“I thought I had to punish you for snatching Raven out from under me. I thought I had to poison Evelyn to keep him alive.” Belle trailed her finger along the spine of the book, touching the names printed there. “It’s what they wanted me to think.”

“Who?”

Belle strode over to the desk in the corner. After opening a drawer, she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper where she’d been keeping a tally of every storyteller who’d given her ideas as a child. She could be a princess, waiting patiently for a prince to save her. Or she could be a witch, wicked and powerful and wild.

She returned to Jack, smoothing out the piece of paper before handing it over. “Notice anything?” she asked, pointing to the list of storytellers she’d loved so much. “What do they all have in common?”

“They’re old dead guys?” Jack said, brow wrinkling at the list.

“Take out dead.”

“They’re old guys?”

“Take out old.”

“Belle.” Jack looked up, shaking her head. “What are you—”

“They taught us to hate each other over beauty. To kill each other over boys. They taught us to cut off pieces of our bodies in order to make ourselves smaller—”

“You’re blaming fairy tales for what we almost did? We almost killed a person, and we knew exactly what we were doing. I did.”

“And you called it off at the last minute because you’re the knight. I’m the witch. And Raven’s the bright, shining prince that all of us were willing to kill for, if it meant saving him from someone truly evil. But you know what’s funny, Jack?” Belle sat on the bunk, her heart racing so fast, it was hard to push out the words. “I grew up with a man who hammered nails into my windows and locked my door from the outside. You grew up with a woman who told you, over and over again, that you were nothing. Garbage. Shit. We could’ve done any number of things to get away from them—”

“We learned how to creep down ladders and climb up vines. And you found that skeleton key at a thrift shop when we were fourteen, which made it easier to get out of your room.”

Belle snorted. “We learned how to hide. To sneak. To lie. But we never fought for ourselves. We only fought for Raven.”

“Raven was our family,” Jack managed, crumpling the paper. “And sometimes it’s easier to fight for other people than to fight for ourselves.”

“Like with your brothers,” Belle said calmly. Casually.

Jack’s ears reddened, her gaze dropping to her hands. “What are you talking about? My brothers don’t have anything to do with this.”