She goes still beside me. Only her eyes move, meeting mine. I assure myself that it’s just the candles that make them look that way, bright and burning. Nobody’s eyes are full of literal light; nobody’s gaze actually smolders.
She writes a name without speaking.
I read the word, pretending not to notice the pair of watery tear drops blotting the page beside it. “You know I was just teasing when I called you that. You can choose any name you want.”
“I have.” Her tone might manage to be imperious, if there weren’t tears in it. “How do we know if it … worked?”
I don’t answer. I slide the last shard of mirror across the table, the one Prim plucked from my hair, and fit it neatly into the frame. Our faces look up at us from the surface, fissured and cracked, but exactly as we are: a skinny, sharp-chinned woman in a dirty T-shirt and a hard, hungry queen with a surprising number of freckles.
The only difference is what’s behind us. There are no whitewashed walls in the mirror. It’s distant and blurred, but I think I see a rich, rolling landscape, a stone shape that might be a castle. A new story, unfolding around us in all directions.
I take Eva’s hand and place it gently on the mirror’s surface. Her fingers fall through the glass as if it’s an open window.
She doesn’t drag me into the space between worlds this time. She looks at me with a question in her eyes, and I shrug. “One more time can’t hurt, can it?”
Eva smiles. We fall together into the vast nowhere, where my imaginary body fights for air that doesn’t exist, where the only real thing is the heat of her hand holding tight to mine.
11
THIS IS, DEPENDING on how you count it, either my forty-ninth or fiftieth happily ever after, but I don’t mind. It turns out I’m not quite sick of them yet.
It shouldn’t be daylight for hours, but somehow we’ve arrived at that perfect moment just after dawn, when the air rushes away from the horizon and lays tall grasses low. The sunlight transforms the frost into dew and the dew into mist, which coils catlike around our skirts. There are trees surrounding us again, but they aren’t dark or tangled. They stand in long, neat lines, their branches spreading low. An orchard, at dawn.
Eva is turning in a slow, wary circle, as if she’s waiting for someone to leap out from behind a tree and shout, “Seize her!” No one does. Instead, the mist parts to reveal a pale stone castle standing on a distant hill. It’s not very big or grand—in castle terms, it might even be called modest—and there’s a shabbiness to it that suggests empty halls and unclaimed thrones. But it’s enough for Eva, I can tell. Her mouth falls open as she looks at it.
A throne of one’s own. A happily ever after fit for a queen. I have to remind myself forcefully that I’m not a queen or even a princess, and this story doesn’t belong to me.
I expect Eva to stride straight for the castle, but she turns back to me. Her smile is wide and young, almost giddy. There are no convenient candles to blame for the bright blaze of her eyes. “It’s better than I imagined.”
I grab my own elbows so I don’t do anything stupid, like fling myself at her. “Yeah, it’s not bad.” It takes a moment to unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “It suits you.”
A little wariness creeps back across her face. Her tone turns haughty, the way it does when she’s uncertain. “Do you think it might suit you, as well?”
“I mean, sure.” I find it easier to speak to her if I close my eyes. “But you know I can’t stay.”
“Because of the harm it would do to the universe.” There’s a flattering amount of grief in her voice.
“Yeah, and because Charm would murder me.” And Prim would hide the body, and my parents would testify in court that I deserved it. “There are these people, back in my world, who need me.”
“Still playing the hero.” A note of bitterness this time.
“No, I need them too. It’s just—they’re my story. And I can’t keep running away from them.” I scrape together enough guts to open my eyes and find Eva looking at me with whatever the opposite of pity is—admiration, maybe, or compassion. I dig my fingertips into my elbows.
“So anyway. Enjoy your happily ever after.”
Her lips curve in an expression too sad to be called a smile. “You know, I don’t think I believe in those.”
I raise my eyebrows at the bucolic perfection surrounding us, a Cézanne painting come to life. “Could’ve fooled me.”