“The drawings,” I say. “They’re so different from the palace-approved version of the story.”

“Indeed,” says Amina. She studies the images and then glances up as the cart bounces on the uneven dirt road. She inhales sharply, and I follow her gaze. The palace comes into view over a sloping hill. As much as I hate looking back at Lille, seeing the castle ahead is worse. Trepidation looms over me as we ride closer.

Amina tucks the book into the bed of the cart as Constance brings us to a stop near where I emerged from the woods on the night I escaped from the ball. Constance unhitches the horse, and we push the cart into the brush on the side of the road where no one will see it. We tie the horse to a tree a little farther in.

“We’ll cut through this way,” says Constance, ducking into the tree line.

Amina follows her in, carrying her supplies, but I hang back for a moment. The sun nestles into the horizon, casting an orange-yellow glow through the sky. That familiar movement of the setting sun is the only predictable thing that still holds any sense of wonder for me. Everything else in my life that was meant to be predictable has irrevocably changed. One decision and a turn of miraculous events have set my life on a new and uncertain path.

Out the corner of my eye, I see Amina standing so still she might have been mistaken for a shadow by a passerby. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. She simply watches intently as I honor the feeling inside myself that told me to wait, to watch the sunset, and to realize that something is shifting.

We navigate the woods by the dying light; long shadows cast in the confines of the forest make ghosts of the trees, and we come upon the tomb, shrouded in complete darkness. Constance guides us here with barely an upward glance, which makes me wonder how many times she has made this perilous trek.

The grand marble structure looms large in the dark. My life had been forever changed the last time I was here, and I hope that the same will be true of this night. I try to calm the racing of my heart as we slip inside.

Amina walks to the rear of the tomb, to the little alcove where the glass slippers are housed. “It’s been so long,” she says in a whisper.

The glow from the enchanted shoes dances across the walls of the tomb like sunlight reflecting off the surface of a pond. The entire enclosure is bathed in a soft blue-white light, much brighter than when I’d been here the first time.

Amina takes the sachets from her bag, along with several small jars, and hands them to me. Red ochre, burned myrrh, wormwood juice, and powdered evergreen leaves. I spoon them out in the proper proportions and mix them together in a glass jar. Constance fumbles with a piece of parchment that has been folded into a makeshift envelope where a single flax leaf is stored. I gently take the paper from her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m shaken up all of a sudden.”

I put my hand on her arm. “It’s going to be okay.”

Amina walks up to the marble coffin, and we gather around her.

“We’ll need to push the lid back,” says Amina, looking at me questioningly.

I place my hands on the lid. Constance sets her still-trembling hands beside mine, and the three of us push. It doesn’t budge.

“Again,” Amina says.

“It’s not going to work,” says Constance. “It’s too heavy.”

“We have to open it,” says Amina, and a sense of urgency fills her voice. A little stab of panic. We are forbidden to be here. I don’t know if the king has his guards anywhere close by, but if they find us here, we’re dead.

“We have to lever it,” I say. I run outside to search for a large, sturdy branch. I find one thicker around than my arm and bring it back inside. “We’ll need to break a piece of the marble off and wedge this inside, and then we can slide it open.”

Constance hurries out and returns with a stone the size of a small melon. She holds it up and brings it down hard at the corner of the lid. It breaks off, sending a shower of chipped pieces to the floor. I put the stick in the jagged hole, and we all lean on it. Groaning, the lid slides completely away from Cinderella’s head, so it sits at an angle across the coffin. In the dim light emanating from the glass slippers, particles of dust float all around us, and the smell of lavender and jasmine permeates the air.

Constance leans in to look at what remains, gasping sharply. I peer in, afraid of what I might see. A mass of ringlets, silver to the point of shimmering, peek out from beneath a silken shroud, which has decayed around the edges. The outline of a body lies underneath. This is all that is left of the fabled princess.

“Remove the burial shroud,” says Amina, glancing at Constance.

Constance hesitates, her hands trembling at the edge of the open coffin. She slowly reaches in and pulls the cloth away. I clasp my hand over my mouth. Amina’s eyes grow wide, and her mouth opens into a little O.

Constance shakes her head. “This can’t be right. What is this?”

28

Cinderella was thirty-eight when she died, and she’s been in this coffin for almost two hundred years. She should be bones and dust, but Cinderella lies, hands crossed over her chest, as if she is sleeping. Decay hasn’t touched her, but something else has.

Her hair is so white it is nearly transparent. Her face is crisscrossed with a road map of lines, and her eyelids droop down in paper-thin folds. Her hands are withered, the nails yellowed and cracked, and every inch of her skin is a pallid gray color. Her appearance is almost identical to Liv’s the morning the palace guards hauled her up out of the ditch.

“It’s not right,” Constance says, shaking her head. “Why does she look like this? This isn’t what a body should look like at all.”

I cover Constance’s hand with mine. I don’t know what to say.

Amina reaches into the folds of her cloak and takes out a bundle of mugwort held together with twine. She lights the end, and a thick, earthy-smelling smoke clouds the confines of the tomb. She then tucks her sachets all around Cinderella’s body. “Sophia, prepare the ink.”

Giving Constance’s hand one last squeeze, I add a vial of rainwater to the jar where I’d mixed the powders. After stirring the contents, I hand it to Amina, along with the flax leaf. Constance grips the side of the coffin. She doesn’t look away from Cinderella. Amina carefully writes on the leaf with a quill and the freshly prepared ink.

Reaching into the coffin, Amina gently pulls Cinderella’s mouth open, placing the leaf inside. Turning and kneeling at the foot of the sarcophagus, she motions for us to join her. I take Constance by the arm and guide her away. She seems to be in some kind of trance.

“Come,” says Amina. “Sit down here. It will be all right.” It is the most comforting thing she’s ever said to Constance in my presence, and still it is a bit gruff. We kneel at Amina’s side.

She takes out the grimoire and, using a pair of silver shears, clips the ribbons that hold the pages together near the end of the book. The book falls open along a crack in the wax seal. She runs her fingers through the pages and stops when she comes to what she is looking for.

Scrawled across the two open pages are ingredients, the phases of the moon, and the instructions for the spell. There are sketches of a freshly opened grave, a flower, its petals pressed flat by the pages, crumbling and rotted. At the bottom of the page there are words written in red ink.