A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2)(33)

I grab my own elbows so I don’t do anything stupid, like fling myself at her. “Yeah, it’s not bad.” It takes a moment to unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “It suits you.”

A little wariness creeps back across her face. Her tone turns haughty, the way it does when she’s uncertain. “Do you think it might suit you, as well?”

“I mean, sure.” I find it easier to speak to her if I close my eyes. “But you know I can’t stay.”

“Because of the harm it would do to the universe.” There’s a flattering amount of grief in her voice.

“Yeah, and because Charm would murder me.” And Prim would hide the body, and my parents would testify in court that I deserved it. “There are these people, back in my world, who need me.”

“Still playing the hero.” A note of bitterness this time.

“No, I need them too. It’s just—they’re my story. And I can’t keep running away from them.” I scrape together enough guts to open my eyes and find Eva looking at me with whatever the opposite of pity is—admiration, maybe, or compassion. I dig my fingertips into my elbows.

“So anyway. Enjoy your happily ever after.”

Her lips curve in an expression too sad to be called a smile. “You know, I don’t think I believe in those.”

I raise my eyebrows at the bucolic perfection surrounding us, a Cézanne painting come to life. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Eva takes a step nearer and hands me the red-bound book of fairy tales. “The last line was the hardest to get right. I tried to write it in the usual way, but it gave me goosebumps. It felt like a promise that couldn’t be kept, a story that couldn’t end.”

I flip to the last page of my book, no longer blank. Her hand must have stopped shaking by then, because the last three words are firm and smooth on the page: She lived happily. The period is an emphatic black circle.

And then I’m on the sudden, embarrassing verge of tears. Maybe because I’ve gone a really long time without eating or sleeping and my nerves are shot. Maybe because I’ve fallen pretty hard for the (former) villain and don’t want to leave her. Maybe because it never occurred to me that it could be enough just to live, as happily as you can, for as long as you have.

There are more wet splotches on the page now, distorting Eva’s neat handwriting. She’s gracious enough not to mention it.

I hear the soft tread of her bare feet, then the rustle of leaves, like she’s plucked something from a branch. When she returns, she stands close enough that I can see the hem of her shift, the grass-stained ends of her toes. If I had the nerve to look up, her face would be inches away from mine. I don’t look up.

“So. I will stay, and you will go home, and both of us will live happily.” Eva’s voice is light and easy. I nod at my book and cry a little harder.

She reaches for my hand and turns it palm up. She places something smooth and round in it: an apple. The skin is a glassy, poisonous red that only exists in fairy tales.

My laugh is watery. “Old habits, huh?” I scrub my face on my own shoulder. “Will I fall into an endless sleeping death if I take a bite?”

Eva’s breath stirs my hair. “If you did, I know someone who would kiss you back to life.”

On this, both our stories agree: a girl in an accursed sleep is woken by her true love. It’s a strange point of plot convergence, a resonance that makes my skin prickle. I elect to ignore it; it feels too much like hope.

Instead, I look up at Eva and raise the apple to my lips. She watches my teeth pop through the skin and her eyes go suddenly wide and dark, as if she’s just solved some very complex equation.

I’d like to say something seductive and clever, which maybe raises the chances of this scene ending with us making out, but what I say is, “You know there’s no kiss in the Grimms’ version, right? Snow White just barfs up a chunk of apple.”

A cool finger touches my chin, tilts my head upward until I’m looking straight into the black satin of Eva’s eyes. “This is my story, and I’ll tell it how I like.” If we were in a sexier sort of romance, I might call the tone of her voice a purr; I might note that her finger is still curled beneath my chin, that if I stood on my tiptoes our lips would touch.

“Uh.” I swallow. The apple is sharp in my throat. “I don’t actually have to leave right this second. I mean, I told Prim I’d come back, and I meant it, but I didn’t give her like, a specific date and time—”

I don’t finish the sentence, because the queen kisses me, and I kiss her back. I don’t even have to stand on tiptoes, because she bends to meet me.

It’s technically our third kiss, I guess, but the first two barely count. They were conducted under stressful conditions and interrupted by trips through the multiverse or attempts on our lives. Nothing interrupts us this time. We stand at the crossroads of our stories, in a kingdom of two, kissing in the rising light of a new world. We do a lot more than kiss, actually, but that’s between the queen and me.

Later—like, much later, not that I’m bragging—we leave the orchard and wander over the hills, into the castle. We drift through the halls without speaking, our hands clasped, our steps unhurried. But eventually I find a staircase that circles upward, and a round room waiting at the top of the tallest tower.