Cinderella Is Dead(42)

My heart speeds up. I guess I’ve been more obvious than I thought. I avoid her gaze. “I doubt that no one has ever looked at you that way. You must know how other people view you.”

“I don’t care how I seem to other people,” she says, leaning in very close to me. “But I would very much like to know how you see me.”

She is direct. I don’t feel like I’ll be risking anything by being honest. The warmth of her body so close to mine makes me forget where we are, what we’ve witnessed. “You’re smart. Funny. You knocked out a man with one blow—”

“A shining example of who I truly am,” she says in a half-serious tone.

“I think you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

“Interesting?” She sits back, a little smirk drawn across her lips. “Care to elaborate?”

Now it feels like a game. A little push and pull between us. “I feel like you looked at Lille’s decrees and decided to do the exact opposite.”

“That’s not quite true, but not so far off. What about you? Is that what you did?”

I shake my head, taking back the reins. “No. I tried to go along with what everyone wanted. I guess I just wasn’t very good at following the rules.”

“Looks like we’re the same in that way,” Constance says. “Maybe in a few other ways, too.” I almost steer the horse right into the ditch.



As we head deeper into the woods, it is as if we have entered a windowless room. The trees become so tightly packed that the only way through is to stick to a path that barely accommodates the width of our cart. The wheels ride up onto the embankment, and we almost tip over several times, causing us to have to back up and realign with the road. My teeth chatter together, and I stare straight ahead, fearing that if I look to either side, I might see some nightmarish creature. Constance hands me a lamp and a small box of matches. The light illuminates only the area of the cart where we are sitting and does nothing to penetrate the curtain of blackness in front of the horse.

“At least if something attacks us, we won’t see it coming,” Constance says.

I turn to stare at her, but she only shrugs.

We clip along at a steady pace for hours until the growls—not from a bloodthirsty creature in the dark, but from our own stomachs—force us to stop. We make camp the first night right in the middle of the pathway. Constance is certain no one will be coming this way, and I refuse to go into the woods. She builds a small fire while I make a terrible gruel in the small cast-iron pot we’ve brought with us. Constance manages to ladle spoonfuls of it into her mouth without gagging. She smirks up at me.

“We’re camping on a road in the middle of the White Wood. The very least of my worries are your cooking skills.”

As we sit by the fire, I think of Constance and her family, living on the fringes of society, just out of the king’s grasp, and how they’ve preserved the truth, hoping they’d have the chance to help the people of Mersailles. I can’t keep myself from wondering if I even deserve to be here with her.

“There you go again,” Constance says. “Lost in your thoughts.”

“I was just wondering if you think I’m some fool,” I say with a twinge of embarrassment. “I grew up in Lille, and I’ve never known any other way of living except by the king’s rules. And then here you are, with all these revelations and all your skills, and I feel like I’ve been living in the dark.”

Constance stares at me across the fire, stirring something foreign inside of me. A fire, but not one made of anger. It is something else entirely.

“I don’t think you’re a fool,” she says. “We come from different places. I grew up knowing all of this. You’re just starting to understand it. But it’s okay.”

“How?” I’m not convinced. I should have trusted my gut about Cinderella’s story. I should have known it isn’t the whole truth.

“Because I value your perspective. You grew up in town, right in the center of the cruelty and chaos. That could be important when we’re figuring out a way to stop Manford.” Constance shifts on the ground and lies back against her burlap sack, closing her eyes and crossing her legs. “Give yourself a little more credit. You’re beautiful, brave, and you knew something was wrong in Lille before anyone confirmed it for you.”

Again, her candid conversation comforts and intimidates me at the same time. I haven’t missed that she called me beautiful either.

I wait to see if she is going to say anything else, but the slow rise and fall of her chest tells me she’s drifted off. The fire starts to die, but I can’t settle my head enough to sleep, so I replay Constance’s words in my mind, hoping they’ll keep the images from the market away. As I wait for morning to come, the crow returns and sits perched in a tree just off the trail. While it’s there, I don’t sleep.





20





Constance is much more adept at knowing when the day is done, so I follow her lead for three days. Sleep had eluded me the first night, but in the nights that follow, I’m lost in a deep slumber, sometimes unable to wake on my own. In the mornings, Constance gently nudges me awake, and hours have passed when it feels like only seconds.

On the fourth day, the path we’ve been traveling ends abruptly, its continuation nothing more than a narrow trail disappearing into a twisted wall of trees.