The huntsman stops because I’ve driven my fist toward his throat with the long splinter sharp between my knuckles. He catches my wrist in a hand roughly the size and shape of a baseball mitt. He gives my arm a shake that makes my bones creak, and the splinter falls from my nerveless fingers.
He shakes his head again, tsking as he picks up the splinter. “None of that, now. Her Majesty also said I was to whip the flesh from your ribs and leave you hog-tied, awaiting her pleasure, if you gave me any difficulty.”
I try to wrench my hand away, but I have the upper body strength of a wet paper doll. I’m not even sure the huntsman notices. “That—okay, that is definitely not necessary.” I soften, letting my lashes fall and my lip tremble. “Please, sir, don’t hurt me.” This seems like a fairly traditional retelling of Snow White, which means the huntsman is a giant softy with a track record of disobeying his queen.
He looks visibly torn, like a good kid thinking about breaking curfew. “Well, let’s just get you locked back up, eh? Then she’ll be none the wiser.” He lays a conspiratorial finger along his nose, which isn’t something I thought anyone ever did in real life.
“No, that’s not—”
But it’s too late. He hauls me back into the queen’s work room and snaps the manacles back over my wrists. He must not be quite as stupid as he looks (which is, to be clear, a very low bar), because he searches me, confiscating the bobby pins, and tosses my backpack out of reach. He pats me clumsily on the head as he leaves, pausing only to flick something into the fireplace. A matchstick, maybe, or a long wooden splinter.
And then I’m all alone, except for the ashes of my spindle and thequestions I can’t answer, and the coldly comforting thought that the queen didn’t underestimate me after all.
YOU WOULDN’T THINKa person could fall asleep with their arms cuffed above their head and their neck dangling at a sickening angle, but I’m here to tell you they can.
I wake some hours later to find the light slanting long and heavy through the window and the queen sitting once more in her chair. She’s fiddling with something in her lap, and her face looks different in the absence of hunger or hatred: younger, softer.
I try to move my fingers and make a tiny wheeze of pain.
She doesn’t look up. “Good morning. Or rather, good evening.” I guess she’s switched to good cop mode. She holds a little golden object up to the light before setting it gently on the floor beside me. It’s my mockingbird, dented and battered but whole once more. “It’s a clever little device. Took me the whole afternoon to put it right.”
I got that mockingbird from a twelfth-level artificer in a steampunk version of Sleeping Beauty; I doubt very much that a short-tempered medieval witch could repair it. I attempt a sneer, but my lip cracks and bleeds. “If you fixed it, how come it isn’t singing?”
“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 fainthnnhand 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 herheaving 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’tgetit. 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.
