A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2)(21)
Her eyebrows are crimped in the middle. “But you don’t even know me.”
“Nope.”
“Why?” This time, for whatever reason, she addresses the question to Eva.
“Because…” Eva flounders, looking around the kitchens as if hoping to find another zombie snake-tarantula to fight rather than finish this sentence. Her eyes skate across mine. She ends quietly, with a wry twist of her lips that isn’t half as disdainful as she’d like it to be. “Someone had to.”
Red hugs her then, which makes Eva’s face do several complicated contortions. It lands on a fixed expression that reminds me of a school calculator that’s been asked to perform too many impossible functions and is reduced to flashing ERROR on the screen. She makes eye contact with me over Red’s head, a clear plea for help that I pretend not to see.
I always like this part. The happily ever afters that come after are too sweet for me, like grocery store frosting, but this moment right here, when you feel the relief of a bad ending averted, a wrong righted—this is the good shit.
(I give a mental middle finger to Zellandine, because I’m not running, I’m being helpful, even if Red’s parents didn’t really need my help.)
Eventually, Red’s mother comes to collect her, pausing to give us a dignified nod.
The room empties as the villagers disappear back down the stone steps, led by Red and her family. I watch them go, still full of that heady, giddy pride.
I can tell from Eva’s expression—eyes dark, lips slightly parted, head tilted back—that she feels it too. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” I murmur.
“What is?”
“Being the good guy.”
She snorts at me, but her eyes catch mine. I’m smiling brazenly up at her, wondering a little dizzily what it would be like to kiss her for real, on purpose rather than out of necessity, when a voice behind us says cliché-ly, “Well, well, well.”
And I know that I have a very few seconds to act. I could run. I could turn and fight. I could prick my finger on the tip of my own knife and hope I fall out of this B-horror movie of a universe. Instead, I do what I’ve always done when I’m cornered, what I always will do. I text Charm.
In the moment before hands close around my arms and my phone is dashed to the floor, crashing into a dozen useless plastic pieces, and this shitty story takes me in its jaws again, I manage to type nine characters and press send: atu 709 sos
7
A CONFESSION: I was totally expecting her to be ugly. Which is pretty fucked up of me, but in my defense, Western folklore persistently and falsely equates a character’s physical appearance with their inner morality, so like, it was a pretty safe bet that the evil cannibal queen would look like Anjelica Huston after she peels off her mask in The Witches.
But when her goons wrench my arms behind my back and spin me to face her, it turns out she’s not ugly at all. She is, in fact, one of the least ugly things I’ve ever seen (yes, including Prim, who is so beautiful that people squint and blink when they talk to her, like they’re trying to have a conversation with the sun). The queen is young and doe-eyed, with long, soft lashes and gently rounded cheeks. Her skin is the phosphorescent white of a Renaissance angel, and her lips are a bright, arterial red, as if she’s just eaten a bowl of fresh cherries or, perhaps, the raw hearts of stolen children.
I think, intelligently: Huh. And then I think, slightly more intelligently, my stomach sinking fast: I know who you are. “You’re—Snow White!” I’m aiming for a nice j’accuse! moment, but it’s clear from the expressions around me that I’m literally the only person who didn’t know.
Snow White smiles at me. It’s a very good smile, sweet as springtime, but her voice is pure ice. “You may address me as Your Majesty.”
My eyes move of their own accord to Eva. She’s putting up a much better fight than me, struggling against three huntsmen as they wrestle her wrists behind her back. One of them knocks the backs of her legs and sends her crashing to her knees. Another buries his fist in her hair and wrenches her face upward, baring the fragile column of her throat. She doesn’t look much like a queen compared to Snow White—her face is hard and plain and a little too old, her teeth bared in bitter fury—but looking at her, I feel a big, weird rush of loyalty.
“Sorry,” I tell Snow White. “I’ve already got one of those.”
Snow White’s sweet smile doesn’t falter when she orders her men to strip us of our belongings and lock us up, awaiting punishment for our crimes against queen and country.
So here I am, in the dungeons again. Naturally.
I’ve seen a decent number of dungeons in the last five years, but these are among the least pleasant. It’s the meaty smell of human remains, probably, or maybe the gelatinous burble of the sewers beneath us, or maybe the extreme unlikelihood of our escape. Both our arms are shackled above us and the huntsmen took everything up to, and partially including, our clothes. I’m barefoot and hoodie-less, shivering sporadically in my T-shirt, and Eva’s kidney-colored gown is gone. All she’s wearing now is one of those shapeless, colorless under-dresses that I’m pretty sure is called a shift, or maybe a chemise, laced up the front with a limp green ribbon. It ought to be at least a little bit sexy, but it just makes her look small and vulnerable, like something recently shelled.