“Should we approach by the main road?” Primrose whispers. “Or go around, perhaps sneak in and take her by surprise?”
At some point I suppose I should stop being surprised when the princess is more than a doe-eyed maiden, ready to faint prettily at the first sign of danger. I’m always annoyed when people are surprised that I have a personality beyond my disease, as if they expect me to be nothing but brave smiles and blood-spotted handkerchiefs.
I watch the raven spiral up the mountain. It soars through a narrow slit at the top of the tallest tower of the castle. “Oh, I think we can probably just knock on the front door, like civilized folk.” Even before I finish speaking the window pulses with a faint, greenish light. “She already knows we’re coming.”
5
THE PATH UP the mountain doesn’t take as long as it ought to. We’ve barely rounded the first turn in the road when we find ourselves standing at the foot of the castle. Up close it’s even more unsettling: the battlements jagged and uneven, the stones stained, the windows staring like a thousand lidless eyes. All its angles seem subtly wrong, off-putting in no way I can name. I want to laugh at it; I want to run from it. I mentally compose a text to Charm instead: it’s Magic Kingdom for goths. Gormenghast by Escher.
I swallow hard. My fist is raised to knock at the doors—which are exactly as tall and ornate and ghastly as you’re imagining—when they swing silently inward. There’s nothing but formless dark beyond them.
“Well.” I glance sideways at Primrose. She’s pale but unflinching, jaw tight. “Shall we?”
She nods once, her chin high, and offers me her arm. It’s only once I take it that I feel her trembling.
We’re barely a half step inside when a voice cracks from the walls, shrieking like bats from the eaves, everywhere at once. “Who dares enter here?”
I open my mouth to answer but Primrose beats me to it, stepping forward with her chest thrown out and her voice pitched loud, and for the first time it occurs to me that princesses grow up to be queens. “It is I, Princess Primrose of Perceforest, and the Lady Zinnia of Ohio.” She turns back to me and hisses low, “Draw out the blade. Ready yourself. I will distract her.”
It’s a good plan. It might even work.
Except I didn’t come here to kill a fairy, because I’m not a prince or a knight or a hero. I’m not Charm, who would charge a dozen dragons for me if only she knew where they lived. I’m just a dying girl, and the last rule for dying girls, the one we never say out loud, is try not to die.
I slide the knife from my hoodie and unwind the soft satin. I hold it aloft, showing it clearly to our unseen enemy, then toss it casually to the ground. It throws sparks as it slides across the flagstones.
“Lady Zinnia! What are you—”
I ignore Primrose. “Excuse me?” I call into the shadows. “Miss Maleficent?”
There is a long, frigid silence. Green light flares at the end of the hall, a sickly torch held in a hard-knuckled hand. The light falls across a slender wrist, a black hood, a dramatic sweep of robes. I’m distantly disappointed that she isn’t wearing a horned cowl.
“That is not my name.” This time the voice comes only from the black hood, a low growl instead of a shriek.
“My bad.” I raise both hands, empty of weapons. “I was hoping you had a second to chat.” I wait. “I will take your frozen silence for a yes. We come to beg a favor from you.” There’s an indrawn breath beside me, then Primrose’s voice repeating the word beg as if it’s foreign and rather filthy.
“You want the enchantment lifted, I suppose.” I don’t know if I’m imagining the bitter irony in the fairy’s voice.
I clear my throat. “Two curses, actually. You’re familiar with Primrose’s situation, I think, but not mine. I was … similarly cursed, in a land far from here. I come to you now in the hope that you—in all your infinite wisdom and limitless power, who have unlocked the secrets of life eternal”—I am aware that I’m laying it on thick and don’t care, dignity is for people with more time than me—“might free us both from our misfortunes. I have no jewels or treasures to offer you, save one.” I practiced this speech for the past two nights while I kept watch over the sleeping Primrose. I lift my face to that green torch light and pull my features into an expression of deepest sacrifice. “My firstborn child.”
Primrose gasps again. “Zinnia, you cannot! I forbid it!”