“Because I mean you no harm.”
I make a noise of pure disbelief and the queen’s eyes flash beneath those lowered lashes. She moves. There’s a silver gleam, a rush of air, and then there’s a wicked point pressing into the bare skin above my collarbone. The little bird breaks into a shrill song, somehow even less melodic than before. Apparently she really did fix it. Under the circumstances—with her knife at my throat—I find my capacity for admiration is somewhat limited.
The queen drags the knife up my neck, scraping along my jugular, pushing uncomfortably into the soft meat beneath my jaw. My chin lifts reluctantly. Her eyes burn into mine, scornful, scorching. “When I threaten your life, I promise you will know it.”
I glare back, unflinching, deliberately unimpressed, until the queen’s jaw tightens. She sits back with a faint hnnh and tucks the knife back into the red drape of her dress. The mockingbird warbles into silence once more.
“I was hoping,” she says, with a sweetness entirely at odds with the clenched muscle of her jaw, “that you and I could start again. Here.”
She sweeps to her feet and turns a key in my manacles. My arms flop gracelessly to the floor, the fingers swollen and useless as minnows gone belly-up in the bucket.
The queen leaves me clumsily rubbing at my own limbs while she settles beside the fire. There’s a second chair across from her and a small table heaped high with food between them. “Come. Help yourself.”
I’d like to be prideful and heroic about it, but I haven’t eaten in a full day and it’s not like I’m going anywhere with dead fish for arms. I stumble into the chair and make a clumsy grab for a pewter cup. You never realize how good water tastes until you’ve spent a day hungover and chained to a wall.
She waits until I’ve made it through a full pitcher and three rolls before she speaks. “Let me state my position more clearly.” Her voice is earnest, her face carefully contrite. She definitely noticed me noticing her—again, sue me—because her makeup has been carefully reapplied and the laces of her dress tightened so that her breasts are squashed higher. I wonder if this is how she seduced poor Snow White’s dad out of his kingdom, and if she even knows who she is when she’s not playing the bloodthirsty villain or the helpless femme. “I am a foreigner and a widow, with nothing but a throne to protect me. But I know now that I will lose that throne, along with my life. And I…” She places one hand on what, I am mortified to report, can only be described as her heaving bosom. “I need your help, Zinnia Gray.”
I skip the apples on the tray and reach for a fourth roll instead. “Again, if you wanted my help, the manacles were not an amazing start.”
Another little flash of annoyance, but her voice remains penitent. “A mistake, born out of great need. I’m sorry.”
I pick bread from between my molars. “So that mirror of yours. What’s it do?”
I can almost hear her teeth grinding. “It shows the truth.”
“Where’d you get it?” My voice is casual, my eyes on her face.
“I didn’t get it. I made it. A woman in my position needs to know the truth at all times.” There’s the faintest blush of pride in her voice. I count magical objects in my head—comb, bodice lace, poison apple, mirror, my own mockingbird—and decide to believe her. It’s a pity she mostly uses her considerable skills for homicide.
“Neat,” I say. “Now, can I have my pack?” Suspicion is obvious on her face. I turn both hands palm up. “No, for real, I have to take my meds—magic potions, whatever—twice a day. You’ll recall the terminal illness I mentioned.”
“That was not a ruse?”
“I mean, yes, it was”—and so is this—“but it’s also true. Now give me my shit unless you want me to drop dead in the next twenty minutes.” That’s horseshit, of course. These days I forget my meds for weeks at a time, approaching them with the sporadic guilt that inspires people to buy multivitamins. It’s weird, actually, after living for so long under a strict regimen of pharmaceuticals and appointments, injections and X-rays. I used to be visibly, obviously sick in a way that made parents look away from me in grocery stores, as if my very existence was a bad omen. But now I mostly pass as a healthy person, carrying the GRM like an ugly secret, a bad seed in my belly. It’s almost a relief to announce it like this, even if it’s mostly a lie.
I snap my fingers and the queen’s mouth thins—God, I love bossing around royalty—but she fetches my backpack and tosses it into my lap. I make a show of fishing out ziplock baggies and plastic boxes labeled with days of the week, surreptitiously shoving the mirror deeper into my bag.