Stepsister(97)

“Nothing but ashes,” Ella said.

Isabelle closed her eyes now and sifted through those ashes.

Everything would have been different if Ella hadn’t burned Felix’s note. She wouldn’t have lost Felix. Or Nero. She wouldn’t have lost herself.

She thought about the day Felix left, and the years that had come after. The music tutors and dancing masters. The dress fittings. Sitting for hours at her needlework, when her heart longed for horses and hills. The excruciating dinners with suitors looking her up and down, their smiles forced, their eyes shuttered as they tried to hide their disappointment. The aching loneliness of finding that nothing fit. Not dainty slippers or stiff corsets. Not conversations or expectations, friendships or desires. Her entire life had seemed like a beautiful dress made for someone else.

“I’m sorry, Isabelle. I’m so sorry,” Ella said.

Isabelle opened her eyes. Ella’s hands were knotted into fists in her lap. Isabelle reached for one. She opened the fingers, smoothed them flat, then wove her own between them.

She was sorry for so many things. She was sorry for her mother who had always looked to mirrors for the truth. She was sorry for Berthe who cried when she was mean, and Cecile who didn’t. She was sorry for Tavi writing equations on cabbage leaves.

She was sorry for all the grim-tale girls locked in lonely towers. Trapped in sugar houses. Lost in the dark woods, with a huntsman coming to cut out their hearts.

She was sorry for three little girls who’d been handed a poisoned apple as they played under a linden tree on a bright summer day.





One Hundred and Thirteen


Ella stood.

She crossed the room and knelt by Tavi’s chair.

“I’m so sorry, Tavi,” she said. “What I did hurt you, too.”

“It’s all right, Ella,” Tavi said, rising. She pulled Ella up and hugged her. Isabelle joined them. The three stood for a moment, locked in a fierce, tearful embrace.

Then Ella turned to Felix. “I need to apologize to you, too,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Your life would also have been different if I hadn’t stolen the note.”

“Oh, Ella,” Felix said, taking her hand. “I’m sorry you thought I wasn’t your friend any more.”

Ella turned to Hugo next. “You wouldn’t even be here now if it wasn’t for me,” she said to him. “In this room. In this mess …”

Hugo shrugged. “Actually, my life kind of got better. The last few weeks, with you two around”—he nodded at Isabelle and Tavi—“have been really awful but exciting, too. I mean, what did I have before you came? Cabbages, that’s about it. Now I have friends.”

Isabelle hooked her arm around Hugo’s neck and pulled him into the embrace. He tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace. He hastily patted Isabelle on the back, then extricated himself. She knew he wasn’t used to affection.

“We should go. We have to find a way to get Ella to safety and the maps to the king,” Hugo said. “And that’s going to become a lot harder once the sun is up.”

“We’ll need an armed escort,” Tavi said hopelessly. “Our own regiment. No, make that an entire army.”

Isabelle was quiet. She was slowly walking around Felix’s room, eyeing his shelves. His bureau. The mantel. Then she turned to the others and said, “We don’t need to find an army. We already have one.”

“We do? Where is it?” Tavi asked.

Isabelle picked up a carved wooden soldier from a shelf and held it out on her palm.

“Right here.”





One Hundred and Fourteen


Hugo blinked at the little soldier on Isabelle’s palm. He forced a smile.

“You can lie down, you know. On Felix’s bed. If you’re tired, you can rest,” he said.

Isabelle shot him a look. “I’m not tired. Or crazy, which is what you really mean. I’m serious. There’s a fairy queen. She comes and goes as a fox and lives in the hollow of the linden tree. She has strong magic.”

“A fairy queen …” Hugo said, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s true, Hugo,” Ella said. “She came to me one night when my heart was broken and asked me what I wanted most. I told her, and she helped me get it. How else do you think I got to the ball?”

“I’ve seen that fox,” Felix said. “When I was a boy. Her fur is red like autumn leaves. She has deep green eyes.”

“She turned mice into horses and a pumpkin into a coach,” said Ella.

“She could enchant these carved soldiers and turn them into real soldiers. I know she could,” said Isabelle. “All we have to do is get them to the linden tree.”

“But how?” Tavi asked, turning in a slow circle. “There are so many of them.”

“Two thousand, one-hundred and fifty-eight, to be exact,” Felix said.

“We would have to find cases or trunks to put them in. Do you have any?”

“No, but we have plenty of coffins,” said Felix. “I bet two of them would get the job done.”

“We could use Martin and the wagon to transport them,” Isabelle said. “We’d just have to unload the potatoes.”

“Then let’s unload them,” Ella said decisively. “We have an enemy to defeat. A king and a country to save. And traitors to capture.” She smiled grimly. “And then hang, draw, and quarter.”