A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2)(8)

The queen leaves me clumsily rubbing at my own limbs while she settles beside the fire. There’s a second chair across from her and a small table heaped high with food between them. “Come. Help yourself.”

I’d like to be prideful and heroic about it, but I haven’t eaten in a full day and it’s not like I’m going anywhere with dead fish for arms. I stumble into the chair and make a clumsy grab for a pewter cup. You never realize how good water tastes until you’ve spent a day hungover and chained to a wall.

She waits until I’ve made it through a full pitcher and three rolls before she speaks. “Let me state my position more clearly.” Her voice is earnest, her face carefully contrite. She definitely noticed me noticing her—again, sue me—because her makeup has been carefully reapplied and the laces of her dress tightened so that her breasts are squashed higher. I wonder if this is how she seduced poor Snow White’s dad out of his kingdom, and if she even knows who she is when she’s not playing the bloodthirsty villain or the helpless femme. “I am a foreigner and a widow, with nothing but a throne to protect me. But I know now that I will lose that throne, along with my life. And I…” She places one hand on what, I am mortified to report, can only be described as her heaving bosom. “I need your help, Zinnia Gray.”

I skip the apples on the tray and reach for a fourth roll instead. “Again, if you wanted my help, the manacles were not an amazing start.”

Another little flash of annoyance, but her voice remains penitent. “A mistake, born out of great need. I’m sorry.”

I pick bread from between my molars. “So that mirror of yours. What’s it do?”

I can almost hear her teeth grinding. “It shows the truth.”

“Where’d you get it?” My voice is casual, my eyes on her face.

“I didn’t get it. I made it. A woman in my position needs to know the truth at all times.” There’s the faintest blush of pride in her voice. I count magical objects in my head—comb, bodice lace, poison apple, mirror, my own mockingbird—and decide to believe her. It’s a pity she mostly uses her considerable skills for homicide.

“Neat,” I say. “Now, can I have my pack?” Suspicion is obvious on her face. I turn both hands palm up. “No, for real, I have to take my meds—magic potions, whatever—twice a day. You’ll recall the terminal illness I mentioned.”

“That was not a ruse?”

“I mean, yes, it was”—and so is this—“but it’s also true. Now give me my shit unless you want me to drop dead in the next twenty minutes.” That’s horseshit, of course. These days I forget my meds for weeks at a time, approaching them with the sporadic guilt that inspires people to buy multivitamins. It’s weird, actually, after living for so long under a strict regimen of pharmaceuticals and appointments, injections and X-rays. I used to be visibly, obviously sick in a way that made parents look away from me in grocery stores, as if my very existence was a bad omen. But now I mostly pass as a healthy person, carrying the GRM like an ugly secret, a bad seed in my belly. It’s almost a relief to announce it like this, even if it’s mostly a lie.

I snap my fingers and the queen’s mouth thins—God, I love bossing around royalty—but she fetches my backpack and tosses it into my lap. I make a show of fishing out ziplock baggies and plastic boxes labeled with days of the week, surreptitiously shoving the mirror deeper into my bag.

The queen watches me count pills into my palm. “What is the nature of this … illness?”

I swallow a lump of steroids and blood thinners. “Did you read that whole book of fairy tales?”

A regal nod.

I make a ta-da gesture at my own chest. “You’re looking at the protagonist of a bleak contemporary version of Aarne-Thompson tale type 410.” My smile tastes bitter. “Little Brier-Rose.”

“The … protagonist?”

“The main character. In ‘Little Brier-Rose,’ the protagonist is Brier-Rose.”

The queen breathes an ah of understanding. She steeples her fingers and says delicately, “In that case, I would imagine you would have a certain sympathy with my situation—”

I cut her off. “And the book. Where’d you get that?”

She’s visibly annoyed now, the edges of her innocent act fraying badly, but her voice is still measured. “It appeared three days ago on my shelf.”

“No shit?”

Her brows lower several centimeters, in offense or worry. “It is not the only strange appearance in recent months. The cook found a golden egg in the belly of a goose she cut open for dinner, and a fortnight ago, the huntsman said he met a wolf in the woods.”

“I mean, isn’t that where wolves should be?”

“It…” The queen looks pained. “Spoke to him.”

“Huh.” Am I in some kind of fairy tale mash-up? Is Chris Pine about to pop out and sing Sondheim lyrics in a confused accent?

The queen gathers herself with the expression of a woman who is determined to regain the reins of the conversation. “People do not like strange things. Golden eggs, talking wolves … They are seen as ill omens, portents. Acts of witchcraft.” Her eyes flicker. “They will soon want a witch to burn.”

I make a show of looking around her workroom, with its skulls and pestles and unpleasant things floating in jars. “They won’t have to look very hard, will they?”