ooooooooo! I love this! I love the idea of something seemingly benign and antiquated secretly teeming with danger! Even better, the dilemma of no modern day “Prince” to rescue the victims.
Technical nit pic: they would have pricked their fingers on a spindle, which is a specific part of the spinning wheel. Not the spinning wheel itself. (at least that’s what I think they were called, if my mommy memory serves)

Didn’t know where you were going with that, but I liked how it ended, very ominous and sinister, these seemingly harmless things that have the dark power of the fairy tale in a world lacking the redeptive agents to counteract it.

You have happened upon the intentional blank from my uncertainty! As far as I was aware it was a needle…I wasn’t quite sure how it worked so I left it general, also I think that’s what it says in most books. I know the spindle is what the yarn is wound around when it is spun and was around before spinning wheels came along.
A quick google search tells me it is indeed the spindle, which ends in a spike, but not when in a spinning wheel. This is the erroneous nature of modern retellings of the fairytale. So this is an accurate use of an inaccurate story. Ah well.
Thanks for pointing it out^^; Glad you enjoyed it!