"Zinnia, my love?" my suitor calls from below my tower.
       Damn! I've slept too late.
       "Zinnia!" He is never as sweet when I make him repeat himself.
       I dart to my window, cautious of the painted designs drying on the floor, the reason I'd been up so late. "I'm here, I'm here!" I brace myself on the windowsill and look down.
       He stands with one foot planted against the tower as if about to scale it. As if he had the faintest shred of courage.
       I smile at my betrothed. "I'm here, my love."
       His face smooths. "You shouldn't make me worry like that. Is today the day, finally?"
       I can only hope that from stories below, he can't see me shudder. "Not yet, darling."
       "Show me."
       I also hope he can't hear my sigh as I turn and sweep my hair out behind me to tumble down the wall. As I expect, it falls short of his grip.
       Yet each day it betrays me, growing more. Simple enough to cut it, of course. But though I am the tower's only occupant, there are those outside who depend on me. So I stop myself from shearing it all off, and keep him fooled.
       He slumps against the wall, discouraged at the sheet of hair unreachably high above him. A romantic image if not for the snarls and snaps of his monsters as they circle the tower, their claws declaring their routes through the ground as a rancid odor rises from them.
       He is too far away for me to see his face, but that makes no difference. He is part of my last memory of Zelie, and therefore seared into my mind.

       It was impossible not to feel plain next to Zelie. Even with rotten leaves clinging to her after Millicent sent us to gather supplies for spells, Zelie still had that smile. I could have been jealous, but the fact was, I had no better friend. Since we'd been babes, born only one day apart, it was always the two of us. The daughter of the King and the daughter of his General. Both unlucky enough to lose our mothers as we came into the world, left with nothing but portraits to teach us what we might grow to resemble.
       Father and I could have spent entire days together in conversation and study had his work not kept him so busy. Zelie wasn't so fortunate. King Ormun, endlessly wrapped in grief, saw no point in a daughter without a wife to share her with.

       When my betrothed finally leaves, I retreat from the window and examine my work from the previous night. My supplies of paint are limited, so each brushstroke must be intentional.
       My narrow bed, chair, and table have been long since pushed against the wall to make room for the large blue circle chalked on the floor. My back still aches from bending over to draw it. Inside are sinuous shapes in purple, red, and green copied carefully from the book. They are as close as I could make them after practicing with charcoal on scraps of paper. The terms of our arrangement dictate that while I may not leave the tower, I may receive Millicent once a month on the night of the full moon. Only then do his beasts grudgingly cease their prowling, taking up watchful positions beneath my window, moonlight glinting off their fangs.
        She, of course, brought me the paints, the brushes, everything I have. When I discover something is necessary I must wait for her next visit, then wait again for her to return with the moon's next rounding.
       There used to be times when the impatience would fill me up from bottom to top and spring out of me in jumping and twirling until I wore myself out. I lost my freneticism once my body realized I was eating a lot less than before my captivity, but even now as I approach the thirty-first moon, I find myself having to tamp down on energy that drives me to pace when I don't have the reserves to do so. If I push myself too hard and need more food than I have, there is no way to contact Millicent and tell her. Another term of our bargain.
       He would never bring me food. His kingdom under the mountain is one of beautiful minerals and gems that sustain his otherworldly people. Were he to think I lacked for anything, he might bring me a diadem.
       I am thinner than thirty-one moons ago, despite containing my movements and eating all of the provisions Millicent brings me, nuts and smoked cheese and flatbread that will not spoil over the course of a month. As the seasons turn, I resemble Zelie a little bit more.

       The Prince from under the mountain came to our court in our nineteenth year as the world crept toward decay.
       "I don't want you two listening to any of the gossip," Millicent told us that morning as we came in from the walk she insisted we take every day of the year unless the doors of the palace were frozen shut. "And I don't want you bewitched by however nice the man may look."
       After my mother's too-early death, Millicent was the most powerful sorceress the court had ever known. Father knew no one was better suited to instruct me in my own magic.
       When we returned that day, the atmosphere was harried by the arrival of the new Prince and his entourage. The beings from under the mountain were so bedizened in jewels I could barely make out their features.
       The sudden tautness of Millicent's shoulders didn't bode well. "Girls," she said quietly, "I need to have a word with your fathers. Zinnia, your room's closest. Stay put until I come for you. Don't let anyone else in."
       "But they look friendly," Zelie began, her eyes drawn to the jewelry filling the antechamber with color and light as if we were caught inside one of the stones. "And so beautiful!"
       "Zelie!" Millicent hissed, "Go!"
       "Old witch," Zelie muttered as we left, "why does she think she can talk to me like that? I'm the King's daughter for all the good it does me."
       Summers slip away when you're not looking, and we could not walk fast enough to avoid our own fall. For then, we met the Prince.

       Millicent arrives as the thirty-first moon shoulders its way into the sky. I have spent the day with my smallest paintbrush and a quickly emptying pot of indigo. As usual, Millicent uses magic to rise upwards from the ground, carrying the single bag of supplies our agreement permits. Much as they chafe, she holds to the restrictions, knowing as well as I do this was the best we could wring from what happened.
       "How is Father?" My first question, always, accompanied by the fear this is the month the answer changes.
       "Overworked, overtired, and overwhelmed with worry about you."
       It wouldn't be reassuring, except it's now the thirty-first time she's said it.
       She nods approvingly at my work. "I brought more paints." She unpacks the bag and stores away food and clean clothes, things I vaguely know I require. And then the things I crave more each month, pigments for workings and candles to light, smuggled in the small quantities she can manage each trip.
       My sorceries are slow in preparation to call an ancient power. But I will have my answer. This will have been worth it.
       All except the first wound.
       My suitor is handsome but empty of anything except greed so powerful it causes those ensnared to waste away. This is why so many fear him.
       But he is also empty of perception. To him, I am only a beautiful prize in a tower.
       This is how I will destroy him.

       They wouldn't stop gazing at one another. My hand tugging on Zelie's wrist had as much effect as a yellowed leaf breaking from a branch.
       "Zelie--"
       "Shhh!" she didn't even look at me.
       "Millicent said--"
       "Leave us!"
       Surprise broke my hold on her.
       The Prince wrapped his arm around hers, and then they were gone, eyes still locked on one another.
       I shoved my way past the uniformly spare frames of the Prince's entourage until I found Millicent speaking with Zelie's father.
       "You have to help me," I cried out, hoping for once the man would show an interest in his only child, "they won't stop looking at each other!"
       Yet all the King did was look to Millicent. "It will be done tonight. Is that clear?"
       "This is not the answer," Millicent insisted.
       "What is your alternative?"
       The King's private guard found Zelie at some point that night. Millicent wouldn't speak to anyone, even me, for days afterwards. But we all felt the ground shudder as stones rolled impossibly up a distant hill, forming a tower with no entrance other than a single high window.
       King Ormun didn't know what to do with his daughter. So he put her in a tower.

       There is half a moon tonight. The land here is barren of plant or animal life, with nothing for the air to resonate off. It is so tempting to retreat to the past, lay a memory of Father and Zelie on the blank canvas before me.
       Instead, I leave my wrap on the bed and stand in my thin dress, letting the breeze keep the hairs on my arms standing and my eyes wide. At last, a shadow mars the moon's face, growing larger until it hovers just past my reach.
       I have read endless stories of this creature's terrible powers. But after what I've already seen in my life, this beauty terrifies me enough on its own.
       Why do I do this? I wonder as I stare at the great scaled wings, the glinting beak and talons. The dragon won't grant my wish until the rituals of the thirty-three moons are complete. These requests of mine are risky, for there are no stories told of the dragon's patience. Whereas I have an enormous store of patience, but accompanied by such loneliness, I often feel suffocated. So often, these gray walls seem to move closer, crushing me into nothingness.

       Halfway between the eighth and ninth full moons, with my cheekbones newly prominent and my hips newly bony, I'd lit one of my precious stash of candles.
       "She who lairs within the moon and gives the stars their fire," I chanted, knowing Millicent would have slapped me if she'd been there, "please grant me the gift of your presence as a sign of your favor in my quest."
       My senses shifted as sorcery bubbled up from my core.
       The dragon of the moon came to me, not as close as she would later, but near enough to be seen in the gibbous moon's light. Enough to intoxicate me.

       King Ormun gave his daughter no more thought when she was far away than he did when she was within arms' reach. The Prince left us on a tide of silent fury. Seasons slipped by until Zelie had been in the tower for two years.
       I filled my days with study. Millicent tried to talk to me about Zelie once, but never again.
       Zelie wasn't allowed visitors, only a weekly delivery of supplies, but I started to send letters along in the hope my friend was still there underneath the girl who'd ordered me away.
       The land under the mountain has such riches, began the only reply I ever received, in a scrawl nothing like Zelie's orderly hand: every time he tells me of them, I lose my breath for excitement. Oh, Zinnia, I shall be so happy when I am with him among all the beauty... Seven pages like that, more indecipherable as it went. What was real, and what was the distortion of isolation?
       "The bastard stole her!" Millicent told me one day after one of our lessons was interrupted by a frantic summons from the King. She would say no more, but the gossip I heard was so bizarre I tracked down the messenger who'd brought the news. The woman sat exhausted in the dining hall, too worn out even to notice the chilled melon juice and roasted meat in front of her.
       "It's true," she said before I finished sitting on a cushion next to her. "I saw it happen when I brought her supplies."
       "He climbed?"
       She gave a nod so curt it might have snapped her neck.
       I'd forgotten how long Zelie had let her hair grow over the years.
       The tower's only point of entry was the window. It had surely been her idea for him to climb her hair, with a rope ladder looped around his neck to help them both back down again.
       Suddenly, my dearest friend was the queen under the mountain.
       As treacherously as summer slipped away, so too did fall decay into winter. By the time the couple graced us with their presence, it had been three years since I'd seen her.
       "Father," I hissed as we stood with the rest of court in a parody of welcome, the King glowering in the center. "Where is she?" The woman next to the Prince was a stranger, adorned in persimmon silk and winking opals.
       "Zinnia," he said in a voice I'd never heard before, "she's right there."
       I would have refused the evidence of my second look, except for the stories told of the kingdom beneath the mountain. A land under the mountain stuffed with gems and minerals, where the sheer beauty of their possessions sustains the Prince's subjects.
       However, such cannot sustain a human. Zelie had the land of wonders she'd longed for so much it spilled out her fingers. Her new husband was so enchanted he'd scaled tower walls to carry her down. But all he knew was beauty and the lust for more.
       The woman beside him was a layer of skin laid over a skeleton. She was living on beauty alone, which a woman cannot do.
       She didn't speak that day.
       When the Prince returned her body to us several weeks later, he was handsome, even in confusion. "She's no use anymore," he said, gesturing for two attendants to drop the corpse in front of us. "She just...stopped." He left as quickly as he'd come.
       "He's not done," I said, not letting myself look at what lay on the ground but sickly certain my premonition was right. "You have to--"
       "I swear," King Ormun said as he held his daughter's body, "the next time you speak to me, I will have you locked up until the end of your days. I don't care who your father is or what you were to Zelie."
       I never heard him say her name again.

       "My sweetest love, how much longer will you make me wait?"
       Another day begins with my suitor's cry. Amazing how rapidly his heart recovered from his devotion to Zelie.
       "Not much, my darling."
       "I long to hold you in my arms, to caress you..." He carries on in that vein for some time and I stop listening, feigning interest with the occasional nod and smile. His ego would never permit him to believe my attention could waver anyway.
       My thoughts drift to the evening to come, when the thirty-second moon will rise.
       Movement around the room has become a delicate dance, as even days after finishing I am terrified of smudging a single brushstroke. The stone floor is cold, but I've put away my shoes for fear of scuffs. Warm feet will be no consolation if I fail to please the dragon of the moon.
       An unusual word in the Prince's blather reaches my ear. My pleasant expression slips. "What was that, uh, darling?"
       His smile makes me want to launch myself from the window and claw out his eyes. Did he smile at Zelie that way when she weighed less than the trinkets he draped on her? My stomach growls. I am so hungry, but there is no food left.
       "My people are excited to welcome their new queen. After the invasion, we shall hold a coronation for you like has never been seen before."
       "Invasion?" I steady myself on the windowpane, not sure if it's hunger or sudden dread making my head feel empty.
       The monsters' snarls intensify, yet I hear every word he says. "When we take King Ormun's palace. You didn't think I would let him treat me as he did without reprisal, did you?"
       "The King is hardly the only one there--" Hush! I scold myself, but it's too late.
       "I know," he soothes, "don't worry; I'll make sure they all pay. Then we can finally be together."

       The Prince started his new game only two days after giving us Zelie's corpse. He would let the sunrise illuminate him as he entered one of the villages dotting the hills, and he always left with a new paramour.
       A loved one went missing, and alarm was raised, of course. Family and friends were concerned and searched, but all too often the truth was grim, especially in winter. Yet the Prince always brought them back once he'd used them up.
       King Ormun had barely left his rooms since Zelie died. Father sent dozens of messengers, bringing news of the danger to everyone they could reach.
       By the time it was warm enough for Millicent and me to take our morning walk without scarves, five women and three men had lost their lives, with each death followed by a band of the Prince's courtiers rampaging through their village, clutching torches to light the fields and whips to spur the monsters. Punishment for producing unsatisfactory consorts.
       As we walked in silence that first warm day, I saw Zelie's tower through a patch of sun-fuzzed clouds. Useless pile of stone.
       Then I realized what I needed to do.

       "Turn around and go back." I block the windowsill as Millicent rises with the thirty-second moon. "Quickly, before his spies see you've been here already." I don't know if they'd notice, but I cannot take the chance. "I have to do the spell tonight, I need--"
       "You only have one month left." Impatience wars with pity on Millicent's face as she hovers in front of me, bag clutched in her hands.
       "Listen!" My stomach growls at the thought of the food she brings, but I ignore it. "You have to bring me starflowers for the final part of the spell!"
       "Let's get you something to eat."
       "He's going to take the palace!"
       Her lips purse as she tries to figure out how much of my hysteria is real.
       "You have to believe me."
       "The ritual calls for thirty-three moons."
       "She's come for me every time before. If she knows how desperate--"
       "When have you called her before?!"
       I snap, "You can scold me and let him kill more people, or you can get me the leaves, and I can try to do something about it." Too late, I hear myself. "Millicent, I'm sorry."
       "No." She lobs the sack over the windowsill. "You're right. I'll be back as soon as I can." She takes a breath and looks at me. "Eat something."
       She leaves.
       My appetite is gone.

       "Tell me about the dragon of the moon."
       "Pff. A fairy story." Millicent didn't slow her pace as her spindly legs pumped their way up the final hill back to the palace. I waited, still staring at the distant tower.
       I heard her stop.
       "You know how long it would take, don't you?" Millicent's words were cautious and clipped.
       "It's the only chance we have to stop him."
       She was silent long enough for the clouds to drift until the tower was framed in clear blue sky.
       "How will you hold him off while you prepare?" She spoke to me not as a student but as one who would be an equal if I shouldered this burden. We both knew how many more would lose their lives if the Prince ran unchecked for thirty-three more months.
       I continued to look at the sky, presenting my evidence better than any words could. It didn't take her long.
        "No." She darted back down the hill so fast the last few steps were stumbles. "I was already forced to imprison one of you."
       "It will not be my prison."
       It will be my fortress.

       I stood outside the palace gates as the sun rose the next morning, wearing the finest gown I possessed, a clinging crimson fabric. My neck was weighted by my mother's necklace, purple stones worked in silver. When the sun heated my back the light made me radiant, a living flame of red hair and fabric touched with sparkle at my throat.
       "What are you doing?"
       Father looked like he'd aged a decade since Zelie's death six months earlier. Each day brought a new flood of desperate requests. Burnt lands meant no reserves of food for the next winter.
       There had been no time to tell him.
       He reached for me, but the sight of the necklace froze his hand. As he hovered, the Prince appeared in the distance. My trap was sprung.
       Think of Zelie. I clung to the memory of her wasted frame as I walked away from my father and toward the creature who'd twisted my dearest friend into something that knew only longing.
       "We can be together forever."
       I took the Prince's hands and forced myself to look into his eyes, dark and heavy-lashed. The eyes that watched Zelie waste away. His breath quickened.
       "I merely need you to wait for me, my Prince. Can you do that? Will you give up all others if I promise to be yours when the time comes?"
       My father made a strangled sound, but I didn't let myself look behind me. I had to stare at the man I hoped would ask me to marry him if my plan was to work.
       The Prince watched me like I was prey, finally brought down.
       "My darling," he pulled me closer.
       "No!" I drew back, distress nothing near mock. "My love, we must not risk it. You said you could be patient!"
       Then I told the Prince a story about the burden of sorcery, of women who died too young as punishment for not mastering their magic before they wed.
       And the Prince, transfixed by the sight I'd made of myself, believed me. He has only one question. "How will I know when it is finally time?"
       "When my hair grows long enough to climb, you shall take me away." A random marker I plucked from recent events, yet he took it for gospel. "Then we can be together forever."
       Afterwards, I tried to explain to Father why I'd done it, but he wouldn't look at me. Millicent brought me to the tower before I had another chance.

       Clouds thicken and creep across the sky as I wait for Millicent to return. Each time my pacing takes me past the window, the thirty-second moon is obscured a bit more.
       Finally, she drifts up and casts another bag to the ground before turning immediately.
       "Millicent, wait!"
       She turns her head. "You don't need me anymore." Her smile is small and sad. "Your mother would be proud."
       A dozen responses war inside me until an interruption makes them all irrelevant.
       "My beloved, I forgot the most important question of all earlier!"
       Millicent grabs onto the windowsill and pulls herself inside as the Prince calls.
       "Surely enough time has passed by now?"
       "He didn't ask to see my hair this morning," I say quietly as realization sinks in. "And I can't remember the last time I cut it." Did I after his last visit, as I always did? I must have. So why can't I remember? My stomach growls as in evidence of my body's betrayal, the weakening of my mind.
       "Of course, my love," I reply quickly, not wanting to alert him with delay. "A moment, merely!" He has never visited me at night before.
       The clouds above are mirrored by fog roiling across the ground.
       "There you are."
       I plaster sweetness over my worry. "I didn't expect you to visit me tonight."
       He is smug as he raises both arms. "Look what I have brought you!"
       My knees buckle. As far as I can see, there is nothing but his army awaiting his command. I've never seen the full force of his legions before. They outnumber King Ormun's by a factor of three, at least.
       "I shall take the palace and have my revenge over those who wronged me at last. And my bride shall be beside me!" His bellowing sets his monsters howling, a discordant sound that makes the insides of my ears itch.
       "Zinnia!" Again, his voice is edged with impatience that I haven't already provided his way to me.
       I glance up but cannot see the sky for the massing clouds. Yet there is no time to waste in hoping the dragon is there.
       I turn so my hair tumbles over the windowsill, glad it takes my face out of his sight. Millicent darts forward to grab my hands and keep me from falling over the windowsill as the Prince pulls on my hair.
       "Quickly," I hiss as hundreds of pinpricks on my scalp bring tears to my eyes, "the scissors!" I spread my legs wide and brace my feet with every ounce of muscle that hasn't wasted away.
       Dull though the scissors are, they are enough. I jab behind me and hack at what I can't see, mindless of anything but the need to keep him from ascending.
       I am suddenly light enough to drift into the sky. A thump below and a foul exclamation from the Prince.
       There is no disguising what I've done. I drop the scissors and reach for the newest bag of supplies, but Millicent has already unpacked them. She holds a purple candle. Her eyes unfocus as she mutters, and the wick lights with a tiny snick.
       I snatch up the bundle of fresh-picked starflowers and count as I pluck off the leaves to burn in the flames until I reach thirty-two. Then I hesitate. The spell calls for thirty-three on the night of the thirty-third moon since the caster has been in seclusion.
       Another roar from the Prince, this time echoed by his army. Millicent shudders as she continues to surround the painted symbols with tiny flames.
       My fingers hesitate on the final leaf. The plant's scent mixes with the candles' sweet smoke and makes me ill. The jagged ends of hair tease my skin to distraction.
       "What are you waiting for?" Millicent whispers as she places the last candle next to one of the red symbols on the floor. I stare at the swirling pattern I have worried over for months.
       There is a deep, rumbling sound from outside, so loud I swear the tower wobbles in the echoes.
       "Zinnia!" There is nothing left of the lover now, only the greedy tyrant deprived of his latest fancy. "You have betrayed me!"
       I let the plant fall, final leaf still attached. "She who lairs within the moon and gives the stars their fire..."
       I do not look at Millicent, much as I love her.
       "...hear me now!"
       I step onto the windowsill, glad the ledge of stone is so broad when I am this shaky. The crisp air clears my head as I look up, refusing to see the forces arrayed against me.
       It is like the trance of sorcery magnified. The Prince bellows, the monsters howl, and the army approaches, but all that exists for me is the sky.
       "I call on you to help my people!"
       I spread my arms, somehow certain that throwing away more than two years' worth of preparation is the right thing to do. Or so worried and hurt and hungry it makes no difference.
       The moon breaks through the clouds, gray-white and gigantic. The sky is all the darker for the contrast. Then suddenly, the dragon is before me.
       "Look at him!" So close her gold beak could spear me for impudence. "He has killed so many. You must help me!"
       The dragon's magic enfolds me in prickly warmth, like thousands of tiny flames running up and down my skin, turning me to ash.
       "You know how strong I am." My voice wobbles, but I dig my nails into my palms to focus. Her head tilts, and one set of claws twitch. Suddenly, I am very cold, so cold I think my heart will shatter.
       As quickly as she arrived, she is gone and the earth shakes again. I am still cold, but it is not really cold at all. It is a channel from my magic to hers that she has left, locked in my core. Not a gift, because I don't know if I will survive what I do next. But I never asked to survive.
       I look once more at the Prince who destroyed Zelie, and then I close my eyes. The channel is not as cold as I feared once I dive in, losing myself in a wash of power more beautiful than any jewel.

       Silence. No Prince, no monsters.
       I float in the feel of the magic. My sight blurs when I try to look at myself, making me think I see scales.
       The ground is far below, strewn with piles of grey powder. The same grey as the tower.
       I open my mouth and a roar comes out, surprising me back into silence.
       My wings take me up towards the moon, away from a land that no longer needs me.