A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2)(3)

The fingers release my wrist. My knees crash against cold stone. I’m lying flat on my face, feeling like I was recently peeled and salted, regretting every single beer and most of the churros (although nothing I did with Diego).

I attempt to leap to my feet and achieve something closer to a woozy stagger. “It’s alright, it’s okay.” I hold up empty hands to show I mean no harm. The room is spinning unhelpfully. “I’ll explain everything, but if there’s a spindle in here, please don’t touch it.”

Someone laughs. It’s not a nice laugh.

The room settles to a slow lurch, and I see that it’s not a lonely tower room at all. It looks more like the apothecary in a video game—a small room stuffed full of stoppered bottles and glass jars, the shelves loaded with books bound in cracked leather, the counters strewn with silver knives and pestles. If it belongs to a wizard, there are certain indications (a yellowing human skull, chains dangling from the walls) that they are not the friendly kind.

The woman from the mirror is sitting in a high-backed chair beside a fireplace, her chin lifted, gown pooled around her ankles like blood. She’s watching me with an expression that doesn’t make any sense. I’ve met forty-nine varieties of Sleeping Beauty by now, and every single one of them—the princesses, the warriors, the witches, the ballet dancers—has looked surprised when a sickly girl in a hoodie and jeans zaps herself into the middle of their story.

This woman does not look surprised. Nor does she look even slightly desperate anymore. She looks triumphant, and the sheer intensity of it almost sends me to my knees again.

She studies me, her brows lifted in two disdainful black arches, and her lips curve. It’s the kind of smile that doesn’t belong on Sleeping Beauty’s face: sneering, languorous, strangely seductive. Somewhere deep in my brain, a voice that sounds like Rosa’s great-grandmother says, ?CUIDADO!

She asks sweetly, “Why, what spindle would that be?” which is when I notice three things more or less simultaneously. The first is a small silver mirror in the woman’s left hand, which does not seem to be reflecting the room around us. The second is an apple sitting on the counter just behind her. It’s the sort of apple a child would draw, glossy and round, poisonously red.

The third is that there is no spinning wheel, or spindle, or shard of flax, or even a sewing needle, anywhere in the room.

Somewhere deep in the bottom of my backpack, muffled by spare clothes and water bottles, comes a tinny, warbling whistle, like a mockingbird singing out of key.





2


SURE, OKAY. I should have figured it out a little faster. But in my defense, my brain was recently soaked in Sol Cerveza, dragged through the liminal space between worlds, and tossed at the feet of a tall woman with silken hair and a dangerous smile.

Also, in five years of adventuring through the multiverse, I’ve never once made it out of Sleeping Beauty. And let me tell you, I tried. I hung my hair out of high windows and bought apples from old ladies at the farmer’s market; I went dancing until the stroke of midnight and asked my father to bring me a single rose from the grocery store. None of it worked. Charm theorized about clusters of related realities and drew graphics that looked like the branches of some great interstellar tree. I pretended like I understood when really all I understood is that there are some rules you can’t break.

But now, somehow—my eyes flick to the silver mirror in the woman’s hand—the rules have changed. It occurs to me that I have no idea what’s going to happen next. A thrill shoots up my spine and buzzes at the back of my skull.

“You,” I say, and my voice is shaking now, but not with fear, “are not a princess.”

Her perfect brows arch half an inch higher, and I wonder dizzily if this world has eyebrow threading. “Not anymore, no.” She touches the pink indent at her left temple, which I’m suddenly sure was left by the weight of a crown.

“So where am I?” But it’s a simple equation (apple + mirror + royalty) with only one answer. There are no spindles here, and no fairies, but I’d bet my left lung there are seven dwarves living deep in the woods. “Who are you?”

Her triumph flickers very briefly, as if she doesn’t like that question much. “You may call me Your Majesty, or My Queen, should you find yourself begging for mercy.”

I’ve heard more than a few villainous threats, but none delivered with such bored sincerity. My excitement dims somewhat. “Right. Cool. Well, it’s an honor.” My eyes slide to the only door. I’m several feet closer than she is. “I’m sure you’re wondering how I got here—”

Her eyes flash, the triumph swallowed by a bottomless, fascinating hunger that makes me forget, for a moment, that I’m in the middle of an escape attempt. The mockingbird in my bag sings an octave higher. “And I would just love to tell you about it. But, uh, is there a bathroom I could use, first?”

The queen tucks the hunger away with practiced ease, like someone leashing a dog; some very unwise part of me is sorry to see it go. She says with polite amusement, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh.” I take a sidling step toward the exit. “Could I at least have something to drink? I have this condition, see, this mysterious ill ness.” Generalized Roseville Malady (GRM) isn’t actually that mysterious, but premodern monarchs aren’t generally familiar with terms like “amyloidosis” or “in utero genetic damage.” “It causes me great suffering, and will one day surely kill me.” My only symptoms at the moment are a high heart rate and a headache, which could be explained by being hungover, freaked out, and—sue me—a tiny bit horny, but I drag my hand dramatically across my brow anyway.