Primrose makes a strangled, raging, weeping sound in her throat. The knifepoint trembles. “Sorry? You who ruined my life and stole my future? Who cursed me?”

“I did not curse you, girl.” The fairy sighs the words, long and tired, and Primrose can’t seem to speak through her fury.

The fairy reaches two fingers up to the blade at her throat and suddenly it’s not a blade at all but merely a feather, glossy and black. It falls from Primrose’s fingers. Her eyes follow it—the feather that was once her only weapon, her way out, secret and cruel—as it slips silently, harmlessly, to the floor.

The fairy turns to face the princess. She touches the perfect arch of her cheekbone, very gently. “I blessed you.”

PRIMROSE HAS AN expression on her face that I recognize vaguely from middle school plays, when one kid said the wrong line and the other was left in baffled, sweaty limbo.

“What?” Primrose asks, with admirable calm.

“It was meant to be a blessing. It still is, by my reckoning.”

A flicker of that bitter fury returns to the princess’s face. “How is a century of sleep a blessing, exactly?”

“There are worse things than sleep,” the fairy answers softly, and she may be the villain, but she’s not wrong. “Stay a moment, and I will explain. Would you like some tea?”

The middle-school-play expression returns to Primrose’s face, and probably mine. Both of us glance helplessly around at the hall, full of twisted black columns and bare stone. No place has ever looked less likely to provide a cup of tea.

“Oh!” The fairy taps her forehead. “Apologies. Let me just—” She snaps her fingers twice. The walls quiver around us like a reflection in rippling water, and then—

We aren’t in a castle anymore.

The three of us are standing in a smallish room with hardwood floors and deep-piled rugs. Everything is pleasantly domestic, bordering on cozy: there’s a scarred kitchen table set with three teacups; neatly banked coals in a stone fireplace; shelves of clay jars and blue glass bottles bearing tidy cursive labels. The ghoulish green torchlight has been replaced by the honeyed glow of beeswax candles.

The fairy herself is no longer draped in black robes, but wearing a grease-spotted apron over a plain cotton skirt. A small, bright-eyed blackbird perches on her shoulder where the raven once stood.

For a second I think Primrose might fall into an actual swoon. I position myself to catch her, wondering distantly who’s going to catch me because I’m one surprise away from a swoon myself. The wrong note I heard before has become an entirely wrong tune, dancing us toward God knows where.

“Forgive my little illusion,” says the fairy. “I find a sufficiently menacing first impression discourages most visitors.”

Primrose replies with a faint oh. I drift a little dazedly over to the nearest window. We’re still on a mountainside, but it appears to be a much gentler mountain than the craggy peak that confronted us through the mist. I see the pale heads of wildflowers swaying in the moonlight, hear the green shushing of grass stalks in the breeze. The moor below looks more like a meadow now, all gentle curves and grassy knolls.