Before Snow White could scream, Liora drove the comb into the hair at her temple. As soon as the first point scraped across her scalp, a strange sensation washed through her. It was not like the brief, sharp sting of a snag. It was a spreading, numbing cold, then a rush of heat that made her vision flicker. Her hand spasmed. The comb’s teeth bit fully into her skin.
“Oh,” she said faintly.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Liora said. Her tone had shifted. There was a hungry, almost eager edge to it now. “Here, let me.” The queen grabbed the comb and brushed a second time, raking the teeth across her daughter’s scalp.
Snow White tried to push the comb away. Her fingers wouldn’t obey. They felt heavy, distant. A dizzy wave surged up from her feet to her head. The room tilted. “Mother?” she whispered. “I feel—” Sleepy, she meant to say, but her tongue felt thick. The word tangled somewhere between her mouth and her mind. Her knees buckled. This time, when she fell, there was no bed to catch her. She hit the floor with a dull thump, the sound muffled by the rug. The comb remained tangled in her hair, its venom—magic or something darker—already pulling her under.
“I will finally be rid of you now,” Liora confessed, watching her daughter’s body slacken. One hand twitched once, then lay still.
For a moment, the queen simply stood there. Then she smiled. Not the brittle mask she wore in the hall. Not the charming curve she used for suitors. A small, private, satisfied smile. She looked down at the girl—so young, so foolish, so trusting. “Good girl,” Liora mocked. She stepped forward and toed Snow White’s shoulder lightly with her slipper, as if checking whether she might startle awake. Nothing.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor—light, like a maid’s. Liora glanced around. She wasn’t expecting to be interrupted. Satisfied that the girl was dead, she opened the door a crack and peered out into the hallway. Two maids scurried by, towels in hand. The queen quietly stepped out into the hallway, closed the door, and darted towards her room.
Chapter nine
Into the Woods
Nightfellheavilyonthe castle. Clouds smothered the stars. Moonlight seeped only faintly through the narrow tower windows, turning stone to silver and shadow. On the floor, Snow White lay like the dead. Her breathing was shallow but steady, her limbs slack. Time dripped past in thick, dreamless drops. At some point, the comb slipped from her hair and clattered to the floor. No one was there to hear it. An hour passed. Two. The castle quieted. Then, somewhere deep inside Snow White’s slumber, something stirred. A memory of fingers at her ribs, of the corset’s merciless grip. A flash of blue eyes in a stable. The feel of Grimm’s warm breath on her cheek.
Her lungs spasmed. She sucked in a ragged breath that turned into a cough. Her body convulsed once, twice. Her eyes flew open. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. The room loomed around her, familiar and wrong at the same time. Her sides throbbed. Her head felt full of cotton. The comb lay a foot away on the rug, its delicate vines suddenly sinister. She stared at it.
The memory of sliding its teeth into her scalp came back in a sickening rush. The cold. The tilt. The way her mother’s voice had sounded just before the world went black. Her hand went to her ribs, fingers tracing the deep, tender bruises left by the corset laces. Her mother’s hands. Her mother’s voice saying, “Beauty is pain.”
The tightness in her chest was not only physical now. It was something else pushing outward: a dawning, terrifying realization. “She did this,” Snow White whispered into the dark. “She did this. Again.” The rags, the hair, the imprisonment, the corset, the comb. All of it clicked into place. “She’s trying to…” The word stuck. She forced it out. “Kill me?” Saying it out loud made it real. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. Not the hot, helpless kind she’d cried into Grimm’s mane when her father died. These were sharp, cold, like ice splinters.Why?Her heart wanted to ask.Why? I’m your daughter. Your daughter! The princess! Father would never have… I loved you, even when you were cruel. I excused you, even when you hurt me. I blamed… How can you… Your own daughter! Why—?
Snow White pushed herself upright, swaying. The room spun for a moment, then steadied. Her head pounded. Her legs trembled when she swung them over the side of the bed. She stood anyway. She crossed to the window and pressed her hands to the cold stone frame. Outside, the night waited. The courtyard was mostly empty now. Torches burned low along the walls. A few guards paced the parapets, dark shapes against a darker sky. Far below, in the shadow of the outer wall, she could see the stable roof. “Grimm,” she whispered. The name was both a plea and a promise. Her mind skittered over the possibilities.
She could stay. She could confront Liora, demand answers, throw the comb at her feet and sayI know what you did. Her bruised ribs throbbed in response. No. If she stayed, she would die. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But eventually,when Liora found a poison that lingered longer than this one, a trap that didn’t leave room for waking.
She was eighteen, with no money, no allies, no map of the world beyond the castle walls. She had no friends, no skills, no protection. She had been coddled all her life and hidden away from the world. She had only what she could carry and what she knew of the woods from glimpses through barred gates.
And yet. She had a horse. She had a body that, for all its bruises and aches, was strong. She had lived half a life in the stables and halls; she knew how to move quietly, how to make herself unseen. Most of all, she had a desperate, clawing need to stay alive.
“Once upon a time,” she said, “a princess ran away.”
She didn’t allow herself time to think further. Thinking meant doubt. Doubt meant paralysis. She moved. She grabbed the plainest cloak she owned—a rough brown thing more patch than fabric—and swung it over her chemise, not bothering with a proper dress. She snatched a small sack from under her bed and shoved into it what little she had that might be useful: a heel of bread, a waterskin, a stub of candle, flint, and a knife left from the kitchens.
Her fingers closed around the falcon token beneath her shift. She hesitated, then tucked it safely back against her skin. Leaving that behind would be like leaving a piece of herself. She crossed to the door and put her ear to it. Silence. The key still sat in the lock on the other side. Snow White smiled without humor. Liora had always been so careful about keeping her in. She had never thought to guard the window.
Snow White pushed the small casement open. Night air clawed at her skin. The drop to the ground below was dizzying. But just below the window, half buried in shadow, a stone ledge jutted out—the ornamental lip of the tower. From there, she could see the faint outline of the jutting stones that led down to alower roof. She’d climbed these walls as a child, before the rules tightened. Little princess fingers had found holds where grown men’s hands would have slipped. Her palms were calloused now. That might help.
She took one deep breath, tasting fear and old dust and something like hope. Then she swung a leg out the window. The stone was cold under her bare hands. The wind was vicious; it snatched at her hair and bit through her thin cloak, threatening to peel her off the wall like a dead leaf. She made the mistake of glancing down. The courtyard was a swimming abyss of shadow, the cobblestones so far away they looked like pebbles. Vertigo washed over her, a sickly swooping sensation in her gut.
Her warm bed was right behind her. The cage was safe. The cage didn’t require her to dangle over nothingness. “Move,” she commanded her frozen limbs. Her fingers gripped the sill until her knuckles went white. “Don’t look down,” she muttered. “Just don’t look down.” She eased herself out, belly scraping the rough edge, until she hung for a moment by her hands alone, legs dangling over nothing. Then she let go.
Her feet found the ledge. She wobbled, arms pinwheeling, then pressed herself flat against the wall, cheek scraping mortar. “Good,” she whispered, breathless. “Good girl.” She moved sideways, inch by inch, feeling for each foothold before she shifted her weight. Once, a bit of crumbling stone broke away under her toes, sending pebbles skittering down into the dark. She froze, heart ramming against her ribs, listening for shouts.
None came. She kept going. By the time she reached the lower roof—a sloping stretch of slate tiles above the kitchen wing—her fingers ached and her arms trembled. Sweat slicked her palms. She slid down the roof as quietly as she could, boots scraping, and caught the gutter before she toppled over the edge. From there it was a shorter drop to the packed dirt of the inner courtyard. She let go.
The impact jarred her already tender ribs. She muffled a cry, biting her lip until she tasted blood. For a second she crouched there in the pool of shadow, panting, forcing herself not to crumple. Desperation rose inside of her. She straightened and ran.
She hugged the walls, slipping from darkness to darkness, pausing only when a guard crossed her path. Twice she flattened herself behind stacks of firewood; once she dove under a wagon, dust clogging her throat as boots passed inches from her face. At last, shaking and out of breath, she reached the familiar sight of the stables.
“Please,” she whispered, fumbling with the latch. “Please, please, please.” The door creaked. She winced at the sound and slipped inside. The smell of horses wrapped around her like an embrace. “Grimm,” she hissed. “Grimm, it’s me.”
He answered with a low nicker that made her throat tighten. When she reached his stall, he was already at the door, ears pricked, eyes bright. Snow White could barely see him through the tears in her eyes. He recognized her immediately even though he hadn’t seen her for almost two years. Her love for Grimm grew deeper in an instant. “We’re going,” she said, pressing her forehead to his. “We have to go. I need you,” she choked out between tears. He snorted, as if to say that she had nothing to worry about anymore.
She worked quickly, hands moving by muscle memory despite their shaking. Saddle, then bridle. She grabbed a blanket and tied her little sack to the strap. She led Grimm out through the far door, the one that opened onto the section of wall where the guards rarely glanced down. The main gate loomed ahead, the portcullis down, its iron teeth biting into the stone. Torches flared in the gatehouse above. There was no way out there—not without wings. “No,” she breathed. “We can’t…”
