to secure her place. But the true, horrifying depths of her Mother’s manipulation remained hidden in the dark, because her Mother had been her impenetrable shield until then.

At twenty, Summer had found a sliver of normalcy. A stable relationship with a boy for over a year. He was only the third man she had ever allowed into her bed. She had strictly adhered to The Rules: Make them wait three months, Summer. Starve them, and they will be yours for life. It had worked. Until her Mother left her side.

Everyone in the industry adored Summer because of the fragile, untouched innocence her Mother had manufactured for her. But the moment she was left alone in Paris, the facade cracked. She had just executed the most breathtaking walk of her life. Every Parisian designer, every cutthroat agent, every magazine editor with a cocaine habit wanted her. But He wasn't by her side. Her boyfriend was supposed to be waiting at the end of the runway with a velvet box. His friends had sworn he was ready to surrender his playboy crown for her. But the seat remained empty. He ghosted her at Paris Fashion Week. Her Mother, calling from across the ocean, blamed Summer entirely for failing to close the deal.

That year alone on the road changed her. The Circus sharpened her teeth. She had no trouble snapping up wealthy men to fill the void, moving from one silk-sheeted bed to the next. But the innocence was gone. She was aging in dog years. She was no longer the Pure Catch after being photographed on the yachts of notorious party boys. She was teetering dangerously on the edge of becoming Old Goods.

The panic set in. Her hollow roommates advised another nose job, a sharpening of the jawline. They introduced her to the needles—monthly fillers to artificially plump the youth back into her lips. Her agent aggressively stripped her identity, changing her hair colour weekly to book more eccentric, desperate gigs. From bruised blue to cotton-candy pink. From rich auburn to a bleached, dead blonde. Her once-famous, milky-white skin—the skin that had made oligarchs weak at the knees—was now chemically choked, sprayed weekly with St. Tropez Golden Number Five.

In that frantic, single year, wandering the absolute peak of high fashion, she finally saw the industry for what it truly was: an International Whorehouse. Girls of fourteen and sixteen were being routinely, casually pimped off to leering, wealthy men thrice their age. She had been blind to it at the beginning because her Mother had been the one whoring herself out to protect Summer’s purity. But now, exposed and alone, without her Mother to absorb the sleaze, Summer was faced with an ultimatum: join the meat market, or be discarded on the bench.

The younger they were, the prettier they were, the more terrifyingly innocent they were—the more they were devoured by the men funding the escapade. Her Mother had been right about one thing: this was where all the rich men lived. The Prince Charming’s. But she had lied about the nature of the princes. They were ancient, they were slick with sleaze, and they were relentlessly unfaithful. The fairytales did not exist here. There were only Devils in tailored suits, hiding their horns, waiting to rip apart the souls of the girls they lured into the dark with the promise of gold.

Summer pulls her eyes from the sleeping Roofer and picks up her phone. She scrolls mindlessly through her Instagram feed. She watches the ghosts of her past—her friends, now considered too withered at twenty-five to walk a catwalk or grace a cover—whoring themselves out as digital influencers, selling detox teas and fake smiles just to pay rent. Below her window, The Painter is screaming in rapid, furious French. He wears his signature white bandana and paint-splattered, excessively baggy jeans. He possesses an enormous nose and a temper to match. Like a stereotype made flesh, he is endlessly complaining. Every single shade of white she selects for the nursery, he violently refuses. The terrified Interior Designer is constantly begging Summer to compromise to appease him. She has surrendered so many battles just to keep him from walking off the job. He knows her husband would rain hellfire down if the timeline was delayed, and he wields that leverage like a weapon. He makes her blood boil. But the secret, shameful truth is that this friction is the only thing she truly enjoys anymore. If he didn't fight her, if he didn't force her to feel anger, she would dissolve into the wallpaper. He drives her mad, but that madness keeps her sane. She knows, with a profound sadness, that she will miss his temper most of all when the Castle is finished and silence reigns again.

Suddenly, a heavy, purring hum vibrates through the glass.

Summer freezes. She needs her SEVEN now more than ever.

Crawling up the long, gravel driveway is His Highness’s black Phantom Rolls-Royce. It slithers toward the Castle like a hearse.

He's early. He wasn't supposed to arrive until tomorrow morning. Panic flutters in her throat like a trapped bird. Are they to have lunch together? Has the kitchen been warned? Does the entire staff know again, leaving me as the only blind fool in the house?

Maybe, her desperate heart whispers, maybe he is coming back to her permanently. Maybe he is finally exhausted by his other lives, his other women, and is ready to settle into the nest. She has obeyed every command. She has swallowed every pill. Maybe he finally sees her.

Down in the courtyard, The Butler and the senior staff are already assembling, forming a rigid, terrified line to greet their King. Summer turns from the window. She must prepare for the performance. She wasn't ready for this curveball, but the choreography is drilled into her marrow. She will paint on the White-As-Snow face he demands. She will artificially flush her cheeks with rouge and paint her lips the color of fresh blood. They will perform the pantomime of dining and wining. And then they will retreat to their separate, sprawling chambers until the sun rises. Tomorrow, he will drag her to the sterile clinic, where men in masks will stick more steel needles into her flesh to see if she is capable of bearing his legacy.

Through the glass, Summer watches the SEVEN little men drop their tools. They shuffle into a haphazard line near the staff. She wonders, truly wonders, where they came from. Why had The Prince been so fiercely adamant about employing this specific, feral crew of men for the renovations?

But she pushes the question away. She is not ready for reality today. It is infinitely easier to assign them the roles of magical saviours than to face the cold, unyielding nightmare that awaits her in the years to come.

The Rolls-Royce glides to a halt. The back passenger window is already rolled down. He is not alone.

Summer’s breath stops. A woman in the backseat has just finished giving His Highness a slow, methodical blowjob. The Prince leans back against the leather, his face slack with satisfaction, and thanks the woman with a deep, passionate kiss.

From her high tower, Summer cannot see the woman's face.

Down below, the Dwarfs all look up simultaneously. SEVEN pairs of eyes lock onto Summer’s pale face pressed against the glass. They know.

The Butler steps forward and pulls open the heavy door for the mystery woman. In her gut, a cold, ancient dread uncoils. She knows exactly who is going to step out. The Mirror had warned her. The creeping paranoia of the older woman who had been orchestrating her life, selling her piece by piece for years.

A high heel touches the gravel. A long crimson dress flows from the car.

Her Mother steps out into the blinding, unforgiving midday sun, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

6. THE BABY – 12 PM

There is no turning back. The trap has sprung. She signed her life away to the ink when she whispered, "I do." She had walked into the slaughterhouse without a prenup, playing the role of the naive, brainwashed Mommy’s Little Girl to perfection. She thought she was in Love, or at least, she believed in the stupid, glittering fairytale her Mother had surgically implanted in her brain from birth. His Highness needed a young, pure vessel for his billions; her Mother was too old, too ruined to give him an Heir, but she could give him her daughter. That was the transaction. She was the currency. She had signed on the dotted line.

Her future flashes behind her eyes like a strobe light. Only a few more clinical jabs to go, and she would have His Heir locked inside of her. Only a few more months of hammering, and the renovations would cease. She will be pregnant with the Golden Son. Once the boy is born, safe and breathing, he will inherit the earth. And then, armed with her SEVEN, she fantasizes about eradicating them all. The Prince. The Mother. The Castle. Only a few more months left of this suffocating charade. Only a few more months until she becomes The Mother, the untouchable matriarch of this dark parade. Only a few more months, and she will seize Snow White's Happily-Ever-After, even if she must pry it from their cold, dead hands.

The Hospital is a temple of sterility. It smells of sharp chemical antiseptics and the depressing, tasteless lemon jellies brought to patients in the recovery wards. The bitter, alcoholic scent burns the inside of Summer's nose as she lies flat on her back on the mechanized medical bed. Her legs are pried open, strapped high into cold metal stirrups. A rough, paper-like blue cloth is draped over her knees, brushing uncomfortably against her bare skin.

She can feel the weight of the nurses' stares. Their eyes crawl over her exposed flesh like dozens of tiny, clicking insects, latching onto her body, trying to nibble their way through her humanity. There are far too many nurses in this room. Summer is certain no ordinary patient receives this morbid audience. But His Highness has paid exorbitantly to ensure she is "special" here, turning her medical procedure into a crowded, VIP spectacle. A brutally thin steel needle breaches her body. Summer feels a deep, sharp pinch deep inside the dark between her legs. It isn't blindingly painful, but it is a profound, invasive discomfort. They are mining her. Taking her eggs out into the cold air to be collected, graded, and judged. She feels completely hollowed out. Someone has broken into her home. It is deeply sad and quietly humiliating—a room full of masked strangers altering and invading her deepest biology without her genuine, soulful permission.

But she knows she cannot scream. She cannot blame them. She had never explicitly said Yes to the man, but she had never possessed the courage to say No, either.

The ultrasound machine emits a rhythmic, hollow beep. Blended, grainy dark images swim on the monitor—a topographical map of her insides that Summer cannot decipher. The nurses hold their collective breath as the needle searches. Summer refuses to look. She stares blankly up at the perfectly, violently white ceiling tiles. There is no husband sitting on a stool beside her. No one is holding her sweating hand. No one is gently caressing her shivering shoulder. In this blindingly bright room packed with people, she is floating in an ocean of absolute isolation.

The needle slides out of her flesh, only to plunge back in again, digging into the other ovary. These fifteen minutes stretch and warp, feeling like a geological eternity. It is as if time itself has frozen, dropping the entire world into a soundless, airless, dark vacuum. No one in the room notices the single, hot tear that silently breaches her eyelashes and rolls down into her hairline.

Finally, the mining is complete. The Harvest is over. The head doctor gives her thigh a slight, clinical tap. She turns her head and glances at the plastic tube. Inside, suspended in fluid, are her eggs.

Now, they will be rushed into the dark, sterile laboratory to be violently mixed with His sperm. The waiting begins. She has twenty-four hours to bleed and rest before she must return to this cold, stiff bed, open her legs again, and allow the scientists to insert the "Best- Fertilized Egg" back into her darkness. Within twenty-four hours, the trap will be permanently sealed. She will be pregnant.

Summer shivers, sliding her thin white hospital gown down over her bruised thighs. She watches the senior nurse carefully, reverently taking the vial of eggs out of the room. For one breathless, treacherous moment, Summer prays for gravity. She wishes for the nurse’s rubber sole to catch on the linoleum. She wishes for the nurse to stumble, for the plastic tube to slip from her fingers and shatter on the hard floor. She wants the eggs—those microscopic cells that are tended to so carefully, deemed so incredibly valuable, worth infinitely more to The Prince than Summer’s own life—to burst open and die. She imagines the royal genetic material ruined on the floor, wiped up with a bleach rag.

Is it a monstrous thing to wish for? she wonders, the thought echoing in her empty chest. Does this mean I am already a murderer? Am I killing my babies before they exist? But the universe does not grant her wish. The tube does not fall. The nurse grips it with white-knuckled terror as she marches out, disappearing down the hall toward the laboratory.

"You may take a rest now," the doctor says without looking at her, charting notes on a clipboard.

But Summer does not need rest. The exhaustion is so deep it has bypassed her muscles and settled into her bones. She is too tired to even feel the fatigue. She lays her head back on the crinkling paper of the bed and waits for the room to empty.

A pink-tinted yellow sunbeam dances across Summer's face, forcing her eyes open. She has managed only two hours of jagged, nightmare-fuelled sleep back in her bedroom at the Castle. She had spent the entire night wide awake, her pale hand resting flat against her stomach, as if she could already feel the heavy, thumping heartbeat of The Heir through the skin.

But it wasn't a baby yet. It was just an engineered embryo. A tiny, weaponized bean about to grow into a parasite, then into a baby, and finally—when it was large enough—it would rip its way out of her body.

Summer slides the heavy velvet blanket away. Her red silk gown ripples over her knees like spilled blood as she glides to the window. She searches the courtyard for her only hope. Her only link to a world outside the madness.

And there they are. The SEVEN. Working with manic, relentless energy, swinging hammers as sweat oozes through their long, tangled white beards.

A desperate smile tries to raise itself on Summer's lips, but the muscles refuse to obey. Her face feels cold, frozen, as if her features have been chiselled out of a block of ice. Her hand instinctively returns to her flat stomach, a stomach she knows will soon swell and stretch like an inflated, bruised balloon.

A voice, primal and ancient, keeps knocking against the walls of her skull. The echo bounces behind her eyes, whispering a terrifying truth: Even if you never wanted to be a Mother, the Mother is already inside you.

She had deeply believed that her mind and body would violently reject this unfamiliar, laboratory-made object. It didn't feel like a part of her; it felt like an alien implant from the outer world. She had thought she would never be able to accept this "Best Egg" the scientists worshipped, this flawless, genetically curated child that His Highness had demanded. Their baby—assembled piece by piece, step by step, under fluorescent lights—felt like a high-tech toy. Perfectly normal, yet unnervingly superior to every other child. Summer had braced herself to feel absolutely no connection to a child stripped of all her beautiful, human flaws, a child designed to inherit only the ruthless perfection of its father.

But now, as the cluster of cells burrows into the lining of her womb, connected to her blood with every passing second, a terrifying, violent love erupts within her. She already loves the invader. She wants him entirely to herself. She wants to hide him, to raise him in the dark, to breathe his air every minute of every day.

Summer furrows her brow, her brain buzzing like a trapped wasp. But what if the blood wins? What if her sweet baby inherits His genetics? What if the boy grows up to be as cruel, as cold, and as soullessly apathetic as His Highness? What if she is simply incubating her own executioner?

The heavy bedroom door clicks open. She expects the Handmaiden to drone her instructions to come downstairs.

Instead, Her Mother glides inside.

She is still wearing the long, blood-crimson dress from the Rolls-Royce. The silk brushes softly against the cold marble floor tiles, and the thick white fur of the rug swallows the sharp, aggressive click of her heels. Her Mother pushes the door shut and turns to Summer. She stares at her daughter with a look of pure, unadulterated disgust, her lip curling as if she were inspecting a rotting sack of garbage the staff had neglected to throw out.

"Why do you have bags under your eyes?" her Mother snaps, the voice like breaking glass. "Didn't you sleep?"

Summer looks down. She stares at the thin string of sunlight filtering through the sheer curtain, dancing across her open palms. She clings to the light. She tells herself the Dwarfs have sent this sunray up to the tower to let her know they are down there. To give her strength against the monster in the room.

"You should be resting in bed. The Egg is inside you now," her Mother spits, stepping closer. "Do you want to ruin it? Why do you constantly insist on misbehaving? He is doing everything for us. You are a stupid, ungrateful girl. You should be deeply ashamed of yourself."

The scolding washes over her in harsh, acidic waves. Standing there, a married woman carrying a billionaire's heir, Summer feels exactly as she did when she was three years old, publicly shamed and slapped for accidentally knocking over a crystal glass.

"Did you take your injections?" her Mother demands, her eyes zeroing in on the vanity table. "You know you have to keep injecting yourself. The baby demands it."

Of course, the torture of the needles didn't end with the implantation. His Highness demanded the ultimate specimen. A baby who would never suffer a scratch, a flu, or a moment of weakness. An Heir with an IQ over 150, speaking five languages before his fourth birthday. A Superhuman. A monster in a crib.

She doesn't want her child to be transformed into a cold machine. She wants him with all his human flaws, his sicknesses, his beautiful imperfections. But in this Castle, humanity is not permitted.

Her Mother snatches the pre-filled syringe from the vanity and stalks across the room. She drops roughly to her knees before Summer. Without a word of warning, she violently rips the red silk gown away, exposing Summer’s pale thigh.

Her Mother grips the flesh and stabs the thick needle deep into the muscle. The fine, sharp blade effortlessly pierces the skin. The thick, burning liquid—The Miracle Potion—is forced into her tissue, dissolving rapidly into her bloodstream.

Her Mother yanks the needle out, leaving a bead of blood on the white skin. She stands up, smoothing her crimson dress.

"Now," her Mother commands, her eyes completely dead. "Fix your face and come downstairs. You have made him wait long enough."

7. THE MIRROR – 1 PM

The Sun burned at its zenith, casting sharp, skeletal shadows across the sprawling estate, but inside the Castle, Time was a decaying thing. Summer wandered through the cavernous hallways, her pale fingertips trailing across the skin of the house. She touched bare, crumbled lath bleeding grey dust, and then smooth, freshly gilded wallpaper that felt cold and damp to the touch.

She walked as though she could find the edge of the labyrinth. But the corridors twisted and entangled like a million rotting veins, creating a catacomb Summer could not escape.

The sounds drifted up from the lower chambers. The Chatter. The Laughter. She heard her Mother and His Highness through the heavy floorboards. Their exact words were muffled, drowned in the architecture, but the frequency of their Betrayal was unmistakable. She heard the cunning, wet tone of it. Her Mother's high-pitched, desperate giggle. His low, predatory chuckle. The terrible silences that stretched between them, heavy with the friction of skin. The pauses of a kiss, or a stroke between the legs, interrupting the hollow pantomime of their afternoon tea.

Tears finally breached the dam. Summer had never permitted herself to cry in this mausoleum, but the water came now, hot and unbidden, blurring the gilded walls. All the bottled-up Terror, the years of silent obedience, seeped through her like black water through cracked glass. She was utterly full. She was going to burst.

Suddenly, her sliding hand caught on something unfamiliar in the dark panelling. A door. Heavy wood, scored with strange, hand-carved ornaments depicting twisting vines and eyeless faces. Had this door been here all along, hiding in the shadows, or had the Castle simply opened a mouth to swallow her?

She pushed the iron latch. The door groaned, revealing a forgotten chamber. The air inside tasted of dead moths and decades of undisturbed dust. A murky, arched window let in a bruised sliver of light.

But it wasn't the sun illuminating the room. It was something entirely unnatural, radiating from the far corner. It was a glow as bright and suffocating as a thousand simultaneously lit bulbs, washing over the floorboards like a heavy, electric tide.

Summer’s eyes followed the light. It was The Mirror.

At first glance, it masqueraded as an ordinary, antique standing glass. But as the seconds dragged, it took hold of her. The Mirror was not reflecting. It was looking. The glass itself was a sentient, liquid eye, gazing unblinkingly at the broken girl in the red velvet gown.

She pulled the heavy door shut behind her, sealing herself in the tomb, and drifted slowly toward the glass. Its surface was obscenely pristine, reflecting her sallow, hollowed face, her wild black hair, and her bare, bruised feet. The heavy gold frame was a masterpiece of twisted horror—golden serpents coiling in shining metallic sand, ornaments so agonizingly detailed they looked as though they had been sculpted by demonic hands. It was the only clean thing in a room made of rot, as if a ghost had polished it twice a day for a century. It possessed the terrifying, untouchable aura of a hungry goddess.

Summer stood paralyzed. The Mirror wrapped its invisible, cold hands around her throat. She felt an ancient, terrible tether snap into place. There was no Castle anymore. No Prince. No Mother. Only The Mirror, and the vessel standing before it.

The giggles echoed up through the floorboards again, violent and sharp. Summer flinched, her eyes brimming with fresh tears.

When she looked back at the glass, her reflection was gone.

The surface went blank, a blinding sheet of white static. Then, The Truth began to flash.

The images snapped like violent, bloody Polaroids. Sights recorded by her own eyes, but buried by a desperate, surviving subconscious. She saw the night her Mother and His Highness first met. She saw the predatory, calculating glances they exchanged over Summer’s naive shoulder. She saw the Look on her Mother's face—the feral, slavering look of a starving dog finally smelling meat.

The Mirror dragged her through the timeline of her own humiliation. It showed her the muffled noises behind the kitchen door while she had dutifully poured wine in the dining room. It showed the days leading up to the Wedding. It showed the Wedding Day itself—the flash of white silk, followed immediately by the sickening glimpse of her Mother and The Prince locked together in the suffocating dark of the bridal changing room. She saw her Mother’s hand sliding up his thigh under the dinner table. She saw him violently grabbing her Mother’s breast before stepping into the Rolls-Royce. The Mirror gutted her, pulling the rotting entrails of her life out into the light, offering no mercy, no second to breathe.

Finally, the glass blackened. Unplugged. Dead.

Exhausted, hollowed out, Summer collapsed onto the dusty floorboards, digging her fingernails into her own face. She had known. In the deepest, darkest marrow of her bones, she had known it all along. She had simply chosen blindness.

A shadow moved. A rough, calloused hand gently touched her shaking back.

Summer gasped, looking up. The Roofer was kneeling beside her. He had silently scaled the sheer stone wall of the Castle and slipped through the murky window. He had watched the glass. He had seen the Betrayal. His eyes—pale blue, nested in deep, dirt-caked wrinkles—were saturated with a profound, aching understanding. No human being had looked at her with such agonizing care in her entire life.

"I hate them," Summer sobbed, the words tearing out of her throat like barbed wire. "I hate them."

The Roofer did not speak. He gently took her trembling hands, pulling her up from the dust. Her knees wobbled. She stood before the blackened Mirror, shaking like a snapped sapling in a winter storm.

"I don't want them in my life anymore," she whispered. The sorrow was suddenly incinerated by something hot and bright. The Blood Simmered in her veins. It was a cold, gothic rage. "I will not let them run me. They will not take my child. My son will be cured of his father's rot and my mother's greed. We will be free of them."

The Roofer held her hand tight. Together, they looked back at the glass.

The blackness dissolved into a final vision. His Highness and her Mother, lying flat on a Persian rug. Their eyes were glassy, staring at nothing. Their chests were utterly still. Their mouths gaped open in silent, eternal screams. Their lips were the colour of bruised plums. They were magnificently, perfectly dead.

Summer's heart skipped, and then settled into a slow, rhythmic, terrifying calm. The edges of her mouth curled upward into a razor-thin smile. She turned to the dirty, silent dwarf beside her. Words were obsolete. The Mirror had paved the road, and they both knew precisely how to walk it.

8. THE HARVEST – 2 PM

Three porcelain plates sat on the grand mahogany table. A crystal jar of rose jam. Freshly baked bread. A delicate tower of yellow cupcakes. A pitcher of iced orange juice.

His Highness and her Mother flirted shamelessly, operating under the assumption that Summer was nothing more than a ghost haunting the opposite end of the table. The prince did not even look at his pregnant wife. His dark, cold eyes were anchored to the deep plunge of her Mother's neckline, tracking the movement of her breath, sliding down to linger on the crossed silk of her thighs. Her Mother kept throwing triumphant, wicked glances at Summer, smiling the smile of a conqueror. She possessed the gold. She possessed the King.

But Summer did not care anymore. The annoyance, the crushing weight of their cruelty, had evaporated. She felt impossibly light, as if the Castle’s stone roof had been lifted away, exposing her to the stars.

She picked up a silver spoon, deliberately dropping two heavy cubes of sugar into her Earl Grey tea. She stirred it loudly, the metal clinking against the china. She slurped.

The sound shattered The Prince’s fantasy. He snapped his head up, finally acknowledging the vessel at the end of the table. He furrowed his heavy, greying brows.

"You should not eat suger," His voice was a low, severe command. A cold blade drawn across her throat. "You know it is toxic for the child."

Summer shivered, a brilliant piece of theater, and took another long sip.

"Stop drinking it," he hissed, his face flushing with sudden, aristocratic fury. He ripped his hand away from her Mother's leg and slammed it on the table. "You are acting like a petulant child."

Summer slowly placed the teacup down on the saucer. She smiled. It was the Pure Smile. The Snow White innocence that had trapped him in the first place. Her lips curved, deepening the dimples in her pale cheeks.

"I am so sorry. You are absolutely right," she whispered, her voice dripping with artificial honey. "I only wanted to celebrate. I made an apple pie for you both. I won't eat it, of course. The sugar. But I wanted to give you something beautiful before you leave."

"I do not eat sweets," he said, adjusting his cuffs.

"Please," she begged, letting her eyes widen, adopting the perfectly pathetic pitch of a desperate wife. "I made it with all my love. My heart is baked into it. Please, just one bite. So you will remember me while you are away."

He stared at her, analyzing the submission in her eyes. He was a man who fed on begging. He gave a sharp, dismissive nod. Summer’s smile deepened into something terrifyingly genuine.

The heavy dining room doors swung open.

The SEVEN marched in.

The Plumber, The Foreman, The Painter, The Electrician, The Tiler, The Carpenter, The Roofer. They moved in perfect, silent synchronicity. The Plumber led the procession, his calloused, dirt-stained hands holding a massive silver platter. Upon it rested The Final Offering: a steaming, perfectly golden apple pie. Its sugary, caramelized icing glistened violently in the sunlight pouring through the windows. The Plumber’s cheeks were flushed, but his usual, shy smile was gone, replaced by a grim, executioner's line.

The others followed, setting down heavy jars and polished silver. The Roofer stepped forward, holding a long, serrated carving knife. He sliced into the crust. Thick, sweet steam plumed into the air, carrying the heavy scent of cinnamon, baked apples, and a bitter, metallic undertone that the lovers were too arrogant to notice.

The Roofer slid the brownish-red slices onto their plates.

The Prince picked up his fork. He took a bite. Her Mother followed.

Surprise instantly warped their features. It was extraordinary. The sugar rushed their senses, a violently delicious assault that hijacked their brains. They couldn't stop. They abandoned their forks, tearing into the pastry with their bare hands, stuffing their cheeks like starved animals.

"It's... it's magnificent," her Mother gasped, forcing the words through a mouthful of wet crust, looking at Summer with a bewildered, greedy awe.

They took a third bite.

And then, The Clock stopped.

The chewing ceased. The Prince’s fork clattered loudly against the fine china. He grabbed his throat. Her Mother let out a wet, high-pitched wheeze, her hands flying to her own neck. Their faces instantly flushed a deep, bruised purple as the blood pooled and trapped itself beneath the skin.

The SEVEN Dwarfs formed a silent, unmoving wall behind Summer’s chair. Together, they watched the massacre.

The Prince and The Mother began to choke, gasping for air that felt like broken glass. They clawed violently at their own throats, ripping the skin, tearing away silk and pearls. The veins on His Highness’s forehead bulged, throbbing wildly as his eyes swelled, turning completely bloodshot. Half-chewed, bloody pieces of crust slid from their gaping mouths and fell onto the pristine white tablecloth.

The heavy chairs tipped over with a deafening crash as both bodies hit the floor. They rolled over the antique carpet, their bodies convulsing, bouncing on the floorboards as the neurotoxin shredded their nervous systems. They dug their manicured nails into the rug, attempting to crawl toward the heavy doors, trying to scream for the guards. But the poison had paralyzed their vocal cords. Only wet, pathetic hisses escaped their swollen, clogging throats.

Blood began to leak from their tear ducts. Crimson tears painted their bulging, terror- stricken faces. The horror twisted their aristocratic features into unrecognizable, monstrous masks of agony.

They flipped onto their backs, the violent thrashing slowing as the energy bled out of them. A thick, bubbling white foam oozed from their lips, trickling down their chins and pooling on the floor like melting snow. The thin, crimson streaks dried rapidly on their cheeks. Their eyes locked in a glassy, wide-open stare at the ceiling. The veins collapsed beneath their skin, turning the purple flesh into a pale, waxy, lifeless grey.

With one final, shuddering puff of air, the Mother stopped moving. The Prince followed a second later.

Soulless. Drained. Perfectly, magnificently dead. Just as The Mirror had promised.

Summer slowly stood up. She slid the heavy, seven-carat pink diamond engagement ring off her finger. It felt like shedding a shackle. She placed it carefully on the table, right next to the ruined pie. The diamond caught the sunlight, fracturing it into colourful, sparkling dots that danced across the dead, foamy faces on the floor.

She felt weightless. A feather caught in an updraft. It was done. The rot had been excised.

She peeled her eyes away from the corpses. There was no stain of regret on her mind, no tremor of fear in her hands. Her soul was a still, black lake. She drew in a massive, shuddering breath. For the first time since she was a child, she was truly breathing. She was free. She could finally be happy with the only family she had left. She turned to look at the SEVEN. They were smiling at her now—those shy, dirty, deeply loyal smiles. They were her true protectors. Her knights in soot and plaster.

9. THE WALLS – 3 PM

The Mirror reflected Summer’s serene face as she stood alone in the hidden chamber.

Far away, echoing through the sprawling bones of the Castle, she could hear the rhythmic, thunderous banging of The Hammers.

She closed her eyes, listening to the music of the burial. She had stood on the balcony and watched the dwarfs handle the bodies with the utmost reverence, carrying the dead aristocrats as if they were fragile, priceless fine china. Four of the wild men had carried the Prince; three had carried her Mother. She watched them haul the corpses into the grand, newly renovated East Wing ballroom.

She had listened as they took their heavy iron sledges to the freshly built, silver-and- gold-patterned walls. They smashed the plaster, shattering the gilded perfection into a million jagged pieces, opening the dark, hollow cavity between the studs. Gently, with those same shy smiles pasted on their dirt-caked faces, they hoisted the foaming, waxy bodies into the dark recesses of the architecture.

As the sound of fresh bricks being laid and wet plaster being smoothed over the dead echoed up through the floorboards, Summer opened her eyes. The Castle was eating its masters. It would hold their rotting secrets in its walls forever.

Summer stepped closer to The Mirror. She pressed her palms against the cold, flawless glass. She felt the entity inside reaching out, embracing her in its long, warm, invisible arms. The madness was complete, but it felt like absolute peace. She felt at ease. She felt at home.

Summer slid her hands down to rest on her flat, pregnant belly. The Heir was safe in the dark.

She was ready to be beautiful again. She was ready to raise the child of the labyrinth. She investigated the glass, her eyes wide, empty, and perfectly dark. She was no longer Snow White. She was the Queen of the SEVEN, and she was prepared to serve The Mirror until the end of time.