The ride to Evil Castle was interminably long. Autumn had not realized how unnerving she would find the forest to be. As a child of the Prairies, she was used to wide expenses and an open horizon. Now, the dense canopy shrouded the sky, casting the ground into a sort of permanent twilight. What meagre morning light reached them danced with the rustling of the leaves, never settling, never allowing her to truly see. Furthermore, the trees around them had continued their unnatural shuffling, parting in front of them and then shaking themselves closed once they had passed.

This made Autumn feel as if they were travelling in a bubble or worse, that the carriage, despite all appearances, was in fact stationary. She was reminded of the way she sometimes moved in dreams, running without advancing on a stretch of road a mere hundred metres long. She did not know enough about trees to be able to tell the difference between one and another, after all.

A fine mist curled lazily in the air, pouring out of the woods like the white tide of sheep cresting a hill. It seemed to become denser the longer that they travelled, dashing her hopes that the rise of the sun would allow more light to reach her. Would she have to live in this oppressive gloom the entire time that she would be here? Perhaps it would be better this way, she eventually realized. She did not truly want to see what lurked in the shadows. Shapes kept moving in the periphery of her vision and she was worried that she would turn her head to find a spirit coming towards them. The knight had promised her that she would be safe; it would do her no good to stare at the trees looking for a reason to prove him wrong.

Up until that point, Autumn had not been really scared of the spirits. Certainly, they could kill her. But so could a bad fall, a nasty cold, or a particularly determined raccoon. Taking the proper precautions, like not wandering out after nightfall, had always been more than enough to keep her safe. But she was no longer shielded by the castle, here. She was entirely in the spirit’s domain, and protected only by the servant of an evil, untrustworthy wizard. The architect of Esternia’s first betrayal.

She pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders and tried to think of anything else. Mathematics. Poetry. Diplomacy.

She realized that she didn’t actually know how large the forest was, or how wide the land of the Wizard King. Most of the maps she had seen in her life had taken the attitude of ‘well, here is the Evil Bad Place. Don’t go in.’ Autumn wondered if there was something behind the wizard’s kingdom. Obviously, she could see the mountains in the distance — or at least, she could see them where there were no trees hiding the horizon. But did his domain stretch all the way to the foot of them? Was it all forest, or did he have his own private bit of grassland to enjoy? Surely, there must be fields somewhere. The prairies often sent grain as tribute, but not nearly enough to support an entire kingdom.

She supposed that if she did marry him — in the unlikely event of that happening — then she would have to learn all of that. It would be her kingdom, too. Talk about upwards mobility, she thought with a smidge of hysteria. As the third sister, Autumn had never expected to either inherit the throne of Veld or marry into another royal family. She had always been the one meant to wed for diplomacy, to a neighbouring duke or perhaps even a marquis, but nothing more. How extraordinary would it be if she did manage to ensnare the Evil King and become his queen? She would boast about it at every court dinner for the rest of time, she decided. She would have more than earned that right.

The noises of the forest, incessant since they had arrived, suddenly jumped in tone. A long wailing cry pierced the air, followed by the flapping of wings passing entirely too close to their carriage. Autumn tensed.

“Do not worry,” said the knight, his warm voice an immediate comfort among these unfamiliar surroundings. “The louder the forest is, the safer you can expect to be. It is when it becomes quiet that you need to be afraid.”

“I see,” she replied, feeling vaguely foolish for reasons she did not understand. “Thank you, that is reassuring to know.”

She let a moment pass, then tilted her head to peer at the man. They weren’t quite sitting back to back. They’d both unconsciously huddled a bit on the left of their bench, so that their shoulders pressed against each other over the low backrest. It was almost intimate.

“What’s your name?,” she asked.

Stretching her neck backwards like this, Autumn could get a decent glimpse of his face. He was looking straight ahead, monitoring the horses. The underside of his jaw was fuzzy, and his throat worked as he seemed to need to think about her question.

“I don’t have one,” he said after a moment. “I am a construct.”

“What’s that?”

“It is a creature made of magic. I’ve been grown from a deer’s heart, you see, made to serve the king and obey his commands. There are a few of us, in the castle.”

“Why a deer?”

“I don’t know. Deers are noble, I suppose, and perhaps my master didn’t want to scare you off by sending a wolf for a guard.”

Autumn made an agreeing noise, even though she thought it unlikely. The Wizard King did not seem to care overly much about the comfort of others.

“And the king didn’t name you?” she asked, bothered by this information for some reason that she couldn’t quite figure out. “He made you, but he didn’t name you?”

He shrugged. The hard lines of his pauldrons rustled against the embroidered velvet of her sleeve.

“Do you want one?”

The knight glanced at her in surprise. “What, a name?” he said. “I… I don’t know. I guess I haven’t really thought about it.”

He was silent for a few seconds. Autumn realized that she’d been staring at him, and shifted around until she was kneeling on her bench. She crossed her arms over the backrest and watched the forest endlessly part in front of their horse. With the knight by her side, the view didn’t seem quite as intolerable anymore.

“I don’t think so,” he eventually decided. “I think names are so you have someone to be when you’re not working. That way you don’t have to be a — a knight, or a princess, or a king all of the time.”

She hummed. She’d never seen it like this before, but it was true that sometimes she had to be Autumn the princess, and sometimes she was Autumn the woman, and neither of them was quite the same person. She wondered how many more Autumns there could be. She imagined being ‘Autumn the Evil Wizard Queen’ and figured that it had a nice ring to it, despite being nothing more than a fantasy.

“But the thing is,” he continued, “I haven’t really been anything yet. I was made only a little under two years ago, for a purpose that has been out of my grasp until now. I think that I would like to be what I’ve been created to be, first. Then we’ll see.”

Autumn leaned her head on her arms and glanced up at him again. He had such a handsome face, it was hard not to look at him. She did not quite understand what he was telling her. “Just two years, really? You look all grown up to me.”

The knight shrugged once more, a delicate blush rising up on his cheeks. “Thank you. I remember being a deer, although less and less by the day. But being a construct is new. As I understand it, I was made for you.”

She blinked. A cold shiver rolled down her spine, as if someone had just poured ice shavings in the collar of her dress. “What do you mean, you were made for me?”

“Constructs exist to obey the king’s commands. But I only have the one command, and it is to protect you. That is my reason for being, inscribed into the very fabric of the spell that created me. It will remain so until you either leave, die, or until He unmakes me. I have to admit,” he added quietly, “these have been long years, awaiting your arrival.”

“I—I don’t understand,” she stammered. “You didn’t know that I would come here, a year ago. No one did.”

“We knew that someone would come. We had no idea who it would be, but we knew that we were due for a princess. I was created in anticipation of you, and have waited my entire life to begin my task.”

Autumn swallowed. She thought for a moment, but could not quite figure out how to articulate what she felt about it all. ‘Troubled’ seemed too weak a word. She asked instead, “What are you supposed to protect me from, anyhow?”

There was only one danger to her here, and it was the Wizard King himself. The knight kept his eyes on the horses, but bent his face towards her so that his cheek came to rest only a few inches away from the top of her head.

“From the spectres, my lady. They are everywhere, and they will kill any living thing that enters the forest unless they belong to the king. They’re only being kept at bay, now, because you are with me, and I am an extension of Him.”

She blinked. If he was referring to the spirits, then didn’t the king control them? Couldn’t he just order them not to attack her? As for the rest… “How to you mean, belong to him?,” she asked. The idea left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Because of his curse,” explained the knight, his tone turning solemn, as if his words now held deadly weight. “The Wizard King cannot have that which does not belong to him. It means that no one can live on his lands unless they tie themselves to him by magic and blood. Otherwise, they are fated to die a horrible death.”

Autumn blinked again. That was new information. Since when was the Evil Wizard King cursed? From the way that the knight had said it, it didn’t really sound like something that he’d done to himself, but—

“Who cursed him?” she asked, bewildered.

“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I am here to protect you from the consequences of that curse until you belong to him properly.”

She didn’t particularly want to belong to him, but now Autumn could see why it might become necessary. She glanced at the trees again and shivered. Maybe the king had been cursed as a punishment for creating the spectres, or for calling them from whatever place they came from. Cannot have what does not belong… Perhaps that explained why this land appeared to be all dark forest as far as the eye could see. Autumn had never been in a forest before that she couldn’t walk from one side to the other in less than an hour, but these woods seemed to go on and on. This place wasn’t a forest that had a name and could be mapped. It was wilderness pure and proper, and she was quickly coming to the realization that it could swallow her whole if she let it.