Cinderella Is Dead(52)
“You haven’t even tried,” Constance says angrily.
“Stop.” I scoop up the book and take it over to Amina. I look her right in the face. She is pained. “We all make choices that we wish we could take back. But we can’t change what has already happened. The only thing we can do is try to make things better now. People are still suffering.” I hand her the book. “You can help them and us.”
A silence overtakes us. Amina stares into the fire for a long time before getting up and closing the book, placing it on the shelf. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath like she has resigned herself to something. “We will need to gather and prepare the supplies. The ritual is complicated.”
“You’ll help us then?” I ask.
Amina nods and my heart leaps.
“Necromancy can be very dangerous, more than you can imagine,” she says, her voice low. “We open ourselves up to another realm where spirits and other inhuman beings dwell. Every precaution must be taken. When you open the door between this life and what comes next, well, I’m sure you can imagine what horrors could arise. And some spirits are not so easily dismissed. We must be cautious.”
“Why did you change your mind?” I ask.
“You, Sophia,” says Amina. “You’re a damn sharp sword. A wildfire.”
That catches me by surprise. I don’t see myself that way at all. If anything, those words describe Constance better than me.
“She’s not wrong,” says Constance, nodding like she sees those things in me, too.
“So you two agree on at least one thing,” I say.
“Don’t go putting too much weight on that, dearie,” says Amina. “I don’t care for this one too much.” She waves her hand at Constance.
“The feeling’s mutual, Granny,” says Constance.
24
Our preparation for the ritual begins that same evening. Amina leads Constance and me to her garden. Maybe these plants thrive on shadow or moonlight, because even in the late autumn there are blooms and green leaves. She strolls through, counting out what she needs and making a list of the things she doesn’t have.
“Do you recognize this?” Amina asks, pointing to a waist-high plant with dozens of amethyst-hued, thimble-shaped blossoms all bunched together like the honeycomb of a beehive.
I shake my head, taking a seat on the little steps that lead down into her garden. Constance sits next to me.
“Foxglove,” Amina says. “Helpful for raising the dead or, in the opposite case, stopping the heart. Deadly poisonous. What about this one?” She points to a short bush with small trefoil leaves and sunny yellow blossoms.
“That’s rue,” I say, excited that I know at least one of the plants. “My grandmother would make a tea from it if she had a cough or an upset stomach.”
Amina seems highly amused with my answer. “Your grandmother was a wise woman. It’s also used for protection and divination.” She looks thoughtful. “We’ll harvest what we need the first night of the full moon. There are some things that we’ll need to gather from elsewhere, but I must warn you, it won’t be a pleasant task.”
I look at her quizzically. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“The spell requires a still-beating heart. It can be from something small. A rabbit, perhaps. We’ll have to open its chest while it’s still alive.” Amina makes a cutting motion with her hand, and my stomach turns over.
“On that cheery note, I’m going back inside,” says Constance. She runs her hand over the small of my back as she gets up. A warm shudder courses through me. I watch her as she walks toward the front of the cottage. The feeling stays with me in the chilly nighttime air.
“I don’t like her one bit,” Amina says.
“I like her very much,” I say. I bite my tongue, feeling that familiar stab of shame. I hate that I still feel this way even this far from Lille.
“Obviously.” She leans over into a bush and readjusts a tendril of small shoots snaking up a latticework. “She’s annoying. You, on the other hand, seem like a sweet girl. How did the two of you come to be allies in all this?”
“She helped me after my parents put me out. It was only a few days ago, the night of the ball, in fact. It still doesn’t feel real. It’s hard to explain.”
“Well, you don’t have to explain it to me.” Her way of speaking is rough, unapologetic. She and Constance are alike in that way, and I appreciate every bit of it. Too many people have lied to me, spouting the same rehearsed lines over and over. “And there’s no sense in feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I don’t. I feel sorry for them. My parents, that is. They only know how to follow the king. They’ve lost their way when it comes to knowing how to help me.”
“And you’re not lost?”
I think for a moment. “Maybe I am. But the difference is that I want to be found. I’m not happy pretending everything is fine when I know it’s not.”
“And just who is it that you suppose will find you?” Amina asks.
“It’ll be me,” I say. “I will find myself.”
She closes the gap between us and sits down beside me. She studies me, looking into me, like she can see every single one of my flaws, my weaknesses, and I am afraid.