“You’d rather we both stayed?” He spread his arms wide, toward the endless, silent mirrors.
The scene below us had changed. Now I was a hot coal leaping out of a fire, landing next to a piece of straw that resembled Sam and a bean that looked like my sister Calla. You’d think it would be difficult to tell who was meant to be who, but it wasn’t subtle. The bean had Calla’s nose.
They came to a river and tried to cross. It didn’t go well. Thestraw caught fire, and the coal fell in the water, going out with a hiss. The bean split in two and had to be rushed to surgery, but it ended up fine. Hurray for the bean.
“Would it be so bad, if we never escaped?” I asked. “We’re not going to starve. And we’d always have someone to talk to.” Although doing anything naked together would, unfortunately, also be precluded under this plan. There was too much chance it would count as kiss adjacent.
He looked down, thinking it over.
In the mirror, I was a bird in Sam’s mouth. He swung an axe at me and cut off his own head. Then Sam was my magic cook pot, but I didn’t know how to make him stop cooking, so I drowned the whole world in porridge. Other scenes followed. I don’t know how many. How long did we stand there without speaking, in that place without time?
Sam turned his gaze to me again. “You said an army of monsters has gathered. They’re trying to murder my sister and my cousin and my friends. Even if Jack’s been a bit of an arse lately, she’s still my sister.”
I nodded slowly. “Your fiercest champion.”
“Yes. If we can go back, we need to. And if you can go back alone, I want you to. Help them. Please.”
I couldn’t think of any way to argue. Or rather, I couldn’t think of any argument I was willing to make. None that weren’t selfish compared to what Sam was begging me todo.
“All right,” I said quietly. “If that’s what you want. All right.”
Sam put his hands on my shoulders and took a final long look at me, his eyes tracing the contours of my face.
Then he leaned forward and kissedme.
I had thought my eyes were open, but I found myself opening them anyway.
I spent a moment disoriented—I’d been standing up, and now I was lying down. But I was still being kissed, a pair of parted lips pressing firmly against my own.
“Sam?” I tried to ask, but it came out more like “Srrgm?”
The face in front of mine pulled away.
“I honestly wasn’t sure that would work,” Angelique said with a tired smile, sitting back on her heels. “Welcome back to the world of the living.”
Part VII
Every Villain Needs a Monologue
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Glass Menagerie
A quick glance around showed me we were in the sorcerer’s tower, the chamber that was invisible from the outside. The cages were mostly gone, and the few that remained held smallish monsters, perhaps juveniles. There was a snarling undersized spider wolf that looked to be barely out of puppyhood (or spiderlinghood). A writhing nest of tiny furred snakes poked their heads out between the bars, raising their feathery spines and flexing their claws.
The rest of the cages had been replaced by a circle of see-through rectangular boxes with hinged lids. Each one just large enough to hold a single person inside.
Glass coffins. It made sense. Curses always work better when they keep to the traditional forms. The spinning wheel to cast my consciousness adrift and the coffin to receive my emptied body. The spell must have brought me straight to it. How long had I been trapped here in a box, comatose?
I was lying in the only one with the top open. I didn’t take the time to count them, but it looked to be somewhere arounda dozen or so. At an educated guess, thirteen—enough to display the inert forms of twelve hunters and one inconvenient Skallan princess.
Angelique stood patiently while I made my assessment of the room. When I returned my attention to her, I couldn’t help but notice her eyes were bloodshot, and the shadows beneath them had deepened. Her face looked a shade too pallid and a little damp. She struck me as being desperately in need of a good night’s sleep.
“We should talk,” she said. “I have a proposal I think might be of interest to you.”
I wasn’t keen to hear it. My suspicions had been confirmed, and with the taste of my first kiss with her still fresh on my lips, there might be something I could do aboutit.
It was time to see how she really felt aboutme.
