I feel like I should ask questions, like where are we going? or what happens when the guards turn up? But Red’s mother still has that sharpened bone in her fist, and her father’s expression suggests an entire armed battalion would present only a fleeting obstacle.
We don’t meet anyone. We climb stairs, and then more stairs, the air warming as we rise. The old-meat stink of the cells is replaced by something worse: a boiling, greasy smell, like bubbling fat. By the time we’re aboveground I have a decent guess where we’re headed. Red’s mother opens a final door and I’m sickened to find out I’m right.
The kitchens are empty. The hearths are banked, the counters bare, the knives hanging clean and wicked from hooks on the wall. And in the corner of the room, huddled in a wire cage like chickens or goats ready for the slaughter, are the children.
They look up when we enter the room, the whites of their eyes gleaming in the dark. Most of them have the glazed, numb expressions of people whose adrenal glands and tear ducts ran dry a long time ago. The last time I saw that look on a kid’s face was on my floor of the children’s ward, and for a moment I want to split and run, not stopping until I find a world worth lingering in.
One of the kids lifts her chin, body braced against the wire as if she’s hoping to get in one last punch before they carve her for the table. I spend half a second admiring the sheer guts of her, and then Red sees her mom.
All the fight runs out of her like cheap dye, leaving her looking like what she is: a frightened girl who wants her mother. Her lips shape a word I don’t know and then her mother is on her knees beside the cage, hands jammed through the wire, and her father is smashing his boot against the lock again and again, and if the guards weren’t already on their way, they are now.
“Be quiet.” Eva’s strangled whisper arrives long after the ship has sailed. The lock shatters. The children crawl out, some of them still dazed, some of them beginning to cry in sudden, shocking bursts. Red vanishes between her parents, their arms interwoven, their heads bent together. The shape of them—this family trapped in this god-awful horror movie of a world, surrounded on all sides by bad endings, still clinging stubbornly to one another—makes my heart twinge, so I look away.
When I’m done blinking back a weird wave of tears, Red is standing in front of us. She looks from me to Eva and back. “You came after me.”
I consider explaining that actually her mom and dad had the whole thing pretty much in hand, but I figure we should get points for effort. “Yep.”
Her eyebrows are crimped in the middle. “But you don’t even know me.”
“Nope.”
“Why?” This time, for whatever reason, she addresses the question to Eva.
“Because…” Eva flounders, looking around the kitchens as if hoping to find another zombie snake-tarantula to fight rather than finish this sentence. Her eyes skate across mine. She ends quietly, with a wry twist of her lips that isn’t half as disdainful as she’d like it to be. “Someone had to.”
Red hugs her then, which makes Eva’s face do several complicated contortions. It lands on a fixed expression that reminds me of a school calculator that’s been asked to perform too many impossible functions and is reduced to flashing ERROR on the screen. She makes eye contact with me over Red’s head, a clear plea for help that I pretend not to see.
I always like this part. The happily ever afters that come after are too sweet for me, like grocery store frosting, but this moment right here, when you feel the relief of a bad ending averted, a wrong righted—this is the good shit.
（I give a mental middle finger to Zellandine, because I’m not running, I’m being helpful, even if Red’s parents didn’t really need my help.）
Eventually, Red’s mother comes to collect her, pausing to give us a dignified nod.
The room empties as the villagers disappear back down the stone steps, led by Red and her family. I watch them go, still full of that heady, giddy pride.
I can tell from Eva’s expression—eyes dark, lips slightly parted, head tilted back—that she feels it too. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” I murmur.
“What is?”
“Being the good guy.”
She snorts at me, but her eyes catch mine. I’m smiling brazenly up at her, wondering a little dizzily what it would be like to kiss her for real, on purpose rather than out of necessity, when a voice behind us says cliché-ly, “Well, well, well.”
And I know that I have a very few seconds to act. I could run. I could turn and fight. I could prick my finger on the tip of my own knife and hope I fall out of this B-horror movie of a universe. Instead, I do what I’ve always done when I’m cornered, what I always will do. I text Charm.