When I’m sure everyone else is asleep, I slip out of my blankets and kneel on the wooden planks of the attic floor. I reach my hand beneath the mattress, carefully digging until I find the hilt of Sol’s knife.
My knuckles drag across a folded sheet of paper and a small rectangular card hidden with the knife, and I pull those out, too.
The blade gleams in the moonlight that comes through the window. The entire room is cast in an eerie silver glow. Haunting and unsettling. Except for Rose. The way the moonlight hits her face and how soundly she sleeps—she reminds me again of a fairy tale princess. Only now she’s Snow White in the glass coffin. Waiting for her true love to come and kiss her awake and save her from this eternal nightmare.
Ibite my lip as a trickle of warm tears streams down my face, and I look down at the paper. My own face stares back up at me, though it’s like looking into the past. Me before the trials. Before the haircut. Before the fire. Before this knife.
How has so much changed in just a few months?
Maybe it isn’t real.
Maybe I’m dreaming.
I press my finger to the sharp edge of the blade. It stings, and I bleed, and I know that this is my reality.
A horrific, grotesque, and deeply cruel reality.
Quietly, I push onto my feet and walk around the attic, past the sleeping forms of Poppy and Zinnia on the bed, until I come to Rose’s mattress. I stare down at her, the knife still clutched in my trembling right hand.
I try to imagine it for a moment: the simple motion of slicing into her neck while she sleeps, the ooze of scarlet, the same color as the lipstick she always wears, spreading across her pale skin and onto the old, thin pillows. It would be so easy. Just one slice.
That thought makes me want to throw up.
I don’t know how long I stand there looking down at her. Itcould be a minute. It could be hours. But finally, I extend my hand toward her sleeping body as I kneel down closer to her.
My left hand.
My empty hand.
I clasp her shoulder and give her a gentle shake.
“Rose.” My voice comes out in a harsh whisper, cracking with tears. “Rose, you need to wake up.”
She doesn’t stir at first. So I have to shake her a little bit harder.
“Rose.”
“Hm?” She blinks, green eyes sleepy and unfocused as they settle on me. “Iris? You’re crying. What’s wrong?”
“We have to go,” I say. “We have to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“You were right. We’re not safe here. Get dressed. We need to go.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t have time to explain,” I say. My heart is racing now, panic rising as the weight of the choice I’ve just made crashes into me. “Please, just get up. Grab whatever things you need to take with us. We have to hurry.”
I don’t know how long we have until dawn. Time, over the last three days, has moved in strange bursts, sometimes creepingalong at a snail’s pace and other times zooming so fast that in the blink of an eye, I realize three hours are gone.
She sits up, rubbing her eyes. Only then does she seem to register that I’m holding a knife. She stares at it. “Where did you get that?”
“Later,” I say. My voice is growing more desperate now. “Please, Rose, let’s just go.”
“Okay, okay. I’m coming.” She pushes the quilt off and begins to gather whatever she can.
She doesn’t ask me where we’re going, and that’s a relief, because I would have to admit that I have no idea. It’s been so hard to think past my choices. To imagine life on the other side of either decision. So I haven’t really considered what we’ll actually do when we leave.
