I had never imagined a boy could be so beautiful. I hadn’t let myself. 

When I was just six years old, Mama had sat me down to explain some harsh truths about our world. I had been playing princesses with my sisters and had make-believed that a handsome prince had come to spirit me away from our lonesome manor, just like Rapunzel. But unlike Rapunzel, there was to be no happily ever after for any of us. The cruel lavender in our eyes saw to that.

The Degeneraté curse came down through our mother, who had got it from her mother, and her mother’s mother. It may seem confusing and contradictory that she married my father and had at least four children with him, given the consequences of the curse. But it’s really not. You see, Mama always wanted children, but grew up understanding the dreadful reality of our family predicament. If one of us falls in love—or worse, is loved in return—the spiritual bond becomes so powerful that it grows unstable, uncontrollable. The result is destruction and death on an incomprehensible scale. So my mother took things into her own hands: she found a man whom she could marry, but never love. Mama’s type was rich young college hunks. Hunks that would tragically be ever out of her thirsty reach. My father was a rough, alcoholic, grey-bearded man of little means himself, who would materially benefit from such a union, despite the suffering they would both endure. Mama took extreme pains to ensure she was cruel and unattractive enough to him to ensure he would never love her in return. Thus my siblings and I came into the world, cursed to the same loveless path—a life of pain and lonesomeness, a life worse than none at all. It was our burden to bear as Degeneraté. Fortunately for the world, my features were so plain, and my personality so dull that no man could possibly fall in love with me.

But.. A Fae Prince, THE Fae Prince… Maybe things could be different? I felt a flutter of something in my chest I hadn’t dared to feel. Hope. I gazed upon his unearthly visage, taken in by his glowing pink eyes, long pointed ears and wavy golden hair that was longer than I could ever hope to grow my own ugly mousy brown hair. His face was almost too beautiful to comprehend.

Perfectly symmetrical, I noted. My mathematical talents hard at work. 

I suddenly became aware that in the midst of my hormonal day dreams, the Fae Prince had been speaking to me, of all people!

You know you aren’t supposed to take her yet. Obie bristled at the inhumanely alluring specimen before me. He was way hotter than a cat. Not that I ever thought a cat was hot… Obie clambored his way up to my shoulder, digging his itty bitty claws into my skin as he did so, reminding me that cats are not hot at all. Moving on.

“Oh. Hello Oblegaimon, still a cat are we? How unsexy.” His voice drawled richly like butter. I was never allowed to have butter, my mother always told me butter was only for pretty girls with big titties. But how could I get big titties if I was never allowed to eat butter!? A conundrum.

He can hear Obie too? They know each other? My mind was boggled! 

You know I didn’t choose this form. Obie snorted.

“Yes quite, well anyway, I’m bored of you now. We meet at last, Archer Flamewheel. I have been anticipating this day for a long time. Sixteen years to be exact.”

I stood in silence, mouth agape, hypnotized by his voice and slow approach. He looked like he couldn’t be more than 18 himself, but I had read in books the Fae are thousands of years old, appearing younger to trick impressionable girls, stealing them away to the warring Fae Realms to feast on their youth and innocence, or something like that.

“How lucky I am, for you to have stumbled upon the Forest In-between, on the same night the cauldrons failed to be lit? It’s almost like you wanted me to find you.” He grinned, flashing perfectly straight teeth. 

I stood dumbfounded as Obie bristled on my shoulder, his sharp claws bringing me to my senses as the Fae Prince appeared before me, close that enough he was able to wrap a slender hand around my wrist.

“Come with me…” He whispered hypnotically.

I snapped to attention, “Huh!? I don’t even know you!” I tried to pull my hand away, but his pink eyes pierced my lavender ones, distracting me once again. Gods, he was so beautiful. A MAN wants me around him? This has never happened before, and cats don’t count as men. Or do they?

Archer, snap out of it! Suddenly, Obie was off my shoulder, and next to me where he landed was a green eyed human man with messy black hair... Well sort of a human, aside from the cat ears perched atop his head! 

He grabbed my unoccupied wrist, and with his free hand swiped at the Fae Prince, nails sharp and extended like claws, “Get away from her, Callon, you know she’s under my protection!” 

Callon laughed and danced out of his way, hand remaining on my wrist. “How long can you even hold that form, Sweet Obie? I missed seeing that handsome face.” He fluttered his long golden eyelashes.

Obie glared at him, cat ears tilted back in anger. He tugged on my wrist, pulling me close to him. Well as close to him as Callon, the Fae Prince, would allow.

I whipped my head back, forth, back, forth, between the two beautiful men who were playing tug of war with my willowy, delicate arms—not to mention my teen girl heart. Oblegaimon, my faithful cat—whom I had given belly rubs and bowls of chicken livers—stood before me on two legs, a slender, non-threatening, attractive young man with my best interests at heart. I whipped my head forth again. Callon, the mysterious Fae stranger with a thousand year age gap, transfixed me with those agenda-having peach-colored eyes. The choice was impossible. 

“Archer!” begged Obie. “We need to get out of here before the Bogmagog Witch arrives and drags you back into the time loop.”

”The whuh?” I said.

“That thing I was getting at before we were so rudely interrupted! The fact that you’ve been trapped in a liminal space where time moves differently for years—a prisoner of the Bogmagog Witch. I was sent to free you, Archer—but you have to trust me. Oh god, she’s here. Archer! Hurry up and pick a side!”

I looked up. At the edge of the field, framed by two twisting dead trees, stood my conniving buxom sister Andromeda. A wry smile spread like a crack across her face as she strode with purpose towards me.

I thought about what Obie just said. The calculations whirred through my mathematical mind. If I had been in a time loop for years…then I was older than sixteen. How much older, I had no clue…but it meant I was definitely technically 18, and therefore, an adult who could make her own decisions. And that meant I didn’t need a babysitter anymore. 

I pushed Obie away. REOW! As he landed on the ground, the impact transformed him back into his familiar feline form.

“Let’s go, Callon!” I shouted, leaping into his wiry, sun-kissed arms.