Mountains Made of Glass

In a world where an Enchanted Forest teems with fae creatures and magic, Gesela is a young woman with a trace of fae ancestry who lives alone in a cottage on the edge of the Enchanted Forest near the village of Elk. Her mother died in childbirth, her sister Winter was killed by an arrow after a childhood wish Gesela made in anger transformed Winter into a deer, and her father died of grief shortly after. The village is plagued by a cycle of curses, each requiring a chosen villager to break it at devastating personal cost. When the village well goes dry, Elsie, a former friend who distanced herself under pressure from the villagers, tells Gesela it is her turn. Sheriff Roland, a wealthy and predatory man, offers to spare her if she marries him. She refuses, and he pushes her into the well.

At the bottom, Gesela finds a large, glowing-eyed toad. A crone had told Roland that killing the toad would restore the water. The toad helps Gesela climb out by hopping from stone to stone, but once free, it leaps frantically back toward the well. In desperate frustration, Gesela kills it with a rock, buries it at the forest's edge, and collapses into bed.

That night, five elven princes appear in her room and reveal the toad was their brother Eero, cursed into that form. Gesela could have broken his curse instead of killing him. As punishment, they transport her to the castle of their seventh brother, whom they call "the beast" and whom no one has seen in nearly ten years.

Gesela meets Casamir, the Prince of Thorns, in a castle that is itself a living forest of vines and moss. He is strikingly beautiful, with black, seemingly endless eyes, and she feels an immediate, involuntary attraction. When she tries to fight or flee, thorns and vines subdue her. Casamir offers a deal: If she guesses his true name within seven days, she goes free, but each wrong guess adds a year to her sentence. She accepts.

Casamir is himself cursed. Years earlier, he slept with a daughter of the Glass Mountains, a powerful magical force in the Enchanted Forest, and when he failed to return her love, the Mountains cursed him to forget his true name. If no one speaks it with love before time runs out, he will forget it permanently and cease to exist, as all fae do when their names are lost. He confides this only to the Magic Mirror, a sentient shard of an enchanted mirror his father broke into seven pieces before dying, and to Naeve, his blunt brownie housekeeper. Both tell him he must make Gesela love him, not merely desire him, but Casamir has never been loved and does not know how.

Gesela's search for the name leads her to a selkie in the garden, a shape-shifting seal fae in human form. She steals his sealskin, the magical pelt he needs to return to the sea, and forces a bargain. The selkie tells her that true names are shared only between lovers and with death, and suggests the Glass Mountains might know Casamir's name. He arranges for Wolf the Raven to carry her there.

Meanwhile, Casamir seeks romantic advice from Prince Flynn, a mortal prince he imprisoned for stealing a rose from his garden. Flynn's counsel is simplistic, and Casamir's stiff attempt to compliment Gesela at dinner backfires when he tells her to be "grateful" and she throws wine in his face. Yet the evening deepens their bond. When Casamir stands abruptly, Gesela flinches, revealing that someone has conditioned her to expect violence. She tells him the full story of Eero's death, and he vows retribution against Roland. He pulls her into a wild fairy ring dance among his court, where she dances until her feet bleed and collapses into his arms.

Gesela flies to the Glass Mountains on Wolf's back, having drunk from the selkie's pond to shrink small enough for the journey. The Mountains demand three hairs from Casamir's head in exchange for his name. After a heated encounter in which she and Casamir share their first kiss and trade intimacy for letters from his name, Gesela collects three dark hairs from her bedroom floor and returns to the Mountains. They erupt in fury: Only one hair was Casamir's. As punishment, they sever her ring finger. When she returns, Casamir is waiting with the selkie's severed head; the selkie had attacked her, and Casamir killed him. Overwhelmed, she weeps against Casamir's chest. He heals her finger with magic, warning that the Mountains now have her blood and will call to her.

Their relationship intensifies through antagonism, bargaining, and escalating intimacy. Naeve reveals the full truth to Gesela: She must not only guess Casamir's name but speak it with love, or they will both remain trapped forever. Gesela is furious that Casamir hid this. The Mountains' hold manifests as a beautiful bell sound that lures her into the garden, where fairies torment her with apparitions of her dead family. A golden fairy blows enchanting dust on Gesela and Casamir, igniting overwhelming desire. Casamir refuses to act on it while the spell controls them, but the fairy reveals the enchantment only amplified their genuine feelings. They acknowledge their real attraction and make love for the first time.

A gradual thawing follows. Casamir shows unexpected tenderness, and when Gesela tells him Winter's full story, he reveals that Winter is not dead: The willow tree absorbed Winter's body to heal her, and her heart still beats. At daybreak, he takes Gesela to the old willow, where she presses her palms to the roots and feels a faint heartbeat. She gives Casamir the letter G in gratitude. He asks if she could love him; she is too afraid to answer, and the silence creates a painful rift. Over the following days, their intimacy deepens. Casamir privately confesses that Gesela makes him feel as though his name does not matter, because as long as he knows her, he knows himself. During a tender picnic, he admits he can no longer fully recall his name, though it is not yet time for him to forget.

Unable to sleep, Gesela visits the mirror and works through the riddle it gave her earlier, which described Casamir's name as a universal feeling of sorrow known to all who have experienced birth, grief, and death. She connects this to the anguish of her own life and determines his name is Anguish: seven letters containing all the letters she has gathered. She races to tell him, but Prince Flynn has escaped his cell by bargaining with pixies, mischievous fae who had plagued Gesela throughout her captivity. Flynn binds her wrists and mouth with pixie vine magic, takes her ax, and forces her toward the Glass Mountains to obtain a golden apple for his princess. At the selkie's pond, Wolf snatches Flynn and drops him from a great height; a hawk catches the tiny prince and swallows him. Gesela kills the traitorous pixies, and Casamir arrives surrounded by thorns and shadow.

Gesela embraces him and says she knows his true name. Casamir confesses he lied about what he wanted most: He does not want his name. He wants her. She whispers her own name, Gesela, giving it to him freely, an act of trust reserved only for lovers. Then she whispers "Anguish" and kisses him, breaking the curse.

Gesela takes the public name Princess Ella, after her sister's nickname for her, and rides Casamir's wild white horse, Balthazar, to Elk, where Roland and Elsie are being married. She demands atonement. When Roland draws his sword, Casamir materializes behind her. She introduces him as her future husband and wishes the village "only Anguish" (216). Speaking his true name causes shards of glass to rain from the sky, killing Roland, the mayor, and every townsperson who treated her cruelly; Elsie alone is spared. Gesela and Casamir confess their love and kiss as Balthazar carries them home through the Enchanted Forest, past Winter's healing willow, to their castle of thorns.