Amina’s hands tremble at the edge of the page. This magic scares her.
In the little wooden cage, the rabbit runs around in circles. Amina reaches in and takes it by the scruff of its neck. In her opposite hand is a small knife. Its blade glints in the light of the glass slippers.
“I can’t watch,” I say. All I can think of is the seamstress’s head rolling into the dirt.
Amina sighs. “Then don’t.”
I close my eyes and hear Constance groan. When I open them again, Amina holds the small, still-pulsing heart in the palm of her hand.
“Quickly, each of us must speak her name once. Clearly and with the intent that she should rejoin the living.” Amina pauses and closes her eyes. “Cinderella.”
A shock of energy pulses through me, and I look around wildly, my heart racing. The hair on my arms and at the back of my neck stands straight up.
“Say her name,” Amina says.
“Cinderella,” I say. Another pulse of energy and a chorus of whispers, like people are having a discussion somewhere nearby.
The air grows heavy, and a low, resonant hum rises from the ground. My skin pricks up as I look at Constance. Her eyes are closed. She takes a deep breath.
“Cinderella.”
A muffled noise comes from inside the coffin. My heart leaps into a furious rhythm, as does the one that Amina holds in her hand. I shut my eyes tight, afraid to look. There is a noise like the rustling of leaves and then a long, slow exhale.
“Please,” says an unfamiliar voice. “Please help me.”
I open my eyes, looking not ahead but straight down at the floor, my heart still thudding. Constance stands up, and so does Amina. I rise slowly and level my gaze with the coffin, where a figure is sitting upright. In the flickering light, her eyelids flutter open, revealing the milky-white orbs beneath.
“Who’s there?” Cinderella asks, her voice hoarse and crackling like the sound of burning paper.
Constance stands in an unblinking haze at the side of the coffin. Amina holds the rabbit’s heart. It withers and crumples into a ball of dust before my eyes.
“I’m not meant to be here,” Cinderella whispers.
“I have summoned you,” says Amina. “I would not have done so if it weren’t absolutely necessary.”
Cinderella’s snow-white hair hangs down her back, and she looks from me to Amina and then to Constance. A shower of dust shakes free from her as she cocks her head to the side. “Gabrielle?”
A literal ghost is speaking to us, and it takes everything I have not to give in to the little voice in my head that is screaming at me to run.
“No,” Constance says, stepping close to the coffin. “Gabrielle is gone. They … they’re all gone.”
“Who are you?” Cinderella asks, studying Constance carefully.
“My name is Constance. It’s been generations since Gabrielle was alive. She was my grandmother many times over.”
“You—you look like her.” Cinderella’s breath rattles out of her. “My Gabrielle.”
A knot forms in my throat. Gabrielle’s name from Cinderella’s lips sounds as if nothing but love remains in her memory, faded as it must be.
“Something is—wrong. Very, very wrong,” Cinderella says.
Constance ventures closer. “I need to ask you something. I need to know what you were trying to tell Gabrielle the night you went to see her.”
“The night I went … to … see …” Cinderella gazes off. “I can’t … remember. Everything is faded.”
“Give her a moment,” says Amina.
“And you—I know you.” Cinderella stares at Amina. “I know you.”
“Yes,” Amina says, shaking her head as if she doesn’t want to be reminded. “I helped you get to the ball all those years ago.”
“The ball?” Cinderella asks. “Oh—I—I remember that. Yes. The ball.”
“Please,” Constance says. “Try to remember. You went to see Gabrielle, but they took you away before she even got to speak with you. Were you trying to tell her something about the king? She heard you say he was cursed. What did you mean?” Constance reaches into the coffin and gently takes hold of Cinderella’s hand. I am, for the hundredth time, in awe of her bravery.
“We don’t have much time. How do we stop him?” Constance presses.
“Stop—him?” Cinderella shifts in her coffin. “Stop him … stop him … STOP HIM!” She screams so loud the entire tomb reverberates, and recognition flashes in her eyes. She is suddenly alert, focused, and afraid. She reaches up and takes Constance’s face in her hands. “Look at me. He did this to me.”
I step closer to the coffin. “What did he do?”
Cinderella holds Constance tightly.
“He … takes,” Cinderella stammers. “He takes—he was always taking. And the sadness—I was so alone.”
Constance rests her hands on Cinderella’s outstretched arms. “What do you mean? What kind of magic does this?”
“What does he take?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” says Cinderella. “I don’t remember. There was only him, and the light, and then there was nothing.”
The light. My vision. They are connected.
“I saw something in a vision,” I say to Cinderella. “I saw the king, and I had a feeling in my chest like I was being pulled into a void.”
“I can’t remember.” Cinderella sighs and slumps against the side of the coffin. We are running out of time.
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Constance asks.
Cinderella tips her head back, closing her eyes.
My thoughts go in circles. What is Manford doing to these girls? What kind of dark magic does he wield? I have to go back to the palace. “I’m going to find a way to end him. I promise you.”
“She’s fading,” says Amina. “She doesn’t have much time.” She quickly takes out a long piece of string that has two knots in it. She holds her shears up and clips it in half.
Cinderella begins to sink back into her coffin, and Constance struggles to hold her upright.
“What was that for?” Constance asks. “What did you do?”
“She doesn’t belong here,” Amina says quietly. “We have to let her rest, and I will not be bound to a living corpse for the rest of my days. I cut the connection between us. You have to let her go.”
Constance nods, lowering her eyes. “We’ll stop him. I swear it.” She sounds determined enough to march right up to the king and try to kill him herself.
“Don’t let him hurt anyone else,” Cinderella says, her voice nothing more than a whisper. “I took the little book—the journal—to Gabrielle. I—I couldn’t give it to her before—before they took me away. Find it.” She closes her eyes, and Constance lays her down inside the coffin.
Cinderella’s chest rises and falls a final time before she stills like the marble statue. Constance places the burial shroud over her and arranges her hands across her chest. We stand in complete silence for a long time. I wait for one of them to move or speak.
“Help me put the lid back,” Constance says.
After heaving the lid into place, we go out of the tomb and Constance and Amina sit on the step. I pace in the overgrown grass.
“What do we do now?” Constance asks. “We still don’t know how to stop him.”
“No, but we know Cinderella was trying to give Gabrielle some kind of journal,” I say. “Whatever was inside was important to Cinderella. And the light—what light was Cinderella talking about?”
“She said it was only him and her and the light,” Constance says. “And then nothing. He was there when she died, and she said he did that to her.”
I nod. I still don’t know where this leaves us, and I sit down at Constance’s feet.
“You need to stay hidden,” says Constance. “The king is looking for you, and I think he may have some idea of where you are. You said his guards came to your home, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he just showed up in
the White Wood.” She shoots Amina an angry look. “He’s tracking us.”
“For all his cruelty, he is a highly intelligent man,” Amina says. “I think we sometimes make the mistake of thinking monsters are abhorrent aberrations, lurking in the darkest recesses, when the truth is far more disturbing. The most monstrous of men are those who sit in plain sight, daring you to challenge them. He’s calculating and manipulative, and believe me when I say he will not stop until he finds you.”
Her ominous tone sends a shiver straight up my back. “Where will we go?”
“We should go back to Cinderella’s childhood home,” says Constance. “Just for the time being. Until we can make a better plan.”
“That place is still standing?” Amina asks.
I nod, but I don’t like the idea. “We just run and hide then?”
“I think we need to make a solid plan,” Constance says. “Let’s go somewhere safe and then sit down and figure all this out.”
“We have time to plan, but do they? The women of Lille, I mean,” I say. I stare in the direction of the palace. “How many girls will he hurt before we have a chance to stop him? How many women are being hurt right now in Mersailles because of the rules he made?” I look back. “And what about the young boys who will never have a chance to be decent people because they are taught from the cradle to be despicable? And we’re going to hide? I want him dead. Right now.” I say those words and wonder if it’s too much, if I’ve gone too far. No. That is exactly what it will take to stop him. Nothing short of death will do.
“We need a plan, Sophia,” Amina says. “We cannot make a single misstep.”
The weight of all we have learned presses down on me. But isn’t this what I asked for? To find a way to make a difference?
“My entire family has been sacrificed to this notion of stopping the king,” says Constance. “We’ve hidden, lived in the dark, made ghosts of ourselves. Waiting, training, hoping that one day the time would come for us to end him, and I had lost any real hope that a change could be made. But now we have a real chance.” She looks up at me. “I’m with you. To the bitter end, if that’s what it takes.”
“A life of running, hiding, and being afraid every single day is no life at all,” I say. I look Constance in the eyes. “We’ll put the pieces together, and then we’ll destroy him.”
29
We gather our cart and horse and travel the long road around the outskirts of Lille. We take the forked road to the run-down house where Constance and I took cover a few short weeks ago. The path is still overgrown and impossible to navigate with the cart, so we leave it in the ditch, covered in branches.
Amina slows as we approach the house. I watch her eyes move over the façade, pausing on the broken front door and the partially collapsed roof.
“It’s been a very long time since I’ve been here,” Amina says, her tone soft. She turns and looks over the poppies that still color the landscape orange. “I see a little of my magic still lingers here.”
“Your magic?” I ask. “It makes the flowers bloom like this, even in the winter?”
“Not purposely, but so much magic was worked here, on these very grounds, I’d think the land cannot help but be changed by it.”
“We won’t be here long,” I say. “A few days, a week at the most. Just until we’ve figured out what to do next.”
We mount the front steps and stand outside the door. Amina draws a long, deep breath and lets it hiss out from between her pursed lips. We walk into the parlor off the main hallway, and Amina sets to work lighting a fire as I help Constance bring in our supplies from the cart. I put the horse in the small stable near the rear courtyard, glancing at the grave under the giant tree.
Once we’re finished, Constance and I join Amina in the parlor. She’s making herself a little nest of blankets by the fire.
“Getting comfy?” Constance asks, shooting Amina a disapproving look.
“Quite,” Amina says curtly.
“Can’t you bibbidi-bobbidi-boo the place back together?” I ask as a gust of wind whips through the room, rattling the bones of the house.
Constance laughs, and even Amina cracks a small smile. “It doesn’t work that way.” She takes out her pipe and puffs away. “I’m going to take a walk. Clear my head.”
“Don’t you want to get started on a plan now?” I ask.
“This very night?” Amina asks. “I admire your tenacity, my dear, but we can’t rush into this. We’ll start first thing in the morning.”
Amina gets up and shuffles out of the room. I feel like we’re not doing enough, like we’re not moving fast enough. I turn to Constance to complain, and she’s smiling.
“She’ll come back,” she says. “I wouldn’t be sad if she didn’t, but I’m sure she will.”
“I know, but I feel like we’re not doing enough.”
“We just raised a corpse from the dead, Sophia.”
“Still,” I say.
Constance pushes the kettle over the fire, and we sit down. I am suddenly aware that she and I are alone together for the first time since before we found Amina in the White Wood.
Constance angles her body toward me, winding a lock of hair around her finger. “Do you think about your friend Erin often?”
The question catches me off guard, though I know it’s something we have to talk about eventually. I’ve been avoiding it because I don’t know what to say. I decide to be completely honest. “I do. I think about her all the time.”
Constance looks down as if that isn’t the answer she wants.
“I never thought I could feel the way I feel about Erin toward anyone else,” I say. “But when I met you, that changed.”
Constance studies my face, her brow furrowed. “But you still care for her.”
“I think I’ll always care about her. I want her to be safe. I want her to be okay, even if she and I can’t be together.” It hurts to say that out loud. For so long, there was only Erin. But with Constance, I see another path, one where I’m not constantly fighting for her affection or struggling to convince her that it’s okay for her to care for me.
When the firelight dances across Constance’s face, all I want is to tell her how I adore her, how she makes me feel like I don’t have to be afraid, but Erin is always there at the back of my mind.
“I would never try to come between you and her,” Constance says. “I just want you to know that I care for you, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else says or thinks.”
I inch closer to her, leaning toward her. “With Erin, it’s mostly me chasing after her, trying to force her to understand that …” I trail off. It’s not fair to say anything bad about Erin. I know what living in Lille has done to her, and it’s not her fault.
“Understand what?” Constance asks, her tone gentle.
“To understand that I’m worth it? That she is worth it. I don’t know.” I struggle to find the right words. “For a time, I’d convinced myself that we could make things work. If we could just hold on, if we were willing to fight for it.”
“And did the two of you fight for it?” Constance looks down.
“She didn’t want to.” The words stick in my throat. They make me angry and sad and hurt all at the same time. “She wanted us to follow the law, to obey our parents. And I think, more than anything, she believed that what we felt for each other was wrong.” I pause, choosing my words carefully. “I realize now that she wasn’t ready to risk everything to be with me and that I shouldn’t have pushed so hard.”
“You cared for her, so you pushed. I would have done the same thing for you.” She glances up at me, her deep-brown eyes soft, questioning.
My heart races. I don’t know what to say or do. All I know is that I want to be close to her. I lean in and she reaches up, running her fingers down the side of my neck, tracing my collarbone. My stomach twists into a knot. Before I have a chance to overthink it, I press my lips to hers. Her hands move to my neck and face. A surge of warmth rushes
over me as she presses herself against me. There is an urgency in her kiss, like she’s trying to prove to me how much she cares, and I yield to her, unconditionally.
The fire in me that has smoldered for her bursts to life in a way I never knew was possible. I’m lost in the tide of her breathing, the sweet smell of her skin, the push and pull of our bodies against each other. Each touch sends a shiver straight through me. In this moment, nothing else matters, only the surrender to the feelings we share.
In the late hours of the evening, Amina returns from her walk.
“Where did you run off to?” Constance asks, straightening out her tunic and working her hair into a curly bun on top of her head.
Amina sits down in the chair and prepares her pipe. “I took a stroll. And I have something interesting to share.”
“Something about the king?” I ask.
“In a way, yes. It seems we won’t have to wait too long to have our chance at a confrontation with him.” Amina reaches into her cloak, pulls out a folded piece of paper, and hands it to me. I show it to Constance.
“He’s plastered these flyers all over town. Nailed one to every door,” says Amina. “Every girl in the kingdom will be required to attend a cotillion on the midwinter solstice.”
“Your walk took you farther than you let on,” says Constance, eyeing Amina suspiciously.
“He’s looking for me,” I say. “He doesn’t want to wait until the next ball. He thinks this will draw me out.”
“And he’s right,” says Amina, puffing away and gazing off. “We have less time to prepare now, but this is our chance.” Her tone is strained, almost sad. I wonder if she’s changed her mind about wanting to help us.
“Then we should get to it,” I say, glancing at Constance, who only nods. “I think we should start by trying to find the little book Cinderella spoke of.”
Constance nods. “She said it was a journal, and if she risked her life to try and give it to Gabrielle, then it must be important.”
“And if it still exists, if she took it back to the castle, there’s no telling what became of it,” Amina says. “But we’re talking about an object that existed two hundred years ago. It could be dust for all we know.”
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