So I just look at Eva for a while, in all her selfish, ferocious, sexy will to survive, and shake my head. “Fine.” I hold down the power button on my phone and wait for the screen to light up, steadfastly refusing to think why I’m turning it on or who I might call. “But I’m going.”
Eva’s eyes flicker.“Why?”
“Because…”
There are noble ways to finish that sentence (because Red is brave and clever and she deserves better; because the hot nerd onThe Good Placewas right, and the meaning of life basically boils down to what we owe to each other) and less noble, potentially more honest ways (because as long as I’m saving other people I can forget, briefly, that I can’t save myself; because storming an evil fortress is easier than showing Charm my X-rays and watching her understand, all over again, that I’m not in it for the long haul, that there’s still a trolley barreling toward both of us).
I finish boringly. “Just like, because. Someone should.”
Eva’s expression remains hard and fixed, like a marble statue titledMonarch Who Is Unmoved by the Pleas of the Peasantry,but there’s an odd wistfulness in her eyes, almost as if she envies me. As if she wishesshe, too, were a stupid twenty-six-year-old with the reckless bravery of the terminally ill rather than the predictable villain doing the predictably villainous thing. I think of Zellandine telling me that we don’t get to choose our stories, but we get to choose what we do next.
A very bad idea occurs to me then. I slide my arms into my backpack straps and meet her eyes very squarely. “If you come with me and help save Red, I’ll tell you how to get out of this story.” I lean forward and tap the back of her magic mirror, which is never far from her hand. “For real.”
Eva’s eyes move from the mirror to my face, widening as she realizes I don’t just meanout of this particular version of this storybutout of this kind of story more broadly. Out of her own horrible ending, away from the cruel logic of her character arc.
Her face finally moves, and it takes me a moment to recognize the expression for what it is. I’ve seen her sneer, and smirk, and bare her teeth in a dozen cruel grins, but this is the first time she’s genuinely smiled at me.
I’m obliged to blink several times. “So.” There’s an answering smile spreading helplessly across my face. “It’s a deal?”
IN RETROSPECT, IT’Spossible that Eva and I could have spent more time in the planning stage of our rescue attempt.
All we really did was consult the magic mirror, which confirmed that Red was still alive (Eva had stared at Red’s face, terrified and tear-streaked, with something very close to guilt), and shove supplies in my bag. Bottled water and snacks, my cool magic compass, her cool magic mirror, a functioning, fully charged phone, and two of Zellandine’s sharpest knives, which we—well, I—fully intended to return.But after we stepped across the threshold there was a slight, inaudiblepop,and a rush of wind that smelled very faintly of roses. When we turned around, Zellandine and her hut were gone.
There didn’t seem to be anywhere to go after that except onward. I pulled out my compass and thought of Red, with her watchful eyes and her grim mouth, her hair twisted by someone who fought for her and lost. The needle spun southwest, and the two of us followed it.
It was an uneventful journey. Most things—and boy, did this forest have more than its fair share of Things—didn’t bother us, either because of the knives or because they were looking for even bigger, juicier Things to eat. Around lunch (half a carrot cake Clif Bar apiece, which Eva considered with scientific curiosity, palpating it gently before realizing she was expected to consume it), something horrible landed on my open pack. It tore at the contents, shredding and shrieking, long talons flashing.
Eva had it pinned to a tree with her knife through its heart before I could properly scream. I would tell you what kind of animal it was, but I have no idea, and looking at it made my brain cramp. So I’ll just say it was bad. Like, if a snake fucked a tarantula and their baby died in a tar pit and was later reanimated by a necromancer who graduated at the absolute bottom of his class.
“Thanks,” I said in a voice that was a mere two octaves higher than usual.
I received nothing in response but a contemptuous curl of Eva’s upper lip. But both of us moved more carefully after that, and startled at small noises. By the time dusk settled over the woods—although I’m not convinced it’s ever fully not-dusk here; it seems to exist on a limited palette ranging from gloaming to gloomy—we were shivery and tense, and I’d spent the last several miles trying and failing to think of a funny name for the twitch in my left eye.
Eva held up her hand and I flinched backward. “What, where—”
She was pointing silently through the trees. I followed the line of her finger and saw it: a high stone wall stained a viscous, tarry black. I looked upward through the dark lace of the leaves, and that was the moment it occurred to me that Eva and I could have prepared better for what struck me now as a laughable attempt at a rescue mission. We could, for example, have brought siege weaponry, or a smallish army, or one of those big mech suits fromPacific Rim. Instead, we brought two kitchen knives and an assortment of underpowered magical objects, like video game characters rushing to the boss battle without leveling up.
I say, “Oh,yikes,” which really undersells the enormity of the yikes we’re facing.
I mean, sure, when one is looking for the lair of a cannibal queen, one expects to encounter a certain degree of spookiness. One might anticipate something resembling the Beast’s castle pre-makeover, with gargoyles and buttresses and more lightning storms than is statistically likely. One does not anticipate what I’m seeing now, which is a jagged ruin of black glass and bones that makes the Black Gate of Mordor look like the Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse. Trees press against the walls, reaching over the battlements with fawning fingers. Dark, winged things circle the towers, screeching in too-human voices.
“Well.” Eva makes a sardonic gesture at the walls. “What are we waiting for?”
After another brief round of hissing (“This was your idea.” “I know! There’s just like, more skulls than I was expecting! Give me a second.”), I gather myself and say calmly, “Okay, there has to be a back way in.”
“I very much doubt it. If I built an impregnable fortress to hold my desperate victims, I certainly wouldn’t—”
“Yeah, I know, but there’salwaysa back way in. Trust me.” Eva’sface makes a funny flinch, which I can only assume is her natural response to the concept of trust, but she trails huffily behind me as we circle the wall. A few guards go clomping past us along the battlements, but none of them seem to see us creeping below them. I guess this isn’t the kind of place that people often try to get into.
After less than fifty feet of sneaking, a damp, foul breeze emerges from somewhere nearby and wafts across us. It smells like old meat and human suffering, and it leads us without much trouble to a rusted, weed-choked grate set in the earth.
I wave my hand and whisper, “Voilà. A back way in.”
Eva squints sourly at the sewer grate. She sniffs. “It must be nice. Being the protagonist.”
I give her my cheekiest smile and say, “It suits you.” It comes out more sincerely than I intended, and Eva’s eyes flick to mine, then away.
I haul the grate aside and shimmy down the hole, landing with a fairly repellent plop. The water (it is not water) is sludgy and cold, running halfway up my thighs. It feels like an obvious moment for Eva to cut and run, but she lands beside me without fuss and strides onward, looking—just for a moment, in the dark—a little like a hero.
