One moment turned to two, then three, then another.

Millie glanced desperately at the sparrow etched on the apple tree. Its small beak pointing to the right path at the fork. A road that led home. To Granny. To life...

"Millie Hood?"

Millie nodded, heaving a large breath into her suffocating chest. She'd stopped breathing. Such heavy was the decision at hand. So grim was her choice, her burden. She swallowed the lump of fear lodged in her throat. "You will reunite me with my granny, Sir?"

She didn't know how he could? Not if this was her last living moment, but she had to ask. She had to hear a hopeful answer, however much of a lie it may be.

"By the knight's honour, I will. I will carry you there myself if I must, but I'd rather you walk yourself, very much alive, with the Princess and I by your side."

"Have you seen a merge before?" she asked, trying to calm her clattering teeth. It was from the cold as much as from what was to come.

"I've read plenty about it before... though I've never seen it..."

Which means he doesn't know what's going to happen and neither do I.

Millie nodded again. Wisps of white cloud that was her breath hung about her head. It was taking her a moment to muster the strength she needed. A moment to understand what she was about to do. A moment to live.

One breath at a time.

Beneath her, Ruby's face was fast draining of colour, of blood. The princess was dying. The nick she had planned to cut, to prove her sameness had been too deep a price, too deep a cut. It was a cut that was spreading wider, faster; after all, the blade had been anything but ordinary. They didn't call it a Ripper for anything.

The one person Millie was tasked to look after was dying in her arms, and she could do something about it. She was the only one who could.

Millie nodded a third time to herself, her breath rasping out of her frightened chest.

She looked upon the sparrow again, the sign of home. So close. "Take the road the sparrow points to if I do not wake. Walk for a league, you will come to another apple tree—no, a weeping willow, by the side of the riverbank, there is a sparrow upon it, follow its beak. Another league ahead, you shall come upon a third tree, a Spruce. Its sparrow will point you home. You will see a cottage a quarter league from there, within a small clearing. The Evergreen. That's where she'll be, my grandmother."

One more breath.

One more moment.

Millie closed her eyes. It was time. "You must do right by us, Ruby-Rose. You must save this world," she whispered, grasping the unconscious Princess's forearm into her blood-smeared hand.

And she let out a howl as the pain of the touch seared her, pulsing; tugging at her skin as if to shred it into thousand little pieces, all so Ruby-Rose's magic could find a way to back into the body it belonged.

"Firstborn granddaughter of the Evergreen. You, my child, are special. As special as the healing dewdrops of the misty mountains. As special as the lure-song of the phoenix. You shall rise, just as you end. You, my child, must carry our legacy." The long-forgotten whispers of her mother's dying words faintly echoed in Millie's ears. Words that had been spoken to a five-year-old child in whose arms cried the newborn Hood, Gretel. All the while their mother lay dying from childbirth.

The hollow echo of those last words murmured below the sounds of Millie's own scream. Below the sound of the last trembling, long breath she drew before darkness cast over her eyes.

At the end of it all, the two maidens lay unconscious by Bashful's feet—two lives hung in the balance. Two lives that were very much intertwined in ways and very much not. Who was going to pull through? Ruby? Millie? Sir Bashful could not tell, and though he wished to the fairies he could save both, he knew very much which one he would want by his side next. For there was a storm coming, and she was going to rage.

"Take the road the sparrow points to if I do not wake. Walk for a league, you will come to another apple tree." Millie's instructions now seared in his mind, repeated. He looked upon the two maidens and pulled in his breath. He had to get them—their bodies—someplace safe before the night fell and hounds came.

With his hearts in his throat, he pulled off the red robe from Millie and donned it himself. Then he did the only thing that was left to do, he picked up the princess and her maid and prayed to the fairies for strength.

Sir Bashful began walking over leagues he had to gain.

Are those birds?

Her head was foggy and thrummed at best. An incessant pulse gouged her eyes. Beneath her, something smelled musty, of age; of neglect. It assaulted her nose, making her feel like she was about to sneeze. The texture of a lumpy mattress tickled the pads of her fingers. Her body ached as if she'd fallen down steep steps. She wanted to get up, to open her eyes, to rise. Yet, there was no reserve of energy left in that body of hers.

A strange hum had settled into her bones. A sensation she could only describe as shivers.

Am I alive? She wondered as faint chimes carried in the wind. Barely there. It reminded her of home. Was she back? After all that, was she back home?

She tried to move. Her hand smarted like nothing else. Her belly grumbled with hunger pangs. And her body was stiff from the cold. Why wasn't there a fire burning? Going by the mattress she lay on, they were indoors somewhere. Perhaps the Evergreen? So where was the fire?

Outside—she was assuming it was outside—she heard muffled voices, bickering. At least it sounded like bickering. Who was talking? Sir Bashful was definitely one voice. His baritone was something she'd recognised, even stifled. But who was the other? It sounded male. Who was there with them? Had someone come across them while she'd been out?

Have the henchmen found us?

Dread gripped her sore chest. Her heart hammered against her aching ribs. With so many questions and so few answers, it did no good for her to be a dead log on the bed. Not if they needed to make an escape. Somehow.

She forced her heavy eyes to open. They tried to close back up against the muggy light. There was no winning this fight, of course, she had barely made it back with her life.

"Open!" she demanded, forcing her eyes back open. The light, though diffuse, still stung. Yes, she had no energy nor means to get out of that musty bed, but she could watch and listen, couldn't see? That usually took little to no effort. Thus, she fought against the brightness until her eyes adjusted to the dimmer interior of the log cabin.

"... saw the convoy from the air on our way here. They are probably half a day behind you, a day, or two if they keep chasing ghosts. You need another decoy, Sir Bashful. Someone to buy you more time, someone to lead them further astray. "

The smokey shape of the figure standing outside the wide door, talking, was a whole head shorter than Bashful.

She could see Sir Bashful turn towards her. His face too far away, too blurry to read anything, really. The knight's chain-mail clinked softly as he gave her a head nod and turned back to his equally blurry companion.

"How is she?" their visitor asked, their silhouette slightly turning to her.

"Come. Let her rest." Bashful led the man away from the open door, away from her.

No, wait! Who are you? What happened? Somebody tell me something.

But they were gone. Vanished from her sight.

She closed her eyes again, trying to think back to the last thing she remembered before darkness had become her company. How long had she been out?

All she remembered was the blood, the urgency of decisions. The dilemmas.

What had happened? She had to know. She had to know now. Thus, she mustered all her strength, every drop that was left in that weary shell, and pushed herself up on her elbow, then with another grunt, pushed up to sit. There, she took a moment, swaying—dangerously close to falling back down. Then, once she was steadier, with minimal swaying, she gave it one last push to get to her feet.

Little by little, she moved towards the door, wondering where Sir Bashful had walked off to with his friend. And what about her friend? What had happened to her friend? Was she okay? Despite everything.

As she stepped out onto the front porch, her jaw nearly hit the floor. All around the cabin, several tents stood, some nearly as big as the cabin itself. A bonfire burned further along, where several uniformed men stood around chatting whilst chattering.

There was a small army around them.

"Sir Bashful?" she called urgently. For he had some explaining to do. What was going on? Who were these people? And what had happened since she was last around? Who else but the knight was best suited to answer them?

"Sir Bashful!"

WC: 1598 TWC: 24, 527

[A/N: Shorter than most other chapters but I had fun writing it. I couldn't help myself. 🤗😂 I wanted to be slightly mysterious. Did it work?

Who do you think 'she' is? Any guesses. Place your bets: Ruby or Millie? Who do you want to see?]