She laughs lightly. “Foolish girl.”

22

“The king who sits on the throne today is not a normal man.” Amina pulls her shawl around her and walks to the shelves at the rear of the room. She plucks a short glass jar with a cork stopper from the shelf, shuffles back over to her chair, and sits down. She leans forward and takes my hand in hers, unwrapping the bandage. I wince as she pulls the cloth away from the wound and uncorks the jar. A sweet smell wafts out.

“Honey and comfrey,” I say, recognizing the scent of the honey and the stringy leaves of the comfrey plant.

She smiles. She dips her fingers, which I notice are each marked with ink in a triangle pattern, into the mixture and smears my hand with the pungent salve. I set my hand back in my lap after she rewraps it. The pain is already starting to subside.

“It’s hard for me to say what the king is or isn’t,” says Amina. “A man, a monster, or some terrible combination of the two.”

“What does that even mean?” Constance asks tensely. I shoot her a glance, urging her to be patient, and she clasps her hands together tightly in her lap. I don’t want her to be quiet. I only want her to try to keep things calm. We need to know what Amina has to say.

Amina continues, unfazed by Constance’s impatience. “Would you prefer the long version or the short one?” she asks curtly.

Constance sits back in her chair, still fuming. I hope she can bring herself to listen to the full story before she loses it completely.

“The long version,” I say.

Amina smiles at me and then purposely frowns at Constance, who rolls her eyes. She reaches under her chair and brings out a small rectangular box. She produces from it a long churchwarden pipe. The chamber is elaborately carved with figures of flowers and leaves, and the stem is nearly as long as my forearm. She fills the chamber from a small cotton pouch and sets about lighting it. She takes a long draw, exhaling slowly. “All my life I’ve practiced magic. My mother raised me in the craft, taught me from the time I was young. You will hear people speak of light and dark, but in my experience you must be well versed in both to find a balance. By the time I was grown, I’d gained quite a reputation for myself. People came from near and far to seek out my services.”

She looks toward the shelf. I follow her gaze to a book that is thicker than all the others, more worn, and bound in some kind of leather. For some strange reason, I want to pluck it from the shelf, but I turn back to Amina as she continues her story.

“They also came with accusations and rumors. When a baby was born with a strange mark, when the eggs of the fowls were runny with blood, when the moon seemed too bright, they blamed me. And one day they came pounding on my door and lit a pyre and dragged me out of my home fully prepared to send me to my maker.”

“What stopped them?” I ask.

“A man,” Amina says. “He drove the village folk from my doorstep, saved my life. He came to me seeking the thing all men seek—power—when he happened upon that dreadful scene. He asked me to aid him in his efforts to persuade a burgeoning kingdom to make him their ruler. He asked me to make the rivers run dry, to make the wheat die in the fields, to make the rain cease to fall.”

A dreadful shock of recognition passes through me. I know this story.

“Who was he?” Constance asks. There is fear in her voice, a wavering in her tone. “Who was this man that came to your door?”

Amina rests her pipe on the arm of her chair and stares into the fire. “The very same man who now sits on the throne.”

I hear Constance inhale sharply.

“No,” I say. “How is that possible?”

“Lille has had four rulers since the time of Cinderella,” Amina says. “Prince Charming, King Eustice, King Stephan, and your current ruler Manford. Charming lived to be nearly a hundred years old, as did his successor, Eustice. But tell me, my dears, do they pass their kingdom to a son? A living relative?”

“All of the successors are handpicked from an annexed city in the Forbidden Lands.” Even as I say it aloud, I realize how ridiculous it sounds, how convenient.

Amina grunts.

“The king always chooses his successor,” I say. “They do it to avoid infighting.”

“And how does it work?” Amina asks. “The kings of this land happen to outlive everyone around them. No one living remembers what the king looked like in his youth. And then what? The king goes into seclusion to wither and die and is buried without pomp or circumstance just before a young man, chosen by the dying king, arrives from the Forbidden Lands and comes to power and seems to know every law, every rule as if he’d authored it himself?”

My hands tremble, and fear rises in me again, but this time I am shaken to my core. I feel like I’m watching the very structure of my life, the thing it is built on, crumble to pieces. “That is how it has always been done.”

“Mersailles has only ever had one ruler since the time of Cinderella,” Amina says. “There is no city in the Forbidden Lands producing potential heirs to the throne. Charming is Manford. Manford is Charming.”

I cannot fathom what she is saying. Constance’s mouth is open, her eyes unblinking.

“How—how can that possibly be true?” I ask as I struggle to comprehend what this means.

“He has a power,” Amina says. “Something that sustains him. I don’t know how, but what is certain is that the prince of Cinderella’s tale, his successors, and the man you call King Manford are one and the same.”

Constance shakes her head, and Amina eyes her.

“I am sitting right in front of you,” says Amina. “A witness to the events I’ve just revealed, and still you doubt. This is the kind of ignorance the king relies on to keep his ruse going. Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t mean it can’t be true.”

Constance opens her mouth to speak, but I interject. “Did you do as he asked? Were you the one responsible for the famine that devastated Mersailles all those years ago?”

Amina shifts uncomfortably in her chair. “I am.”

“My grandmother told me stories passed down to her from that time,” I say. “People were starving, dying. You did that?”

Amina shakes her head and looks at the floor. “I said I was a witch. I never said I was a good witch. I told you I’ve done wicked things. Didn’t you believe me?” She snuffs out her pipe and puts it back in the box. “When the devastation became too much, the people became desperate. Desperate people do foolish things. They put Charming on the throne, and I provided the magic that brought back the crops, the flowing rivers, all of it. They groveled at his feet and begged him to keep them fed, and he did. He became their benevolent leader.”

“And what did you get out of all of this?” Constance asks. “I doubt you helped him without getting anything in return.”

“He made me one of his closest advisers,” Amina says in a way that sounds almost disappointed. “He continued his cursed reign, and in turn he made sure I never had to worry about who might decide that a witch might make good kindling.”

“Cursed,” I say quietly. “This has to be what Cinderella meant when she said he was cursed.”