The Faerie's Bargain

Owen had always been warned about the woods. His grandmother, old and sharp-tongued, would sit by the fire and tell him tales of people who wandered too far beneath the canopy and were never seen again. She called it the Veilwood, a place where the boundaries between worlds grew thin. Owen had always dismissed her stories as bedtime cautionary tales, meant to keep an unruly child close to home.

But on the night he stumbled into the Veilwood, those stories became uncomfortably real. He was chasing the remnants of an argument, his anger still hot in his chest, the moonlight barely piercing the dense branches overhead. He hadn’t meant to stray so far from the village, but before he realized it, the familiar paths had vanished, replaced by twisting trails that seemed to rearrange themselves behind him. The air was thick and humming, charged with something ancient and watchful.

He found the queen in a glade, seated on a throne woven of living roots and glistening flowers. Her beauty was terrible—sharp and cold, as if carved from starlight. She looked at him as though she could see every thought he had ever had, and when she spoke, her voice was music laced with knives.

“You are lost, human,” she said, her lips curling in a faint, knowing smile. “And yet you have stumbled upon a place that welcomes no intruders. How fortunate for you that I am feeling generous.”

Owen’s breath caught. Every instinct screamed for him to run, but he couldn’t move. “Who… who are you?”

“I am Titania, Queen of the Fae,” she said, standing. Her presence filled the glade, her crown of woven light casting flickering shadows. “And you, mortal, are trespassing in my realm. But perhaps you may yet amuse me.”

She offered him a bargain, her smile as dangerous as a blade’s edge: one wish, anything his heart desired, in exchange for a favor to be named in the future. He hesitated, the old tales clawing at the edges of his mind. But her offer was intoxicating, her words dripping with promises he couldn’t resist. He thought of his grandmother, frail and coughing in her bed. The wish tumbled from his lips before he could stop it.

“Save her,” he said. “Save my grandmother.”

Titania tilted her head, the glade quieting as though the world itself held its breath. “Done,” she said, with a snap of her fingers. “And the favor shall be mine to name when I choose.”

The moment the words left her mouth, the glade dissolved around him. He awoke at the edge of the forest, the first rays of sunlight brushing his face. When he returned home, his grandmother greeted him at the door, her cheeks flushed with color, her cough gone. For years, he thought the bargain was a distant dream, a strange, fevered night that left no trace.

But the fae never forget.

It was a decade later, under another moonlit sky, that Titania came to claim her favor. Owen had built a life by then, one marked by quiet happiness—a home, a family, a future he never thought to question. When she appeared in his garden, draped in moonlight and shadows, he knew instantly who she was. Her beauty was unchanged, her gaze just as piercing.

“I have come for what is mine,” she said, her voice soft but unyielding.

Owen swallowed hard. “What do you want?”

Her smile was cruel, her answer darker than any nightmare. “A soul, human. Not yours, but one dear to you. I require it for a binding—a debt owed, a price paid. You will choose, and you will deliver them to me.”

His stomach turned. “No,” he said, his voice shaking. “I won’t.”

Titania’s eyes narrowed, her presence growing colder, heavier. “You struck the bargain willingly. Do not test my patience, mortal. The debt must be paid.”

Owen’s mind raced. He thought of his wife, his young son asleep in his bed, the life he had built on the foundation of that wish. His heart broke at the thought of losing any of it, of being the one to destroy what he loved most. But Titania’s gaze held him, unrelenting.

“There must be another way,” he pleaded. “I’ll do anything else.”

The queen’s laughter rang out, sharp and cold. “There is no other way. The terms are set. The choice is yours.”

Owen’s nights became sleepless, haunted by her demand. Days passed, then weeks, the weight of the bargain suffocating him. He tried to find answers in the old stories, poring over dusty books and questioning anyone who might know the ways of the fae. But every tale ended the same: the fae always collected.

One night, as the moon reached its zenith, he returned to the Veilwood. Titania was waiting, her throne illuminated by the ghostly light.

“I cannot choose,” he said, his voice breaking. “I can’t.”

Titania regarded him with an expression that was almost pity. “Then the choice will be made for you,” she said. “Your hesitation is answer enough.”

Before he could react, she reached into the air, plucking a thread of light from the night itself. It pulsed and writhed in her hand, and he felt its pull deep in his chest. He realized with dawning horror what she had taken—his own soul, the one thing he had not considered she might claim.

“You are a fool, mortal,” she said, standing. “But I am not unkind. The ones you love will remain untouched. And you? You shall know what it means to serve the fae.”

As the light faded and the forest dissolved around him, Owen felt the change taking hold, his humanity slipping away like sand through his fingers. He became a shadow, a whisper, bound to the queen’s will. For the rest of his days—and beyond—he would serve her, a reminder to all who would dare strike a bargain with the fae.