At least this time, when I touch the mirror and fall into the space between worlds, I’m not running away or rushing to anyone’s rescue. I’m not looking for a new once upon a time or hoping, secretly and shamefully, for my happily ever after. This time I’m just trying to live. Happily.
* * *
I OPEN MY eyes when my feet touch cold tile. I’m standing in Charm and Prim’s tiny bathroom, looking at my own face in their medicine cabinet mirror. I can hear small, domestic sounds through the door: the hum of a vacuum, the clink of a spoon.
I can’t make myself open the door just yet, so I study the apple in my hand. It’s that same slick, unlikely red, but this one isn’t unblemished. It looks like someone has pushed their fingernail through the skin, again and again, writing a message into the white flesh:
BITE ME
I smile, a little painfully, and then Eva’s voice echoes in my skull: I know someone who would kiss you back to life, and for the very end. I stop smiling. My heartbeat sounds uneven, very far away. I wonder, distantly, why I’m so surprised. When you save someone, sometimes they save you right back.
I don’t know if it would actually work. I don’t know if Eva would wait for me that long, or if her kiss could cure me, or if we would irrevocably break the rules of the universe. But what rules would we be breaking, really? An unlucky girl falls into a terrible sleep; her true love wakes her. That piece of the plot could belong to either of us, couldn’t it? It feels like a loophole, a cheat code, a chance. It feels like hope.
My story will still end—every story does—but I no longer know when, or how, or where. All I know for sure is what happens next, and I find it’s enough for me.
I set the apple carefully on the edge of the sink and clear my throat. “Hey, uh, guys?”
The vacuum goes silent. A muffled conversation follows （“Who the fuck was that?” “It sounded like—” “I will flay her.”）。
I raise my voice, smiling at my own face in the mirror. “I’m home.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wasted half a day trying to come up with a tortured Snow White parallel for these acknowledgments （Perhaps my publishing team could be compared to seven life-saving dwarves? Could I do anything with the magic mirror bit?） but I failed hard, so all I have to offer is this humble list and a lot of gratitude. This story owes its life to:
My agent, Kate McKean, who simply does not quit.
My editors, Jonathan Strahan and Carl Engle-Laird, who trust me and doubt me to precisely the right degrees.
My cover artist, David Curtis, and the entire team at Tordotcom, who did not have to go this hard, but who did anyway. Special thanks to Irene Gallo, Greg Collins, Christine Foltzer, Matt Rusin, Oliver Dougherty, Isa Caban, Giselle Gonzalez, Megan Barnard, Eileen Lawrence, Amanda Melfi, Dakota Griffin, Jim Kapp, Sarah Reidy, Lauren Hougen, Rebecca Naimon, Michelle Li, Kyle Avery, and everyone from Tor Ad/Promo.
The expertise of J. D. Myall, who saved me from myself, and the thoughtful, patient, generous insight of E. J. Beaton, H. G. Parry, Shannon Chakraborty, Rowenna Miller, and the rest of the blessed bunker.
The friends who’ve seen us through the first years of this frankly miserable decade, who have made us brunch and babysat the kids and left Gatorade on the front porch when we were sick.
My brothers, Eli and Larkin, who provided the memes and movie nights.
My kids, who provide the chaos, and Nick, who provides the order—and the humor and the food and the music, who is the very marrow of my life, the heat at the center of everything, and who is—as I type this—cajoling a three-year-old out of the kitchen cabinet.