Now Sylvanis and Deyus, each locked away and stubborn, held fast to their young naïve thoughts. Each believed, very earnestly, that they would swiftly escape their predicament and rescue the other long before daybreak. Each believed their dark imprisonment a final, futile effort by a jealous fate to stop them from their love. And so each, as they were marched through empty tunnels and long halls, began to plot escape.

It did not take long to realize that fairy stories had no place in dungeons. Stale wind blew chilly through these moldy halls.

Late that night the Tyrant King came down the steps in torchlight. He stood before Sylvanis’s cell and spoke to her in gentle words. He mused again on his love for her, how he longed for her, and desired her. He spoke of how he lamented life waiting for her, how restless he’d been when she’d disappeared. He told her of the ways in which their lives would now be grand, now that the two of them at last could be together. He asked her then again to be his wife.

Sylvanis refused.

This time the King grew angry. Impatience overcame him in his restless lust. Yet he tamed his desire with thoughts of hard won conquest. He steadied his temper, and with low voice made Sylvanis a promise.

“You love the boy, I know,” he said. “For that same love I feel for you, and thus I know its strength. But so long as one blossoms, the other will wilt, and this I cannot abide. I speak, so carefully listen: each night I will return to you, and each night I will ask my question again. If you accept me, you will become my queen, and have treasure and riches and power untold. But if you refuse, I will torture the boy. With each refusal I will torture him still. And on the eve of the third night, if you refuse me again, I will kill him.”

Sylvanis heard this and grew terrified. All notion of escape disappeared. She collapsed to her knees, she wept and apologized, she protested and pleaded and begged.

“But,” the Tyrant King continued, “If you agree to become mine, his life will be spared. I will pardon him and set him free to live out his days in sunlight. So then, wildflower, cautiously consider: his fate now rests with you.”

Then the Tyrant King turned from her, and both he and his guard left the dungeon.

Sylvanis sat alone.

Sadness swelled up beneath her breast, and in the dark of the dungeon she began to cry. Tears dripped from her eyes to the dusty stone, and the halls echoed with the sound of her heartbreak.

To marry, or refuse; to save her love, or condemn him?

Oh, what a ploy it was. She knew very well there was no fight to win. A King had his way, in the end. That she had choice at all was merely by his courtesy; at any moment, any time, he could revoke it.

He would have her, when all was said and done. This she knew.

Sylvanis, her heart hanging on the thought, suddenly screamed. She slammed a fragile fist against the stone beneath her. She shouted at the darkness with a voice filled with rage. She crumpled to the dungeon floor, and then in sorrow and tears she spoke. She said aloud a dangerous phrase:

“Oh, I would give anything if only there was someone to help me!”

It rang and echoed throughout the hall.

This dangerous, deadly phrase.

This the broken girl shouted in the naivety of youth., unknowing of what might be listening; unaware of their power, or what such a saying might conjure. Sylvanis cried aloud. And as she whimpered in the dungeon, as her sobs softened and her spirit waned, as her heart seemed to shatter beneath the weight of her circumstance…

…a demon appeared.

Its body lay flat and flickering, like a ghostly silhouette upon the walls. Its form seemed to flutter and dance with the torchlight, and it crawled across the ceiling looking down at the weeping girl. More a vapor than a body, more a vision than a thing, the black shadow slowly pulled away from the cold stone walls.

Sylvanis looked up and saw the shadow, and saw nothing to make it cast. She drew back in fright, her voice escaped her, and her muscles tensed to flee.

“Do not be afraid,” the shadow said suddenly. “For I am a demon and I have heard your cries, and I am here to help you.”

At this Sylvanis shrank further still. She fled into a corner of her cell. She watched as the demon faded through the bars, through the iron door to the floor of her cell. The shadow sat down on the hay before her.

“I have watched you,” it said sweetly. “I know of your plight and of your wish to see your love again. I have come because I have power, and I have come to give it to you.”

Sylvanis steadied herself. A spark of hope kindled in her chest, greater than her fear. Here to answer her cries was a thing of power, and it arrived when she called and when she needed it most. What a gesture of fortune—what a happening of destiny.

What other options did she have?

So in wonder and awe she sat down with the thing; desperately she wished to see Deyus again.

“Please, help me great shadow,” Sylvanis said. “If you know of my plight, you must help me.”

The demon smiled, pleased by her eagerness. But his head lowered, and he gazed upon her face, though his black form had no eyes.

“I have great power, child,” the shadow said. “But I can not give it freely, for that is not the way of the world. My power comes at a price. Though I can give you any gift you might imagine, its cost will ever equal the worth of what you wish.”

Sylvanis’s heart sank—for she had nothing in her cell with which to bargain; no trinkets, no baubles; naught to trade. The shadow’s words made her tremble, and she cast her gaze down to the hay.

“What is your wish?” the demon asked.

“Great shadow,” Sylvanis said. “That you would appear in my hour of need must surely be fate—and yet I am but a desperate girl in a cage. What here could I offer to one so great as you? What that my hands might grasp could serve as payment for your gifts? Yet even so, in such an unworthy state, I beg of you to help me.”

The girl bowed deeply. Her forehead touched the stone.

The demon sat in silence, and his ghostly form shifted with the flickering of the torch. He thought to himself.

Then he leaned in towards the girl. With a ghostly hand he lifted her up from the dungeon floor and spoke.

“You underestimate your worth, fair maiden,” the shadow said. “For even here, locked in darkness, you have any number of remarkable wonders to trade. But do not be so quick to give away your treasures. A lock of your hair, I think, will be payment enough for your first wish.”

Sylvanis leapt up from the stone overjoyed: though she kept her hair short, it was something still to give. She gathered it up in a knot behind her head and held what she could out towards the demon.

“You would offer me your hair?” the demon asked in a curious tone.

Sylvanis bargained quickly.

“Yes,” she said. “Take what you desire.”

The demon smiled with white teeth. Then he reached forward. He took but a little with a ghostly hand, and it melted away into his darkness. Around the strands, the hair from where he had touched turned singed and black. Then he nodded, pleased.

“What is your wish?” he asked.

Sylvanis thought quickly, and without care.

“I wish for the power to open the locks of the cells, that my love and I might escape within the darkness of the night,” she said.

The demon smiled, and he reached forward. With a single, branching black claw he touched the maiden on the forehead.

All the world turned black. The torches flickered out. All light suddenly faded. For an instant Sylvanis felt terrible, consuming cold. It chilled her straight through like a biting, bitter frost, as though she’d fallen through ice into a frozen, rushing river.

Then it vanished.

The dungeon hall flickered with torchlight, the moon shone outside, and Sylvanis saw that the shadow had gone.

She looked around, first the cell, then the hall, then the thick iron bars, to a keyhole on the front of her cell door. In curiosity she tugged strong on the bars.

The cell door didn’t move.

Sylvanis touched a finger to the keyhole on the door.

A sound like breaking. The cell door opened.

With a gentle push, the girl stood free.

Sylvanis nearly cried with joy. She rushed, fast and silent, off into the dungeon hall.