Lady Rosella Vitale's lips are like satin, like the golden tresses spread over her pillow.

She stirs. I pull back, startled and painfully hopeful that I have broken the curse, that this isn't a cruel trick of the briar fairy.

Lady Rosella's eyelids flutter. Her eyes open. They are dark enough to collapse galaxies, to swallow me whole.

I'm rooted in place as she sits up. As if enchanted, I take the slender hand she offers me.

Her palms are as smooth as seashells, as if she wasn't lying alone in the highest tower of an abandoned home for the last century, as if she had a maid giving her a manicure every few days.

My family calls me a fool for believing in magic, but I'm glad I do. This meeting would've never been possible if I was like them, running banks, loaning money, and figuring out where to invest it next.

That life pays well, but the clink of glittering gold only holds so much happiness.

Lady Rosella looks around the room, dazed. I imagine it hasn't changed much in the last century, but perhaps she can sense the passage of time in the heavy silence surrounding us or the novel fragrances wafting in the air.

"Rosella."

She turns to me. Her dark eyes drink me in before her perfect lips split in a bright smile rivaling my mother's finest pearl necklace. "It's your kiss I've been waiting for." She takes my face in her hands and draws me to her, more forcefully than I would've expected of a lady who has been asleep for a century.

Her immodesty makes my cheeks burn, but it also draws a sigh from me as her lips caress mine. My hand wanders to her golden hair. I twist a silken lock around my finger.

Lady Rosella tastes unexpectedly sweet, like grapes. I wonder if that was the last thing she ate before her unfortunate encounter with the spinning wheel, but she gives me no opportunity to ask.

She pulls away, gazing at me with an intensity befitting those big, black eyes. "How many years has it been?"

The words catch in my throat. "A hundred."

Her eyes widen. "What of my parents?"

"They passed years ago. I'm sorry."

She shakes her head in dazed disbelief and muted grief. "The servants?"

"They fled. They couldn't keep the thorns at bay."

A single, perfect tear rolls down Lady Rosella's cheek. I feel her pain like it's my own, but I can't help but admire her. Crying contorts faces, turns them red and puffy, but Lady Rosella is beautiful just like the moon whose craters can't dim its glow.

I wipe her tears away. I wish I could say something, but I don't know what words could relieve her agony. I have never lost everything as she has.

I have a privileged life to return to after this, with wealthy, influential parents who have the means to care for me. Lady Rosella has no one.

She looks up at me, eyes sparkling with unshed tears. "So, you're the only person I have?"

A thrill runs through me at the thought of having her and her having me, followed by a dull sadness. "Yes, if you'll have me." It's a bittersweet start to a saccharine future.

"The legend says only true love's kiss can break my curse, and there's no arguing with fairy magic." Lady Rosella kisses me again. "Of course I'll have you."

I take her into my arms. Her frame is slight, more like the fairies who designed her fate than the mortals who tried to protect her from it.

The legend speaks of how impossible Vitale Manor was to breach, how impossible it was to be the true love whose kiss would break Lady Rosella's curse, and now I have accomplished both.

I kiss Lady Rosella again. Everything was worth it for this moment: the pre-dawn awakening, the hours of riding with the saddle chafing against me and sweat leaking into my camicia.

She pulls away. "Let's leave this place. I can't bear it a moment longer."

I take her hand. She must see the thorns rimming her window, a mocking reminder of her family home's desolation. She must feel the deathly silence of the absent footsteps and breaths.

She grasps my other hand and stands unsteadily.

I lead her to the window, where thorns and corpses greet us beyond the blood-red curtains.

Lady Rosella blanches as she gazes over the garden. I can only imagine how it looked a century ago: vibrant blooms occupying the flowerbeds, adventurous vines climbing the walls, water cascading from tiered fountains, servants scurrying up and down the cobbled pathways. Now, it's a cemetery for men nobody remembers.

"I know a shorter, safer way." Lady Rosella casts a final, fearful look down at the garden before pulling me to the centre of her room.

She kneels and swipes at the dirt coating the floor, sneezing as it rises in a cloud. She feels along the floor until she grasps something and pulls it upwards with her small, strong hands. The trapdoor swings open easily.

I wish it had shown itself to me sooner instead of hiding beneath a layer of dust. I would've never risked my life by crossing over the garden of thorns if I had known of this shortcut right into the Vitale Manor's heart.

I wince as my cut from the vicious thorn throbs. It burns as if a fire licks me. I grit my teeth. Lady Rosella and I must escape this briary trap before I can see to my wound.

Lady Rosella pauses in the mouth of the trapdoor. Behind her, there is only darkness, but her radiant hair still shines.

"Come." She takes my hand, enveloping it in warmth and adoration I've never felt before, and leads me after her.

So, this is what it's like to be admired, to be valiant, a hero. It's worth it all, even the stinging pain of the thorn.

The passage winds down the inside of Lady Rosella's tower, as black as her eyes and as endless. I would've been lost in it if it wasn't for her small hand around mine, as steady and certain as if she had walked this route a thousand times before. Perhaps she had in the days before; when her fleeting freedom had been taken for granted.

The floor flattens beneath me as the staircase ends. Lady Rosella's pale hand punctures the darkness as she pushes the door. It opens into a midday far brighter than the tower containing us, far more cheerful than the story we're living in as it filters through the arched, many-paned windows into the large hall. 

We move through the house, past finely engraved furniture encrusted with dust, past portraits of the Vitale family looking down on their last descendant with solemnity.

I sneak a glance at Lady Rosella. She strides through the passages, never sparing a glance for the wilted flowers in the painted ceramic vases or the intricate glass ornaments on the dull wooden tables we pass.

These sights must bring so much pain. They must remind Lady Rosella of the life she had lived before; of the laughter and memories she had made with the parents who died from the misfortune that kept her alive a century after they were gone.

Upon reaching the front door, we step into the bright day and descend the steps into the garden.

The curses and the darkness end here, today. Lady Rosella and I are headed towards a loving, lovely future. We must only reach the gate at the end of the garden.

On this side, it's clear of thorns. Even they know they can't keep my freedom from me if they tried, not after I have claimed ownership of the land's greatest treasure.

I can see it in my mind's eye, how Lady Rosella will push the gate open, how it would tear through the thorns on the outside, splintering the feeble branches bearing them. Carmine would trot towards me, neighing his glee. I would help Lady Rosella into the saddle, and we'd ride away, somewhere the prickly fairy would never find her, somewhere her curse couldn't haunt her.

There's nothing to stop me. The path to the gate is clear, with no thorns thirsting for my ankles and no wayward rocks to trip me up so close to victory.

"Come." In the sunlight, I swear Lady Rosella must be made of the magic that cursed her. Her eyes glimmer like those black gems nestled in the bowels of the earth, her hair as bright as lines of festive candles.

I let her lead me down the path, keeping away from the thorns encroaching upon the cobblestones. A clatter echoes among the brambles lining the wall, hollow, like a skull falling against stone. I start.

I swear one of the wilting red briar roses stirs as I gaze upon it. The sound must've come from an animal, a dumb creature not to know what deadly grounds it has selected for its foraging.

Or perhaps it's just my imagination. I gaze at Lady Rosella. As when we were inside Vitale Manor, she keeps her gaze ahead. I follow her example. We must look to our future, not the cursed past, not our prickly present.

Then the garden rouses to life.