And without a backward glance, they walked out the door and down the stairs.
I was pretty sure they expected me to follow them. Instead, I looked at the spot where Edwin had fallen, remembering his bruised face and the blood stuck to his clothes. The fairy godmother had said…or at least implied…or, well, it was possible that she was going to bring Edwin back here once she had cured him. Or whatever she was doing. I couldn’t leave until I saw with my own eyes that he was all right.
But also: I didn’t really want to be anywhere near Rosalin right now. When Varian told her the truth, he would also tell her that I had known the truth.
She would forgive him, sure. He was her true love, her hero, the reason she wasn’t sleeping for another thousand years. She had to forgive him.
She didn’t have to forgive me.
She hadn’t even come after me yet, and already my shoulders were knotted. I tried to shore up my defenses, to get angry at her before she could get angry at me. Why should I have told her? It wasn’t like she ever listened to me.
It didn’t work. Guilt kept creeping back in. I didn’t even like Varian, yet I had chosen him over my own sister. I had helped him deceive her, and now she was going to get her heart broken and it was my fault. I couldn’t even remember why I had done it.
No, that wasn’t true. I knew exactly why I had done it: Because I was scared. Because all I had been able to think about was getting out of the castle.
That was also why I had led everyone out into the Thornwood. Edwin was the one who had paid for that. He’d come here to get away from people who had hurt him, and now, thanks to me, he was hurt more than he ever would have been in the village.
When the fairy godmother appeared, it was a relief.
At least, it was until I realized that she was alone. I clenched my fists. “Where’s Edwin?”
“He’s all right,” the fairy godmother said. “I healed him and left him to sleep it off.”
“Left him where?”
The fairy godmother looked amused. “Concerned about him, are you? What a fondness your family has for commoners.” She pursed her lips. “But as I recall, you used to chase after the kitchen maids the same way.”
I flushed. “Edwin has fought the Thornwood with me. Twice.”
“I’m not denying it.” She shrugged. “My spell worked out quite well for you, didn’t it? Most of the people who know how useless you are died long ago. You have a chance to start over with new people who haven’t realized it yet.”
She didn’t emphasize the yet, but it seemed to echo in the round stone room.
“Unless,” she went on, her lips curving unnaturally high and cutting into her cheeks, “you turn out to be quite important after all. Unless you turn out to be the key to the survival of every single person in the castle.” She spread her wings and rose several inches into the air. “Spin for me.”
It still didn’t seem like a good idea. But I had promised.
Besides, we had just tried, and failed, to cut our way out of the Thornwood. The magic sword wasn’t going to be enough. We needed more powerful magic.
We needed fairy magic.
The fairy godmother was our only hope. And since I was the one she seemed interested in bargaining with, I was the castle’s only hope. Just as she had said.
“I won’t tell you where the boy is,” the fairy godmother said, “until you spin.” She swept her wings back and forth, waiting.
“But why do you want me to spin?” I said. “What do you gain from it?”
Her eyes glittered. “The thread from this spinning wheel has great power. It can trap the fairy queen herself, if you wield it right.”
“Then why don’t you spin some yourself?”
“The magic requires human energy. You will spin some of your life force into the thread, and that is where its power will come from.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “If I’m going to give you my life force, I think you owe us more.”
“Barely a trickle.” She waved a hand through the air. “You humans have such an abundance of life, and you have no idea how to use it. There is so much we can do with the minutes you fritter away playing games, the breath you waste on chatter, or just a few drops of your blood.”
Her voice dipped hypnotically low, the magic in it so compelling that it almost didn’t matter what she was saying.
“Um,” I said a bit desperately, “using a spinning wheel is probably hard. I can’t just start spinning thread without any instruction or practice or—”
She smiled, her lips stretching from one side of her face to the other. “Give it a try.”
Still I hesitated, and she dropped to the floor. Her feet didn’t make a sound when she landed. “Come, Princess. Start spinning and I’ll answer your questions. I promise.”
“Why can’t you just answer them now?” I demanded.
The fairy licked her lips. Her tongue was too long; when she flicked it, it reached all the way to the end of her chin. “There are rules, Princess; fairy laws that run deeper than blood. We cannot do as we will, especially not in the human world. Our queen laid down the laws eons ago, and all fairies are bound to them. When we deal with humans, there is always a price, a bargain, an exchange.”
There was a firmness to her words that made her impossible to doubt. I took a step toward the spinning wheel before realizing what I was doing.
“How would I even know,” I said, “if you’re telling the truth?”
“Fairies always keep their bargains. You must know that.”
Everyone knew that. I was just stalling.
I walked up to the spinning wheel. The fairy
