“I can believe it,” lied Cora, fighting the urge to remind the Queen that she had already tried to have this conversation. When people wanted to think that they knew more than she did, she found that it was generally best to let them. “You seem so perfect for what you are. This world must have needed you very badly.”

“It did,” said the Queen. She leaned back in her throne. A chunk fell off of her dress and tumbled to the floor. “It called me here to bake cookies—cookies! Who wants to put more cookies into the world? No one needs that sort of disgusting extravagance. It wanted to make me fat and lazy and awful, like all the people who came before me. Well, what I wanted was bigger, and better, and I won, didn’t I? I won. What do you want, little renegade?”

“I want to learn to be…” Cora looked at the Queen’s trim waist, wreathed as it was in cake, and swallowed bile at the hypocrisy of what she was about to say. For Christopher, she thought, before saying, “I want to be like you.”

“Bring her closer,” said the Queen. “I want to see her eyes.”

Kade obediently marched Cora across the room. There were two guards, one to either side of the throne, neither close enough to intervene if things went south. That was good. Both guards had a spear, in addition to their swords. That was bad. Cora took a deep breath and kept her eyes on the Queen of Cakes, trying to focus on how necessary this all was.

When they were close enough, the Queen leaned forward, gripping Cora’s chin in bony fingers and tilting her head first one way, then the other.

“You could be pretty, you know,” she said. “If you learned to control your appetite, if you understood how important it was to take care of yourself, you could be pretty. I’ve never seen hair quite like yours. Yes, you could be a striking beauty. Staying here will help you. The best way to become strong is to surround yourself with the things you can never have. The daily denial reminds you what you’re suffering for.”

Cora said nothing. She was used to having people assume that her size was a function of her diet, when in fact it owed more to her metabolism and her genes, neither of which she could control.

The Queen smiled. “Yes,” she said, letting go of Cora’s chin and sitting back in her throne. “I think I’ll keep you.”

“Thank you,” said Cora meekly, and took a step backward, putting herself behind Kade. “Truly, you’re a monarch to be emulated—and overthrown. Now!”