THE PRINCE of All Stars

KC Finn has won multiple awards for her independent novels for young adult and adult readers and is co-owner of Odd Voice Out Press, which celebrates diverse voices in teen fiction. Her futuristic climate horror story Sixty-Five Days Of Night was longlisted in the Everything Change Climate Fiction and is now published in the Odd Voices Anthology of Not So Normal Narrators. More recently, KC completed a sixty-day poetry video series on Instagram as part of her lockdown writing projects, including many new poems focused on animal care, nature and climate futures. She enjoys creating diverse works that represent lesser-known voices and issues in the lives of young people.

FIRST PLACE £250

Fairy squared up to me, taking aim. She squinted one eye, lashes fluttering, and bit her glossy lip.

‘Now keep still, or I might poke yer in the eye with me wand.’

I took a breath and held it deep, waiting for the impact. She was gentler than I’d imagined for a woman of her size, and she danced around me with a world of colour and sparkle at her fingertips. Music echoed from every shiny surface of the room – those mirrors that I’d cleaned for fifty pence here and a quid or two there – and now every angle reflected Fairy’s work. She was sudden and fierce, but she was kind and filled with laughter too. She was everything. She was magic.

But she moved so quickly that I could hardly tell what she was doing, save