Mary’s warnings might have gone unnoticed, but Jill had grown up surrounded by adults who said one thing and did another, adults who were so consumed with wanting that it never occurred to them to wonder whether children might not know about wanting too. She knew better than to disappoint if she could help it.

“All right,” she said, and opened the door, and stepped into a mermaid’s grotto, into a drowned girl’s sanctuary. The walls were tiled in glittering blue and silver, like scales, arching together to form the high, pointed dome of the roof. It was a flower frozen in the moment before it could open; it was a teardrop turned to crystal before it could fall. Little nooks were set into the walls, filled with candles, which cast a dancing light over everything they touched.

The floor was a narrow lip, no more than two feet at its widest point, circling the outside of the room. The rest was given over to a basin filled with sweetly scented water, dotted with frothing mounds of bubbles. Everything smelled of roses and vanilla. Jill stopped and stared. This was … this was amazing, this was incredible, and it was all for her.

A small dart of smug delight wedged itself in her heart. Jack wasn’t here. Jack wasn’t standing in this room, looking at a bath fit for a fairy tale princess. This was hers, and hers alone. She was the princess in this story.

(Would she have felt bad about her smugness if she had known that, at that very moment, Jack was puzzling her way through the process of getting water from well to kettle to tin tub without scalding or freezing herself? Or would it have delighted her to think of her poised and pampered sister sitting in lukewarm water to her hips, marinating in her own dirt, scrubbing the worst of it away with brittle yellow sponges that had once been living things, and were now remembered only by their bones? How quickly they grow apart, when there is something to be superior about.)

Jill removed her stained and filthy clothing and stepped into the bath. The temperature was perfect, and the water was silky-smooth with perfumes and oils. She sank down to her chin and closed her eyes, enjoying the heat, enjoying the feeling that soon, she would be clean.

Some untold time later, there was a knock at the door, and Mary’s voice said, briskly, “Time to come out, miss. Your clothes are ready, and it’s nearly time for lunch.”

Jill snapped out of her daze, opening her mouth to protest—it couldn’t be time for lunch, they’d just eaten breakfast—before her stomach gave a loud growl. The water was still warm, but maybe that didn’t matter in a magic room inside a magic castle.