It’s a good plan. It might even work.

Except I didn’t come here to kill a fairy, because I’m not a prince or a knight or a hero. I’m not Charm, who would charge a dozen dragons for me if only she knew where they lived. I’m just a dying girl, and the last rule for dying girls, the one we never say out loud, is try not to die.

I slide the knife from my hoodie and unwind the soft satin. I hold it aloft, showing it clearly to our unseen enemy, then toss it casually to the ground. It throws sparks as it slides across the flagstones.

“Lady Zinnia! What are you—”

I ignore Primrose. “Excuse me?” I call into the shadows. “Miss Maleficent?”

There is a long, frigid silence. Green light flares at the end of the hall, a sickly torch held in a hard-knuckled hand. The light falls across a slender wrist, a black hood, a dramatic sweep of robes. I’m distantly disappointed that she isn’t wearing a horned cowl.

“That is not my name.” This time the voice comes only from the black hood, a low growl instead of a shriek.

“My bad.” I raise both hands, empty of weapons. “I was hoping you had a second to chat.” I wait. “I will take your frozen silence for a yes. We come to beg a favor from you.” There’s an indrawn breath beside me, then Primrose’s voice repeating the word beg as if it’s foreign and rather filthy.

“You want the enchantment lifted, I suppose.” I don’t know if I’m imagining the bitter irony in the fairy’s voice.

I clear my throat. “Two curses, actually. You’re familiar with Primrose’s situation, I think, but not mine. I was … similarly cursed, in a land far from here. I come to you now in the hope that you—in all your infinite wisdom and limitless power, who have unlocked the secrets of life eternal”—I am aware that I’m laying it on thick and don’t care, dignity is for people with more time than me—“might free us both from our misfortunes. I have no jewels or treasures to offer you, save one.” I practiced this speech for the past two nights while I kept watch over the sleeping Primrose. I lift my face to that green torch light and pull my features into an expression of deepest sacrifice. “My firstborn child.”

Primrose gasps again. “Zinnia, you cannot! I forbid it!”

“Chill,” I tell her through slightly gritted teeth. I don’t feel like explaining to her that (a) multiple doctors have informed me that my ovaries are toast and (b) I do not want and have never wanted kids, having spent my life trying to save my parents from the trolley problem of my death. Hard pass.

The hooded figure at the end of the hall takes a step, another, and then somehow she’s standing directly before us, a raven perched on her shoulder and her eyes gleaming like poison through the shadows. Her gaze falls first on Primrose. “Even if I could break the spell I laid on you one-and-twenty years ago, I would not.” The princess stares back, her face gone hard and cold, stark-shadowed in the torchlight.