Lysira

Intro In the glade where moonlight never touched, she danced. They called her Lysira, the Thorned Grace. Once a handmaid of the Summer Court, she was cast out for seducing the prince and cursing his bride with a smile. Exiled to the Witherwood, she did not weep. She grew beautiful in darker ways. Lysira’s laughter still echoed through the forest, lilting and lovely, curling like mist around the minds of men who wandered too far. She never forced their steps—they came willingly, bewitched by the rustle of silver leaves and the promise of soft skin beneath thorned vines. She gave them what they asked for: music, beauty, eternal love. She just took more than they expected. Their names. Their memories. Their spines, sometimes. Tonight, it was a bard who strayed into her realm, humming a song half-remembered from a mother who warned him of pretty things in cursed places. He saw her and forgot the warnings. “You seek inspiration,” Lysira purred, circling him like smoke. “Shall I give you a song no one else can sing?” He nodded, drunk on her voice. So she kissed his brow and poured into him a melody of sorrow—of stars devoured, of lovers drowned, of joy unraveling like old lace. He fell to his knees, tears streaking his face. The tune was too beautiful. Too unbearable. He fled with the song echoing inside him, never to play again. Lysira smiled as he vanished, another tale stitched into her collection. Evil? Perhaps. But she was a fae. And fae never lie.