Then Eva sobs, harsh and sudden, and I realize that I’m looking at two pairs of iron shoes, the metal straps glowing a dull, hellish red.
I curl my fingers tight around Eva’s, but her hand is limp and damp in mine. I turn to face her, kneeling, speaking in a desperate rush. “It’s okay, I’m sorry, we’re going to be alright.” But Eva isn’t looking at me, or even at the shoes. Her eyes are on Snow White, who has already forgotten us and is now staring into the mirror’s surface with a chilling, predatory patience.
Eva’s expression as she looks at the queen is not one of panic, or loathing, or even despair. Her face has an eerie coolness to it, a carved-marble quality that makes my chest hurt for no reason. “Hey, listen, Charm knows we’re here. She could still save us, okay?”
Eva’s eyes move to mine slowly, squinting as if the two of us are standing on opposite sides of a very wide river.
“I hope she does,” she says softly. Then, just as softly, she kisses me.
It’s dry and gentle. It feels like an apology, or a farewell. “Thank you.” She whispers the words against my lips.
The very small part of my brain that isn’t occupied by the imminent approach of my own painful death or the salt-sweetness of her mouth manages to say, “For what?”
“For showing me I do not have to be the villain, the evil stepmother, the Wicked Witch of the East Bro. For giving me…” Her eyes move back to Snow White, and her lip curls, revealing a slim white line of bared teeth. “Agency.”
It’s at this point that Eva begins unlacing the front of her dress. My brain splits into two competing factions, one of which is cheering and sounds a lot like Charm on girls’ night at the gay bar, and the other of which is thinking how sad it is that Eva has endured so much, only to lose her mind now. “Eva, babe, what are you doing?”
She doesn’t answer, drawing the ribbon slowly out of her shift. Except it’s not a ribbon, is it? It’s a bodice lace.
A syrupy weight settles over my limbs. I notice small things: the minute tilt of Eva’s body away from mine. The taut cord of muscle in her neck, the divot in her cheek as she clenches her jaw, bracing herself to do something terrible and brave and stupid. I reach for her. Too late. Eva has already launched herself across the courtyard, knifing through the air like a falcon with dirty white feathers. She collides with Snow White, and then there’s a splintering, shattering sound, like a dropped wineglass. Something sharp slices across my cheek.
The courtyard falls into a numbed silence as every eye looks at the ground, at the place where the magic mirror lies in broken shards. I see our faces reflected in the shards, split and doubled, frozen in shock.
There’s a large sliver of glass right beside me, close enough to touch. The face reflected in this piece does not belong to the huntsmen, or either of the queens, or even myself. It’s a face framed by a long wing of bleached blond hair, with a septum piercing and an expression suggesting homicidal intent, or at least serious bodily harm. The lips of the face are moving, repeating the same name over and over, interspersed with swears: Zinnia, Zinnia, goddammit Zinnia.
“Charm, holy shit—” I reach for the shard and my fingers fall through the glass, into the cold rush of the great nothing between worlds. I feel myself tilting into it, falling forward, but I dig my toes into the stones. “Eva, it’s Charm! Come on!”
Eva is crouching before the queen with blood oozing from one nostril. She looks back at me and understanding flashes across her face. But she doesn’t run to me. She could have. I want that on the record. She could have taken my hand and run, and left this world under the thumb of its wicked queen for another century or two. She could have chosen to survive, like she always had.
Instead, she draws the bodice lace tight between her hands. It gleams sickly green in the firelight.
Eva nods once to me, with a fey, rueful smile, as if to say, Well, someone has to, before she surges to her feet and wraps the ribbon around Snow White’s throat.
Warm fingers grab my wrist, pulling hard. The last thing I see before I go is Eva—my not-so-wicked queen, my heroic villain—falling beneath the weight of her enemies.
9
I LAND HARD, flat on my back, feeling like a lump of Play-Doh forced through a cheese grater. The sky above me is no longer low and purple, but a bright, suburban blue crisscrossed by jet trails. A few oak leaves slap peacefully against one another. Damp earth soaks through the back of my T-shirt.
I’m in Charm and Prim’s backyard in Madison, a place I wasn’t totally sure I’d ever see again and from which I now desperately and ironically want to leave.