She whistled.

Pamono came at a full gallop out of the darkness behind her, hooves scattering snow. He did not slow gradually the way horses do. He stopped hard, close enough that she could feel the heat of him, and pressed his nose against her shoulder. His nostrils flared—reading the smoke, the caramel, the cocoa butter, the traces of magic still clinging to her skin. He pulled back and looked at her. She had learned to read his expressions over millennia.

This one was worry.

"I'm fine," she said.

She was not fine.

She put her hand against the side of his face, pressed her forehead against his, and held him.

"Were you safe? Did it reach you?" He nickered, blinked slowly. Leaned into her palm.

She closed her eyes. Just for a moment. He was safe.

She stood in the snow beside him and let the stillness settle over both of them, her hand resting on his neck, his warmth steady against her palm. The Minted Snowfall stretched out around them in every direction, patient and indifferent, the scent of cool peppermint slowly replacing the last traces of cocoa butter and caramel in the air. The battle was over. The Pumpkin Serenade was gone. She had won.

It was only the first battle. The love she had spent millennia guarding had been desecrated in a night.

A fairy tale had done this. Something everyone had dismissed as folklore for longer than most civilizations had existed had walked out of a children's story and nearly killed her. The fact that she was standing here at all was not entirely her own doing. That stung almost as much as the rest of it.

The Pumpkin Serenade’s magic had invaded her land, her field, her home—those could be cleansed, rebuilt if necessary. What it had done inside her could not be undone. It had not just entered her mind—it had reached past it, desecrated her memory, violated what made her her, from the inside. It had stripped them bare. Held them up. Used them. Her grief. Her love. Her scent. And worst of all—her fangs. The most intimate parts of who she was, dragged into the open and played like strings on its guitar. It did not have the right to know her name, let alone what she carried inside.

No one had ever reached that deep. Well, except for—

Her hand moved to her sleeve.

She slipped the robe from her shoulders, holding it out in front of her. It was singed along one sleeve from the fire. The velvet was darkened and curling, the crimson trim blackened where embers had caught it. She rubbed the damaged fabric between her fingers and watched small pieces crumble away. This robe had been hers for longer than she cared to calculate. She wore it in her field, in her home, in the only place in the world where she did not perform for anyone. And now—burn marks, holes, the smell of smoke and spiced caramel and a fight she had not asked for.

"My robe," she said to Pamono, as though he had asked.

He had not. His head was lowered—eating the mint leaves.

She let him. She did not have the energy to object to his appetite right now. She had other things to consider.

She wiped her face with the robe—laid it gently, neatly across Pamono's back. The night air had already found her skin. Cool, sharp with mint, settling against her.

The stillness should have helped. Instead, it gave what burned hottest room to surface.

Not the enchantment, not the robe, not being caught off guard by a bedtime story.

The fangs.

Her jaw tightened. They had extended without her permission, without conscious thought—her body deciding, beneath everything she controlled.

That creature had seen her fangs. To bare what vampires shared with no one—except the one they chose. It did not deserve to see what she shared with only one person ever in thousands of years.

“Where else was there to look?”

She looked at Pamono. His head was down, still grazing, unbothered by anything that did not involve mint leaves. She ran her fingers through his mane. He was unharmed. His appetite was intact. At least he was still himself.

Her gaze drifted to her robe, draped neatly across his back. She stared at it for a long moment.

Ruined.

"I hate this," she told Pamono.

Her hand stayed in his mane. "I do not like that something invaded my thoughts, my memories, stole what I kept sealed, and used it against me. I do not like that something else—or someone else—intervened. I am grateful. I am also not naive. Help that arrives without explanation is rarely help. It is positioning. I do not like that I have nothing to go on except the experience itself and a fairy tale that turned out to be real. And I—"

Pamono lifted his head and nudged her shoulder with his nose.

She rested her forehead against his neck for a moment. She straightened.

He lifted his head. Something was in his mouth that was not a mint leaf.

She reached for it, annoyance briefly overriding everything else. “What are you eating now—what have I told you about”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to take it out on you,” she said.

She worked it free from between his teeth and held it up to the moonlight.

A cross with curved edges.

Smaller than the mint leaves at her feet. Heavier than what looked like a charm that size had any right to be. The moonlight caught the metalwork—two threads, blue and green, woven together like a rope around a cut gemstone that seemed to hold the moon inside it.

The scent arrived. Peppermint, of course, everywhere in this field. Eucalyptus beneath it, cool and clarifying. And under both, something woodier, steadier—cedar, not drifting from the tree line but concentrated in the thing itself.

She stood with it in her hand. She could sense the magic.

Her hand closed around it harder than necessary. Coincidence—unlikely. She tucked the cross into the undamaged pocket of her robe lying on Pamono’s back.

Pamono blinked at her, mint leaves working slowly in the corner of his mouth.

“Too many things, all in one night,” she said to Pamono.

Was the Serenade the enemy, or a tool of he enemy? Was tonight a genuine attempt, or a test to see what she could do? How long until it came back—would it? The fairy tale was far older than she was—why her? Why now? Was the Serenade an illusion—like what she saw in the fire?

“I do not want to be forced back into the world,” she said.

The roads that led to places she had been trying to forget. Into the noise, the stink, hemmed inside inns, obligated to wear clothes.

Every single day. Without exception.

She would have to engage with everyone, with humanity, those who feared her. So many of them ignorant, carrying hatred inherited from stories their ancestors never thought to question.

The thought alone was exhausting.

She drew in a long breath, allowing the Minted Snowfall to slow her mind. The fresh mint on her skin, the warmth of vanilla threading through her—the anticipation of the exhale was exhilarating.

She thought of inn food—almost as good as the dwarves made it. Human dessert, the best of any species. Human fashion—she had always thought it held its own against elven work, even if no elf would ever admit it.

“Good news, Pamono. We get to go shopping.”

Exhaustion replacing frustration.

"Time to let it settle," she told Pamono.

She looked at the night sky—the moonlight on her skin. She drew in the Minted Snowfall.

She spread her damaged robe over Pamono's back. His coat was damp with melted snow.

“It'll do,” she said.

They began the quiet walk back.

She asked Pamono, "What do you think—when we go shopping, the black corset with the beautiful floral—”