“Some of the other GRM kids formed a group—Roseville’s Children—that’s done a lot of activism stuff. They marched on the state capitol, did some sit-ins in Washington. They always get a lot of press, but nothing ever seems to change. Mom and Dad took me to the monthly meetings when I was a kid, but…” I trail away. I stopped going to the Roseville’s Children meetings at sixteen, when I decided I didn’t want to spend my remaining years chanting slogans and wearing cheesy T-shirts. Now I feel another squirm of guilt, thinking of all the sleeping beauties I hadn’t even tried to save. There are fewer of us than there used to be.
“Anyway. I’m on a ton of steroids and meds to try to delay the protein buildup, but my last X-rays weren’t great. The phrase ‘weeks, not months’ was used.” I aim for a casual tone, but I hear Primrose’s gasp of horror.
“I’m sorry,” she says eventually, and there isn’t really anything else to say.
We ride on—we dying girls, we sorry girls, gallows-bound—until the fairy tale spires of Perceforest Castle rise through the trees, gilded by the setting sun.
* * *
THE GROOM NEARLY faints when we turn up in the stables, smelly and tired and road-grimed. There follows a long period of shouting and running about, while the groom fetches a better-dressed groom who fetches an even better-dressed fellow, who sweeps the pair of us into the castle and up to the King’s council room.
The atmosphere reminds me of a hospital waiting room, cold and airless, thick with worry. The King and Queen are seated across from Prince Harold, muttering over a map of the kingdom. They fall silent at the sight of the princess.
There follows a medieval version of the classic “young lady, where have you been, we were worried sick” speech. There are a few more “whences” and “wherefores,” but it covers the same territory. I do my best to melt into a tapestry while the King thunders and the Prince tries not to look disappointed that he doesn’t get to ride out in daring rescue of anyone and the Queen stares wearily at the table.
No one seems particularly interested in Primrose’s explanation—although to be fair, “I went for a morning picnic and got lost in the woods” is pretty weak sauce. It seems more important for them to stress how terrified they were and how precious and fragile she is. “For one-and-twenty years I have sought only to protect you,” the King says mournfully. “How could you risk yourself in this manner? Did you think nothing of our love for you?”
In that moment he reminds me of Charm’s parents, or maybe my own: a person whose love is a burdensome thing, a weight dragging always at your ankles.
Primrose listens with a glassy, passive expression that tells me she’s heard it many times before, has grown so used to the shackles around her legs that she barely feels them.
I make a small, involuntary sound somewhere between disgust and empathy. Prince Harold looks up. “And who is this?” His voice cuts through the King’s speech. “She is not one of your ladies, I would swear it, and she is dressed most curiously.”
It takes physical effort not to flip him off.
The princess’s expression remains glassy, opaque. “This is the Lady Zinnia. I met her on my journey, and I am indebted to her for her courage against the perils we faced.”
“There need not have been any perils if you’d stayed where you belong!” The King launches into another long speech about duty, family, fatherhood, honor, womanly virtues, and the obedience owed to one’s elders and monarchs, but Prince Harold’s eyes remain on me. His face is too lumpishly handsome to pull off canny, but there’s a suspicious set to his mouth that I dislike.
Whatever. Soon enough I’ll be home and his fiancée will be asleep, and none of his suspicions will matter.
Eventually the King blusters himself into silence and tells his daughter they’ll discuss her punishment in the morning.
“Of course, Father,” Primrose says placidly. Her eyes cut to her mother and for a moment the glass cracks. Her lips twist, her mouth half opens, but all she says is, “Good night, Mother.” The Queen dips her head in a low, almost apologetic nod that makes me wonder if her love might not be quite so burdensome.
The two of us are escorted up to her rooms by a bustling flock of maids and ladies. The princess is fed and fussed over, pampered and cooed at, bathed and dressed in a nightgown so stiff with embroidery it can’t possibly be comfortable. It’s nearly midnight before they leave us alone.
Primrose climbs into that enormous, ridiculous bed, half swallowed by eiderdown and shadow. “You—you’ll follow me, when I go?”
“Yeah.” I consider the window seat or the carved chairs, then peel out of my hoodie and tennis shoes and crawl in bed after the princess. She doesn’t move or speak, but I catch the wet gleam of her eyes in the dark, the silent slide of tears. I pretend I’m Charm, who knows how to comfort someone who can’t be comforted. “Hey, it’s okay, alright? I’ll walk with you, every step. You won’t be alone.” We might not be able to fix our bullshit stories, but surely we can be less lonely inside them, here at the end. “Just go to sleep. I’m right here.”
Her hand reaches into the space between us and I place my palm over it. We fall asleep curled toward one another like a pair of parentheses, like bookends on either side of the same shitty book.
* * *
THE CURSE COMES for her in the fathomless black after midnight, but long before dawn. I wake to find the princess sitting up, her eyes open and vacant, foxfire green. She climbs out of bed like a sleepwalker, full of terrible, invisible purpose, and I pad behind her on bare feet.
The castle corridors are twistier and colder than I remember, with every torch doused and every door closed. The wind whips through narrow slits in the stone, tangling Primrose’s hair and raising goosebumps on my arms as we wind down one corridor and up another, through a plain door I bet a million bucks didn’t exist until just now. Behind it are stairs that spiral endlessly upward, lit by a sourceless, sickly light.
I don’t need to tell you what happens next. You know how the story goes: the princess climbs the tower. The spinning wheel waits. She reaches one long, tapered finger toward it, her eyes faraway and faintly troubled, as if she’s dreaming an unpleasant dream from which she can’t wake.
The only difference is me. A second princess, crownless and greasy-haired, desperately in need of modern medicine and clean laundry, quietly crying in the shadows behind her. “Goodnight, princess,” I whisper. She hesitates, the frown lines on her face deepening briefly before the fairy’s enchantment smooths them away.
Her finger is an inch from the spindle’s end when I hear a sound I’ve never heard in real life, but which I recognize from an adolescence spent rewatching Lord of the Rings: a sword being drawn from a scabbard. Then comes the ringing of boots on stairs, the drag of cloaks on stone, and armored men pour into the tower room.
A broad hand closes around Primrose’s arm and hauls her backward. A silver blade crashes down on the spinning wheel and I flinch from flying splinters. I lower my arms to see a square-jawed man standing triumphantly above the shattered wreckage of the thing that was my only way home.