Before dinner, Bari came to my room to catch me up on the rest of my sisters. She took a seat on the floor and patted the ground beside her. I sat as she opened her palm and released a swarm of beetles, which re-formed on the rug as a map of the Queendoms. As she pointed to each location, she told me a fact or two about each sister. But I could tell she was holding back. I may have known now where each sister lived and what her hiding place was, but there was so much I didn’t know. And I could barely keep it all straight. There was a commonality shared by their hiding places, though. They were all close to power. Maybe too close.
“So Odette is the Queen of Doyenne’s chef, and Sistine is the Queen of Vignon’s mistress of music . . .”
“And Em is the creature that haunts the Sixth Queendom—”
“What do you mean about Em?”
“She’s created the most wonderful ruse with magic. She appeared as a reptilian monster in the loch. It terrified the Queendom. They stay away from the loch and she’s safe there . . .”
I know we were all left to our own devices, but terrifying a whole Queendom did not exactly sound “wonderful.” Still, who was I to judge?
“We all have found our own ways to hide,” Bari concluded. She studied my face like she used to when she was waiting for me to agree with her.
“Is that all we’re doing? Because it looks like we are awfully close to power . . . It seems dangerous . . . and the people of the Sixth Queendom never hurt us. They had nothing to do with the Burning. Is it fair to them?” I asked hesitantly. I didn’t add that it also seemed cruel.
“Fair? The Sixth Queendom pledged its allegiance to Magrit and the Hinter. And almost every other Queendom has followed suit.”
“They had no choice. If they didn’t fall in line, Magrit would have slaughtered them all.”
“They had a choice, and they choose poorly. If the other Queendoms had stood by their Entente we could have built an army together to overcome Magrit. But they did not. They have not. Each Queendom one by one has given up without so much as a fight. It’s as if our devotion and sacrifice all those years mattered not at all.”
“So now we punish them?”
“No, now we take the place that we should always have had.”
“And what place is that?” I asked. I felt the floor beneath me sway as if I were standing on a ship and not in my room. It wasn’t magic. It was Bari’s new worldview. I understood vengeance. I understood punishment. But I had never once in all those years longed for power over anyone.
“We are the power. When are you going to get that?” She said it with a flare of emotion, which was punctuated by the beetles dispersing through the air and returning to become part of her hand.
“Bari?”
“It’s time for dinner. I’m ravenous.”
“Okay, but this conversation isn’t over,” I said, getting to my feet.
As we arrived at the table, Cinderella was putting down a place setting for me. She stayed on her feet, serving, while we ate. Cinderella had called this her home. But they had made her their servant in it. She did not even have a seat at her own table. I thought of how I had felt when I saw what the soldiers had done to the Reverie—trampling on what had once been our home. Were my sisters not doing the same thing now? And hadn’t the Grays been nothing but kind to my sisters, taking them in when they were most vulnerable, at great personal risk?
And now, to add insult to injury, I was struck by how rude my sisters were to her. Everything was too hot or too cold or too salty or too bland. It was as if she could do nothing right. It was as if she were the stand-in for every human they thought had hurt them. For the first time in my life, I felt embarrassed for them. And I felt confused by them.
I watched in horror as Cinderella’s body tensed in response to every barb and complaint. Then she snapped into compliance and action.
“But of course, dearest Stepmother. Anything for you and yours,” she said with a hasty bow.
Her eyes were downcast, and I could feel her fear. But she obeyed as fast as her tiny feet could carry her.
When Cinderella left the room, Galatea spoke freely.
“Humans are so tedious.” She looked off into the distance like she did when she was looking into the Past. “Hecate wouldn’t listen. There were so many things we did to serve them instead of protecting our own. And look where it’s left us.”
I thought of my childhood meals around the Entente’s table. Odette and some of the other sisters would prepare daily feasts that were beyond human imagination. I indicated the spread in front of us.
“You could do all this with magic. Why keep Cinderella on? You could send her away to school or set her up somewhere else.”
“She is the perfect cover for us. To the outside world I am the benevolent widow of Lord Gray. No one looks at us as long as it seems like I am continuing his legacy. She is part of that.”
“One glance at that girl and you can see the fear painted all over her . . . Other people might see that too,” I commented. “I learned from the Couterie that sometimes you get more with a kiss than with a slap. With a kiss, someone will give you the keys to everything—even their heart. With a slap, you might possibly end up with only a bite.”
“In my experience, humans bite either way. It’s their nature. You will never truly have their loyalty,” Bari said sharply, weighing in.
“The girl is harmless enough. Her thoughts are so banal that I can’t even bear to look into her head anymore. And I cast a spell that won’t allow her to discuss anything outside the grounds of the manor,” Galatea replied. “As for the food, I think you are right that we can improve on it.” She flashed her wand over the food.
“Galatea, that’s not what I meant,” I protested.
She motioned for me to eat.
Pouting, I took a bite. She’d transformed the tastes to those I hadn’t had since we all sat around the long stone table in the Reverie. Food that changed with every bite. Potatoes that were mashed, souffléed, and then in a pie. Meat that went from fish to steak to chicken. And flavors unique to the Reverie’s own garden that would have brought tears if the Entente allowed themselves to cry.
“This tastes like Odette’s . . . ,” I whispered.
“It’s her spell, but I don’t quite do it justice.”
Bari took the hint and raised a glass. “Hey, this is supposed to be a celebration. I don’t think we should spend another minute discussing such unpleasantness. It’s not every day our sister and brother return from the dead.” Then she raised the glass higher, in the direction of the barn.
“Here, here,” Amantha joined in.
Galatea raised her glass too.
And finally I raised mine. But I put it down before I could clink glasses.
Of course they had been changed by the last few years. So had I. But if the years had taught me anything, it was that the old way of doing things had left us vulnerable. I wasn’t ready to celebrate yet. And as the minutes ticked by at the manor, what I witnessed from my sisters continued to gnaw at me. We had all calloused over distinctly from the wounds suffered that day and every day after. Perhaps what I had witnessed with Cinderella was an anomaly, no matter how routine their cruelty seemed just then.
But around the edges of me there was a buzzing like one of Bari’s winged friends. As much as I wanted it not to be the case, my sisters were strangers to me. Only time together could remedy that, and hopefully with time would come understanding. For the life of me, I couldn’t make sense of them now.
Amantha pulled out her wand. “Is it the food? I can fix that.”
I shook my head. “The only remedy I need is the truth. I have so many questions about me and South . . . about the Entente,” I said hesitantly. “Since I’m Hecate’s daughter, will I become a Fate? Who is my father? Was he human? Who is South’s? And why hasn’t he shown any signs of magic if he was Iolanta’s son all along?”
All the questions about the unknown I’d been holding back came spilling out at once.
Galatea took a deep breath, knowing the significance of what she was about to say. “I’m afraid the story of your father died with Hecate.”
“But how is that possible? You can see every Past.”
“We Fates honor one another’s privacy, and we shield one another from seeing what we don’t want anyone to see. I looked once and all I got was a glimpse,” she explained.
She tapped my forehead with her wand. I had the fuzzy image of a man’s face leaning in to kiss Hecate’s. I could see his lips and brown eyes and the brim of his hat. He was probably a gentleman. He removed the hat as their lips met. The vision was accompanied by a blush of emotion, a heady feeling of happiness that seemed to belong to the two of them.
When she took the wand away, Galatea continued. “We were instructed not to fall in love. But we also had to keep the Entente alive. We spun the wand, and some of us were chosen to carry on the line. You and South were the results of that. As to whether you’ll be a Fate, I cannot say. I can only see your Past.”
I sighed with frustration. What good was Galatea’s gift if it couldn’t tell me more than this? I wished that Hecate had shown Galatea my Future.
“And South? What do you know about him that you haven’t told us?” I asked, hoping she knew more, for his sake.
“There are two sides to his magic. One side is from Iolanta. The rest comes from his father. She believed he was a Rook.”
“She met a Rook?” Bari asked in utter disbelief. Amantha perked up too.
“In the flesh,” she said matter-of-factly as Bari, Amantha, and I froze, eager to hear more. Our forks hung in the air.
The Rooks had always been a joke, a fairy tale, never real to us. And now she was telling a new story. One that meant that South was half Rook.
“I myself have never met one, but their magic works differently than ours does. It’s not tied to Fate or destiny. It’s emotional and temperamental and unpredictable. It doesn’t manifest itself until a boy comes of age. There is no way of knowing the result of two magic forces comingling. Perhaps his Rook blood will save him and keep him on our side of sanity. The decision to keep the Rooks and Entente separate was part of a covenant made by our ancestors. There is a reason that the Rooks and the Entente chose to stay six Queendoms apart all those years ago. To keep the balance of magic. But perhaps in South, he is the balance.”
South’s best hope was that the chaotic Rook magic would balance out all his encompassing Presents? A part of me sank for him even further. Another part of me rose in hope, but I wondered if the hope was real or a fairy tale I needed to make me feel less scared for South.
“Do you really think so?” I asked.
“South is unlike anything that has ever been, Farrow.”
“Then how could you treat him as an orphan?”
“There had never been a boy born to an Entente until South,” she continued. “And when we saw that he had no magic yet . . . we decided to raise him as a human. We thought it would be confusing for him and for all of you to reveal his Entente lineage.”
“So you denied him the truth?” I accused.
“We thought we would be there when and if he ever got his magic. And if he never got it, he would never know what he was missing.”
“But he missed so much more. Knowing that he was part of us . . .”
Galatea nodded, her face downturned with apparent regret. “We chose wrong. We wanted to spare him any pain. Iolanta especially.”
I hurt for Iolanta. I wondered if her inability to shut out all the Presents had to do with the fact that she had not dealt with the most important Present of all: the fact that South was hers.
I also hurt for South. His whole life would have been so very different if he’d known who he really was. He would have known that he belonged with us.
“Amantha, Bari, surely you must have these questions too . . . ,” I added.
They looked at each other. Were they examining their faces for similarities to Galatea’s? Was Amantha’s nose Galatea’s? Were Bari’s eyes?
Was Galatea their mother? She’d always kept them close. They had to want to know. If the old rules really were gone, why hold on to this one?
Bari spoke first. “I have all I need in the Entente.”
“All the answers we need will be given to us in due time. For now, we cannot have our hearts clouded by unnecessary entanglements. We know what we need to know. We are sisters. Nothing else matters,” Amantha seconded, joining in her folly and raising her glass again.
“Tonight we celebrate. Tomorrow we begin rooting out the Queen and destroying her,” Galatea announced.
“Can I help?”
Galatea’s face dropped. “Why don’t you concentrate on taking care of South for now?”
“I can’t help because I don’t have magic,” I said, realizing and feeling left out all at once.
Galatea didn’t deny it.
“We will figure out a way to get your magic back,” she said. “You just have to be patient. After all, we waited years to reunite. What’s a little longer?”
After dinner I went to South. He was now sleeping fitfully. I thought I heard him murmur the word “father.” I sat down at a distance, making a place for myself on a bale of hay. I would be there when he woke. But the temperature in the barn had dropped and I had to get South another blanket from upstairs.
When I got there, Cinderella was outside my door, her hands full of linens.
“Cinderella, I am so sorry for their behavior back there . . . ,” I began.
“Would you like the sheets turned down?” she said over me. She returned my gaze, clearly not believing me.
“They weren’t always this way,” I added. But even as I said it, I wondered if I was telling the truth. “Something happened to us. And we were separated. We have all dealt with it very differently.”
Cinderella put her chin up. “Something happened to me too. Your sisters happened to me. I have never behaved like that to another person. And I never would.”
“Cinderella—” I started to speak again, trying and failing to find the words to mount a defense for my family.
She cut me off, suddenly cold. “Miss Farrow, do you want me to turn down your bed now? Or I can come back and do it later.”
“Cinderella, that isn’t necessary.” I felt wounded by her formality. I wanted to break through it, but she was looking at me like I was a stranger. No, worse. She was looking at me like I was a witch.
“I know that they have behaved terribly. But I am the same person you met last night,” I said finally.
“I hope so. But my history with your family has always told a different story,” she said dismissively, curtsying before making her exit.