The gun was heavier than the memories.
It sat in my hand, a cold, dense lump of steel that felt like it possessed its own gravitational pull. My arm was extended, the muscles trembling with a frequency that rattled my bones. The barrel wasn’t pointed at the monster.
It was pointed at Julian.
He was bound to a heavy iron chair in the center of the sorting floor, his wrists zip-tied behind him, his ankles taped to the legs. His face was a map of violence—one eye swollen shut, a split lip oozing blood that dripped onto his ruined shirt. But his good eye was open. It was locked on me, green and terrified, pleading not for his life, but for my soul.
“Judge him!” Elias screamed.
His voice ricocheted off the corrugated metal walls of the Sawmill, amplifying into a chorus of madness. He was pacing the periphery of the circle, a hulking shadow in his tattered coat, waving his knife like a conductor’s baton.
“Read the verdict, Princess! Tell the court what he did!”
I couldn’t speak. My tongue felt like it had been cut out. I looked past Julian to the “jury box”—three rows of rusted benches dragged from the locker room.
Sarah Miller. Ms. Albright. Becca Trent.
They sat in silent attendance, their taped and bandaged wounds glowing white in the shafts of moonlight bleeding through the roof. They were the witnesses to this final game. The guests at the wedding.
“He forgot us,” Elias hissed, stepping into the light. The scar on his face twisted as he sneered at his brother. “Tell him, Elara. Tell him how long we waited in the dark.”
“Elara, don’t listen to him,” Julian rasped, spitting blood. “He’s sick. You know he’s sick.”
“Silence in the court!” Elias roared, slamming the flat of his knife against a hollow metal pillar. The sound was like a gong, vibrating in my teeth.
He turned to me, his eyes shining with a terrifying, wet sincerity. He looked like a child begging for a bedtime story, trapped in the body of a butcher.
“He promised,” Elias whispered, his voice cracking. “He bought me shoes. He said, ‘I’ll come back for you, Eli.’ But he didn’t come back. The water came. The mud came. And he went to the big house and ate warm dinner.”
He circled Julian, moving with the predator’s grace I had seen in the woods.
“He grew up,” Elias spat. “He became a man. He became a cop. He put on a badge and pretended the shed didn’t exist. He pretended we didn’t exist.”
Elias stopped right beside me. He smelled of old blood and pine needles. He didn’t touch me, but his presence was a suffocating heat.
“We didn’t grow up, did we, Princess?” he murmured intimately. “We stayed. We stayed in the basement. We stayed in the walls. We kept the secrets.”
He pointed a dirty, bandaged finger at Julian.
“He is the Bad Prince. He is the Dragon’s son. As long as he is alive, we are still the dirty secrets. We are still the mistakes.”
He leaned closer to my ear.
“Kill him,” he whispered. “And we can be clean. We can be the Kings.”
I looked at the gun sight. It was hovering over Julian’s chest.
A terrible, twisted logic bloomed in my mind. I could see it through Elias’s eyes. To him, Julian wasn’t a brother. He was the jailer. He was the symbol of the town’s indifference. Julian had lived a life of sunlight and football games and police academies while Elias rotted in a root cellar, eating canned peaches and worshiping a ghost.
In the fairy tale, the traitor prince always dies. That’s the rule.
“Elara,” Julian said. His voice was steady now, cutting through the fog of Elias’s narrative. “Look at me.”
I forced my eyes to meet his.
“This isn’t a game,” Julian said. “Those women… Sarah, Ms. Albright… they aren’t dolls. They’re dead. He killed them.”
“I saved them!” Elias shrieked, stomping his boot. “They were broken! I fixed them!”
“He killed them,” Julian repeated, never breaking eye contact with me. “And he’s going to kill you. Once the game is over, once the wedding is done… he puts the toys back in the box, Elara. You know that.”
My hand wavered.
“He loves me,” I whispered. The words tasted like ash.
“He loves a memory,” Julian said. “He loves a twelve-year-old girl who doesn’t exist anymore. Look at him, Elara. Look at what he is.”
I turned my head slightly. Elias was watching me with bated breath, his hands clasped together in anticipation. He looked hopeful. He looked monstrous.
“The gun,” Elias said, nodding encouragingly. “Use the wand, Princess. Make him go away.”
“Elara,” Julian’s voice dropped, urgent and hard. “Shoot him.”
I froze.
“What?”
“Shoot him,” Julian demanded. “Turn the gun. Put him down. It’s the only way you walk out of here.”
“No!” Elias yelled, backing away, looking hurt. “You can’t! We’re the same! We’re the E and E!”
“He’s rabid, Elara,” Julian shouted, straining against his bonds. “He’s not your friend. He’s a killer who has tortured innocent women because he thinks it makes you happy. End it! Shoot him!”
The air in the mill grew thin. The sound of the rain outside faded into a dull hum.
I looked at Julian. The man who had abandoned me to the town, but who had risked his career to break me out of jail. The man who had given me the gun.
I looked at Elias. The boy who had taken a dog bite for me. The boy who had lived in my walls to watch over my sleep. The boy who had murdered three women to build me a court.
One wanted to save me. One wanted to keep me.
“I can’t,” I sobbed, the gun lowering slightly.
“You have to choose!” Elias screamed, his face contorting into a mask of rage. “Him or me! The Dragon or the Knight! Choose, Elara!”
He lunged toward the jury box. He grabbed Ms. Albright’s hair—her stiff, gray hair—and yanked her head back.
“If you don’t punish him,” Elias snarled, pressing his knife against the dead woman’s duct-taped neck, “then the guests get punished. I’ll cut them up. I’ll cut them into tiny pieces so they can never wake up!”
The desecration was too much. The sight of him threatening a corpse, threatening the woman who had given me cookies…
It shattered the spell.
The boy in the wall was gone. Only the monster remained.
I raised the gun.
I locked my elbows. I sighted down the barrel.
Not at Julian.
At Elias.
Elias saw the movement. He froze. His eyes went wide, not with fear, but with a heartbreaking confusion.
“Princess?” he whimpered. “Wrong way. The Bad Prince is over there.”
“Let her go,” I said. My voice was ice. “Step away from the bodies, Elias.”
“But… but we’re a team,” he stammered. He looked down at his chest, as if expecting to see a hole there already. “I did this for you. I built the castle. I made them listen.”
“You hurt them,” I said. “You hurt everyone.”
“To protect you!” he roared, tears spilling from his eyes, washing tracks through the filth on his cheeks. “Because nobody else would! Where was he?” He pointed the knife at Julian. “Where was your mother? Where was the town? I was the only one! I am the only one!”
“Elara, shoot!” Julian yelled.
“Shut up!” I screamed at Julian.
I stepped closer to Elias. The distance between us was twenty feet. A killing distance.
“You saved me once,” I said, tears blurring my vision. “When we were kids. You saved me from the cellar. You saved me from Rex.”
Elias nodded eagerly, lowering the knife slightly. “Yes. Yes. I’m the Knight.”
“But you didn’t save these women,” I said. “You’re not the Knight anymore, Elias. You’re the Dragon.”
The words hit him harder than a bullet. He recoiled, his mouth opening in a silent gasp of pain.
“No,” he whispered. “No. Not the Dragon. Never the Dragon.”
He looked at the knife in his hand. He looked at the dead women. He looked at me, aiming a gun at his heart.
“I’m the Knight,” he insisted, his voice trembling. “I have to be the Knight. If I’m not the Knight… then who am I?”
“You’re just a boy,” I said softly. “A lost boy who needs to stop.”
“I can’t stop,” he said. “ The game isn’t over. The wedding isn’t over.”
His face hardened. The confusion vanished, replaced by a terrifying resolve.
“If you won’t judge him,” Elias said, his voice dropping an octave, becoming the gravelly voice of the Sandman, “then I have to judge you both.”
He tightened his grip on the knife. He wasn’t looking at the dead woman anymore. He was looking at Julian.
“Elara!” Julian shouted.
Elias moved.
He didn’t come for me. He charged Julian.
He moved with a speed that defied his size, a blur of rags and rage covering the distance between the jury box and the defendant’s chair.
I pulled the trigger.
Click.
The hammer fell on an empty chamber.
I pulled again.
Click.
Julian had said it was a five-shot revolver. He had said it was loaded.
I looked at the gun in horror.
Elias reached Julian. He didn’t stab him. He grabbed the chair by the backrest and hurled it—with Julian still strapped to it—across the room.
Julian crashed into a pile of rusted saw blades, groaning as the metal bit into him.
Elias turned to me. He was smiling. It was a sad, broken smile.
“You tried to hurt me,” he said softly. “You tried to break the rules.”
He reached into his pocket.
He pulled out five bullets.
He opened his hand, letting them drop to the concrete floor. Clink. Clink. Clink.
“I took them,” he said. “When you were in the truck. When you were hiding in the shed reading my book. I was in the back. I watched you put the gun on the dashboard.”
He shook his head, like a disappointed parent.
“Naughty Princess,” he whispered. “You’re not ready to be Queen.”
He raised the knife.
“I have to start over,” he said. “I have to clear the board.”
He walked toward me.
I threw the empty gun at his face. He batted it away without blinking.
I backed up, my heel hitting the edge of the rusted conveyor belt that ran down the center of the mill.
“Elias, please,” I begged.
“No more talking,” he said. “Talking ruins the game. Now we play Tag.”
He lunged.