Everyone has a secret. Everyone lies, I thought, walking away from Cinderella’s room and into Bari’s.
Some lies were more worthy than others. Cinderella’s secret was a noble one. But the Entente, as much as I wanted to deny it . . . their secrets went beyond plans for justified vengeance. They meant to hurt the innocent or rule them or both. I had been so glad to have my family back, I didn’t look at who the Entente were. I’d ignored every anomaly because I didn’t want to see what they had become. I had tried to push down my objections to how Galatea, Amantha, and Bari treated Cinderella, to how my other sisters manipulated humans in every Queendom for their own survival. But to take lives of innocents, to take the lives of those who actually sheltered her—Galatea had not just thrown out the rules of what it meant to be Entente; she had also thrown away everything we were supposed to be.
This was not what we had been taught. Never cruelty. Never interfere with what was to be. Only serve and keep the balance. We were done serving. But I still believed in the rest. Even if they did not anymore.
I wondered what it would have been like if we had all stayed together. If the Queen hadn’t torn us apart. Would Bari and Amantha still have turned out this way?
“Bari, this isn’t who we are,” I implored. “This isn’t what the Entente were meant to be. I think Galatea killed Cinderella’s parents.”
“She didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
Bari looked down at the ground like the answer might be found there. And then she looked up at me. As she did, I felt my heart catch.
“Because I did.”
The earth beneath my feet remained still, but I felt myself wobble. It wasn’t possible.
“We don’t kill innocents,” I reminded her.
“None of them are innocent. We were unprepared the day of the Burning. But we will never be unprepared again. And we will never lose another sister.”
Bari looked at me a long beat.
“I did what the Entente have done for years. Only I did it for our kind and not theirs. I serve the Entente. I bow down to no human, or Queen or king for that matter. Don’t you want justice for your mother and for the Entente? So do we . . .”
“I was going to kill Queen Magrit. I could still do it, but only her.”
“Galatea, Amantha, and the rest of our sisters are planning to take over the Queendoms. What happened that day in the square is larger than Magrit. It’s as big as every person who stood by and didn’t stop it and every person who allowed us to be persecuted all over the lands.”
“People got scared. And with good reason. Queen Magrit has persecuted humans too.”
“The humans have proven that they can’t handle power. And they are never going to leave us alone. They will never accept us. They will always be threatened by us. Because we have magic, and they don’t. We will take their Queendom one nobleman and royal at a time, and they’ll never even know that they lost the war.”
I looked at my oldest friend. She thought she had figured it all out.
“Oh, Bari,” I whispered.
“Oh, Farrow,” she parroted back at me.
Bari was a killer. And not in self-defense. She was my first friend. She was my sister. My heart hurt as the reality set in.
“Why not spell them, control them? The Grays were kind to you—they hid you; they saved you. Why did you have to kill them when they took you in?”
“If you kept a scorpion as a pet for long enough, it would bite you eventually no matter how good you were to it.”
“Are we the scorpions or are the humans in your analogy?”
“What if we both are? What if this is just where we end up? One eating the other eventually . . . I’d frankly prefer to do the eating.”
I was struck mute by her cruelty for a moment, but she continued.
“The Grays’ will and their love were strong . . . The spell kept breaking . . . We had no choice.”
“What if you are wrong about the humans? There is good in them,” I returned.
I thought of the prince. I thought of Cinderella. And I thought of Tork.
“Are you willing to bet all our lives on the humans? Because I’m not,” Bari said.
I wanted to show her she was wrong. I wanted her to take it back. But the only one wishing in this room was me, and I wasn’t able to grant my own wishes.
“This has never been our way,” I said firmly.
“Our way didn’t work. If it had been left to the old ways, we would all be dead.”
“There’s a difference between choosing us and killing them,” I countered.
“Is there?” she asked. “We’ve put an Entente in every Queendom to take control from the inside. We’re not just hiding. We’re taking over.”
“What do you mean ‘take control’? And what is your plan for Magrit?”
Bari laughed. “We will gain our influence back over every Queendom one way or another. Starting with Magrit.”
“And the prince?”
“It’s simple, really. The prince will fall in love with me at the Royal Ball. Our magic can’t make the heart want something it doesn’t want, of course. So when the prince sees me, he will see the face of the girl he loves: you.”
Bari thought the prince loved me. Their entire plan turned on an idea that I had never let myself entertain. Could Mather really love me? We had only met three times, and one of which I was wearing another face. Had I really made that much of an impression on his heart? A part of me whispered “yes,” remembering the electricity of our every moment together. Another whispered “never” because it could not be. He was the son of our enemy. His royal blood was never meant to mix with mine. Still, another screamed inside in protest. Whatever we were or weren’t to each other, I did not want Bari to use it to twist his heart to her will. And I could not bear the thought of her borrowing my face to do it.
“There will be fire crystals at midnight. The entire ball will spill out into the courtyard. I will plant a kiss on him, and the rest is Happily Ever After. For us, anyway.
“After we’re married, the Queen and the prince will have an unfortunate accident. I will become Queen, and I will be loved by all the Queendoms. You see, Farrow, revenge is not always a single strike. Sometimes it’s a series of them. And we are striking at the heart of humanity. They will submit or they will die.”
“The prince isn’t like his mother,” I said with more emotion than I meant to betray. “I know him.”
Bari studied me for a beat, clearly reacting to my impassioned tone. “He’s human. He will disappoint you in the end. And we will pay the price for it.”
I remained silent, taking Bari in. There was no talking her out of her belief about the prince or the rest of their plans.
The only way I could save the prince was if I did it myself.