“You have to do this now,” the fairy godmother said. “I cannot appear in the presence of my queen, not after defying her like this. She would kill me the second she saw me.”
Rosalin wrested her hand free. Only then did I realize that I had been clinging to her, not the other way around.
“No!” I said shrilly. “Rosalin, don’t. You can’t. We have to find Mother and Father. We have to tell them—”
She walked away from me, taking slow, careful steps toward the spinning wheel.
“Don’t!” I said. The word was swallowed in a sob. “Don’t, Rosalin, please! I should never have told you about the spinning wheel! I should never have brought you here—”
“It’s not your fault,” Rosalin said without looking at me. “Don’t feel guilty.”
“I will feel guilty! Unless you stop.”
Rosalin hesitated.
“She won’t feel anything,” the fairy godmother said to her. “I’ll make your sister forget what happened this morning. She will have no recollection of her part in this.”
In three quick strides, Rosalin covered the distance to the wheel. She placed one fingertip carefully on the spindle. She closed her eyes.
So she didn’t see the wide, glittering smile that spread across her fairy godmother’s face.
Terror arced through me, so intense I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t scream No!
A ruby-red globule swelled on my sister’s finger, slow and tiny and bright.
And that was the last thing I saw for a very long time.
I pressed my hand to my lips.
“I’m sorry,” Rosalin said. “I’m sorry! You should never have been involved in this.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. I had to speak around my sobs.
I had always been angry at Rosalin for not paying attention to me. But I was the one who hadn’t been paying attention. I had never picked up on how scared she was. She had spent her entire life being afraid, and I’d had no idea how bad it was.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I would have helped you sooner if I’d known.”
“I should have asked.”
Well, that was true. But I shook my head.
“The past doesn’t matter,” I said. “Right now, we’re trapped in this castle, and the fairy godmother is the only one who can help us get out. And the only one who knows where Edwin is. So we need to not make her angry.” I sat back on the stool, reached for the wool hanging from the spinning wheel, and began pulling it thin.
“I won’t be a part of this,” Rosalin said. “I’m going to get Mother and Father.”
“Rosalin,” I said. “We have to work with your fairy godmother. We have to. She’s the only one who can help us get out before…before…”
Before the Thornwood overcame us. Or before Rosalin died to stop it. I didn’t know how to end that sentence, so I stopped.
“Not necessarily,” Rosalin said. “There might be another way.”
“Feel free to suggest one.”
“Well, there’s the royal wizard—”
I stared at my sister. She pressed her lips together.
“We’ll figure something out,” she said. “But get off that thing.”
“You can’t make me,” I said.
Rosalin shook her head, turned, and stormed out of the room. Her footsteps thudded down the stairs.
Varian gave me an apologetic look, then went after her.
Every bone in my body wanted me to follow them. Instead, I positioned my feet on the pedals and began to spin.
This time, the spinning was even easier. The pedals moved smoothly up and down, and the wheel created a cool breeze against my face. The wool kept coming out of nowhere, rough between my fingers until the wheel pulled it tight. Gold whirred onto the bobbin, around and around, a shiny layer of magical thread.
It felt right. It felt like I had been meant to do this all along.
At least, it did until I got a cramp in my leg.
I kept going, but the steady burn in my muscles turned into a knot of agony. I whimpered and stopped. The bobbin was thickly layered with gold. That probably counted as full. At least, I hoped it did.
“What,” I said aloud, “are you planning to do with this thread?”
“Exactly what you asked me to do,” the fairy said from the window. “Hold off the Thornwood.”
I turned, forgetting my precarious perch. I slid off the stool and landed on the floor, pitching forward onto my knees.
The fairy godmother laughed—a delicate, tinkling, annoyingly beautiful sound—and stepped lightly into the room. “There’s no need to kneel before me, Princess. We are working together now.”
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to my feet. I could feel my legs straining with a dull, painful ache, but I managed to stand.
“How is this thread going to help us fight the Thornwood?” I said.
“It’s a magic spinning wheel, Princess. Anything that comes from it contains power. At its strongest, this wheel’s thread could trap even the fairy queen.” Her eyes glittered. “You just spun, instead of bleeding or dying, so it’s not as much power as it could be. But it should be enough to hold the thorns back for a little while.”
A little while. That didn’t sound promising.
“How did the spinning wheel get here?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “I brought it in. Did you think your father’s ban would stop me?”
I felt a weird, guilty relief. Not that I’d ever truly thought it was anyone else, but…it was nice to know it wasn’t. “How did you get it in without anyone seeing?”
She looked at me as if she couldn’t believe anyone would ask such a stupid question. “Magic.”
Right.
“That wheel is bursting with power,” she went on. “Didn’t you wonder how you managed to use it? It teaches people how to spin it. It could turn a novice into a master.”
Or make someone who had never spun before feel like she had been doing it all her life.
“It cost me, too. I borrowed the spinning wheel from a friend, and he required quite the payment from me in return. I had to give him a new, secret name, and…Well, never mind. That’s the last
