The slamming door cut off the rest of Snow White’s shocked sentence, and this time the queen remembered to pull the bolt across. Her breathing filled the room but this time it was slow and calm. A chill bloomed inside her. She looked back at the crystal ball. A black mist swirled inside it. So be it, the queen thought grimly. So be it.

3

‘A wish is just a curse in disguise’

The new dresses arrived two days after the ball. The atmosphere had remained frosty, the queen had avoided Snow White and it seemed the princess had been doing the same because it was only now, as they both stood in the princess’s rooms, that they were face to face since their argument. That suited Lilith.

‘Are you sure they’ll fit?’ one of Snow White’s handmaids said. She was a small, mousy thing who could probably come somewhere close to pretty if she straightened her shoulders and put some curls in her hair but, as things stood, she erred on the side of plain.

‘Of course they’ll fit,’ she said.

‘It’ll break me in half to wear this,’ Snow White had pulled on the blue dress closest to her. ‘These bones are criminal. There’s no give in them.’

‘There isn’t supposed to be any. They’ll stop you slouching.’

‘I want my old clothes back.’ Her simmering resentment was clear in the flash of her defiant violet eyes. Lilith had never seen eyes that colour before. She wondered if maybe the girl had magic in her too.

‘You had no right to take them.’ The dress still undone, Snow White stood with her hands on her hips, her hair falling loose over her shoulders. ‘No right at all.’

‘I had every right,’ Lilith snapped, aware that the two maids had drawn close together and were no doubt memorising every word of this confrontation to take down to the servants’ quarters and relay as soon as they could. ‘You’re twenty years old. You need to be preparing for marriage.’

‘I don’t want to get married,’ Snow White said, looking squarely at her. ‘I’m not seeing the appeal.’

Lilith ignored her and, with her teeth gritted, grabbed the laces at the back of the dress. Beneath them, Snow White’s skin was white and soft, used to freedom. By tonight, if she did as she was told and stayed in the garment, it would be sore where the bindings had been. The laces shone beautifully but were coarse and rough, woven from looms housed in the attics of castles far away. There was no comfort in the court dresses of her own kingdom. She’d forgotten how unforgiving they were. Still, it would do Snow White good to wear them for a while. To feel what it was like to be so trapped by something that you felt you couldn’t breathe.