A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2)(10)
“Oh.” A scuffing sound on the other side of the door, like a large man shuffling his feet. “It’s just, he’s waiting in the great hall now, and he brought so many guards with him to escort you, and—”
The queen summons enough regality to say, firmly, “Offer them food and drink while I make myself ready.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
When there are no subsequent boot steps, she adds, “That will be all, Berthold.”
“Yes, Majesty.” He clomps dutifully down the hall.
The queen still hasn’t moved. Her skin is the grayish-white of last week’s snow, or cheap dentures. She could almost be mistaken for the protagonist of this story if it weren’t for the cold metal crown on her brow. I could almost feel sorry for her if she hadn’t poisoned a child and shackled me to a wall.
“Berthold, huh?” I slouch back in my chair, ankles crossed, eyebrows up. “He seems bright.”
She answers absently, one shoulder twitching in a shrug. “He has his uses.”
“Oh, it’s like that?”
I’m being a dick on purpose, maybe trying to provoke her into anything other than this congealed panic, but her expression barely flickers. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a lover who isn’t angling for the throne? He was…” Her lip curls, and I can’t tell if it’s the huntsman or herself she disdains more. “Kind.”
It doesn’t seem very helpful to remind her that he betrayed her and let Snow White live, so I don’t say anything.
Eventually the queen gathers herself, blinking twice and exhaling sharply. If she were a knight, I imagine she would lower her visor, but since she’s an evil queen, she stands and stalks to her workbench.
It takes less than a second for her to whirl back to face me. “Where is it? What have you done with it?”
A brief, hissed exchange follows, wherein I try and fail to deflect her accusations (“Where’s what?” “You know what, you thieving pustule!” “Okay, calm your tits, it’s in my backpack.” “Calm my what?”), and then she’s clutching the tarnished frame of her mirror, whispering to it. I can’t hear the words, but I don’t have to. Maybe it’s in the original German, or maybe it’s the Grimms’ translation: Mirror, mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?
In Sleeping Beauty stories, I’ve come to recognize certain moments—tropes, you might call them, repeated plot points—that have an echo to them. Pieces of the story that have been told so many times they’ve worn the page thin: the christening curse, the pricked finger, the endless sleep, the kiss. You can almost feel reality softening around you, at those times.
I feel it now, as the wicked stepmother whispers to her mirror.
I don’t know what she sees in the glass, but the queen’s throat moves as she swallows. “It’s too late.”
“Yeah.” I make a face, hissing through my teeth. “I recommend you decline this invitation.” It never made much sense why the wicked queen showed up at Snow White’s wedding, anyway.
A scathing glance in my direction. “Do you really think I have a choice? Do you think she sent all those men as an honor guard?”
I shift in my seat, stomping the tiny worm of pity in my stomach. “So pull some witchy shit. Disguise yourself. Knot your sheets together and climb out the window. Run.”
“That would buy me days, maybe weeks. And even if I somehow escaped her reach, what would I do? Hide in a little house in the woods, rotting away?”
The pity vanishes. “Oh, you mean like Snow White did? To escape you?”
Her eyes narrow to vicious slits. She says, “I. Have. To. Get. Out,” with extra periods between each word.
“That’s what I just said.” But I know that’s not what she means. I reach, not very casually, for the straps of my backpack.
The queen stalks toward me, the mirror still clenched in one hand, the air thickening around her. Stray hairs lift in an invisible breeze, tangling like dark branches across the cold moon of her face. “You will tell me how it’s done.” This time it’s not a question or an order; it’s a promise.
So, okay, it was exciting to find myself in a different fairy tale, to feel for the first time the possibility of diverging from my own dreary road, but it’s time to go. I stumble out of my chair, backing away, running my free hand against the shelves in search of something, anything sharp. A knife, a splinter, a tooth, a shard of bone. There’s nothing.
The queen is close now. She reaches for my collar and twists it in one clawed fist, drawing us together. I can see the plain bones of her face beneath the creams and cosmetics, the hard line of her lips.
And I have no spindle and no tower, no roses or fairies or handsome princes, but I have a monarch close enough to kiss. It’ll have to be enough.
I straighten my spine and tilt my face recklessly upward—and, oh God, I have to stand on tiptoe to close the last inch between us, which is both embarrassing and embarrassingly hot—and kiss her.
It’s an undeniably weak kiss: a nonconsensual crush of lips and teeth that I would feel pretty bad about if she hadn’t been on the verge of nonconsensually torturing me. She breaks away, of course—but not instantly. There’s a tiny but critical delay, a moment that makes me wonder how long it’s been since the queen met someone outside of her control, and if she might harbor a low taste for sickly, sarcastic peasants.