Jagger swept his arm across the walls. “This bottle lets you know what people are thinking. This one lets you be invisible, but only for a little while. This one makes you a good dancer. This one lets you read minds, but only for a few minutes. This one makes people tell the truth. We spell the magic before we bottle it. That way it can’t be used against us.”
His eyes went back to the dancing potion. “Do you want you try it?”
“No, thanks.”
“You have to,” he dared and took a sip.
I liked dares. I thought of all the years and all the times Vern came into my room with her silver tray and paper cups filled with the seven-dwarf pills. I took them not knowing that what was wrong with me could not be cured with a pill—and perhaps did not need curing at all.
I pushed Jagger’s hand away with a little too much force and the bottle tumbled to the ground, making a tiny crash. The spilled magic on the floor evaporated into a glittery dust.
Jagger looked up at me, confusion across his brow. “How can you throw magic away like that? I can’t make sense of you, Snow.”
“Well, that’s not a first,” I quipped—but I ached, too. I was closer to the truth about myself than ever before, but the closer I got, the further I felt I was from everything and everyone else. I was not like Jagger. Or those girls out there.
“Well, we can’t let that bottle go to waste. You’ll just have to experience it from my magic, then.”
“What? No.”
But Jagger ignored me. He held up his hands in a waltzing stance.
I had never danced before, and I didn’t want to use magic to do it. It felt like a shortcut—and I was done with shortcuts. But Jagger had other ideas.
He took my hand and wrapped his other around my waist. As soon as he did, we rose off the floor. Jagger held me close, and I could feel his heart beating against my chest. There was no music, but our bodies moved together to a silent rhythm.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Margot would kill me if she knew I was using this potion. We’re supposed to save it for a mission.”
“A mission that involves dancing?”
“You never know.”
“Since this is my first dance with a boy, I wouldn’t have minded having my feet on the ground,” I blurted.
“Then why not make it extraordinary?”
What Jagger didn’t know, what I didn’t tell him, was that the dance was extraordinary. It was the strangest thing dancing on air. It was the prom that Bale and I had never had and would never have … and I was in the wrong person’s arms.
“You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?” Jagger asked, his question breaking the moment.
Which him? I wondered. Bale or Kai? I didn’t answer Jagger. Luckily for me, whenever I felt too close to him, Jagger did me the favor of blinking first and creating distance with his words.
A flash of anger rose in me, and we crashed suddenly to the ground, our feet coming down hard where the spilled potion used to be.
“I guess I didn’t pay attention. I guess the magic ran out,” he lied, studying me for a beat, uncertain.
Jagger didn’t let go, though, and we continued to dance. His eyes held mine, and this time it was my turn to blink.
I stopped moving, and we finally broke apart.
“Does everyone here lie?” I asked.
“Everyone lies everywhere. I saw your world, too, Princess. Not much of it. But enough.”
I hadn’t seen much of my world, either. And definitely not enough.
That night Queen Margot held a party at the Claret in my honor. The drawing room was filled with girls. A girl was playing a harp, and a couple sat at a piano playing in tandem. There was another girl hanging from a trapeze suspended from the ceiling, and yet another doing ballet at a bar in the corner.
Jagger took me around the room to meet everyone. The girls’ names were even prettier than their faces: Dover, Garland, and others that flitted right out of my brain.
I wondered if they named themselves when they took on new appearances or if those were their real names. Maybe I wasn’t so different from them, after all. Gerde had given me a fake name in the village.
I had so many questions. Were these girls hiding from something or just choosing a new life? I wasn’t sure if they were lying to one another or to themselves—or if this magic menu that let you be whoever you wanted was the most incredible, empowering thing ever. But at the same time, if you changed your identity over and over and never stood still, how did you ever know anyone?
I wanted the girls to tell me everything. But who was I to demand their secrets when I had no desire to share my own?
Suddenly a girl left her perch on the couch next to Fathom and made her way atop a table. She had a tattoo on her cheek that looked like lightning. She began to sing. Her voice was deep and strong and full of spite. At first I didn’t recognize the tune, but I soon realized that she was singing about me. It was the song the boy had sung in the circle.
The other girls joined in, too, with a melody full of venom.
She brings the snow with her touch,
They think she’s gone, but we know
She will come again,
She will reign in his stead,
She will bring down the world on his head.
Oh come, Snow, come…
I beat a hasty exit for the door, eliciting laughter from the girls and a little frost on my palms.
Jagger caught up with me in the hall as I wiped my hands on my dress. “Ignore Howl. She gets a little carried away. Believe it or not, that was not a bad welcome.”
The girl’s name was Howl. And this was how she and the others had chosen to greet me. They might need me for something, but they wanted me to know they didn’t want me.
“I’m not afraid of them. They are a means to an end,” I said finally, not liking the pitying look that Jagger was giving me.
“In the end, you’re afraid of what you’ll do to them.”
I looked up at him, surprised. It wasn’t pity; it was understanding. The girls were doing what they did to any new guest. But I wasn’t just anyone, not anymore. I nodded and let him walk me back to my room. He was uncharacteristically silent. I took that as a kindness.
There was magic here.
My mind kept returning to the Bottle Room. I still didn’t know so many things. I needed to hear the rest of the story, didn’t I? Everyone in Algid had their own agenda. I suppose the same was true of my world. I just never looked beyond Whittaker’s walls. What I did know was I needed to get Bale and get home.
Jagger had come to my world, to Whittaker, using magic. What if that yellow bottle could take us all the way home? Or at least to the Tree? That was where all this started. Perhaps it could end there, too. If it could, I could get away from Algid, from my father, and from everything I didn’t understand. I could forget about this place forever.
I stole out of my room and made my way over the two bridges to the room where Jagger and I had danced. But when I opened the door, there were no bottles. Instead I saw Margot standing in front of a large silver basin that hovered in the air. There were a gazillion shards of mirror floating around her. The room was lit by candles that had been arranged in a peculiar sequence on the floor.
The room was hot. I assumed it was another test of some sort.
The walls themselves began to glow with a warm white light. It felt a little like I imagined the inside of a microwave would feel.
Streams of white light roped from her hands.
They danced around me. I could feel the heat emanating from them. I felt power. The force behind it was strong.
I remembered what Jagger had said about the Robbers having a history with the King. One which called for reparations.
I felt my snow rise up within me as her heat circled closer. As I tamped it down I wondered if maybe the Robbers weren’t just robbing. Maybe they were working on a weapon against the King.
“Wer
e you … are you part of the prophecy? Did you help my mother escape Algid?”
Margot looked at me sharply. But the dancing ropes distanced themselves from me and began to fade.
“I knew Ora. Whether I helped her or not still remains to be seen. When I was very young, I met the Witch of the Woods and I apprenticed with her. Ora was there. I didn’t have your natural gifts or hers. So my stay with the coven was not to be. But when the coven broke the King’s mirror, there was more magic in the world. Magic that anyone can hold in the palm of his or her hand.”
The Witch of the Woods. The River Witch had said she was one of the witches in the coven. Queen Margot had once been an apprentice like Gerde was now. I suddenly wanted to bring Gerde here. I wondered if Margot could help her find her magic through the light—instead of through the darkness, like the River Witch. Gerde relived her pain and shame to keep control. Maybe Margot had another method.
“Did the Witch of the Woods give you her piece of the King’s mirror?” I asked bluntly.
Queen Margot produced a vial and turned it over in her hand before she continued.
“The Witch of the Woods gave me many things,” Margot replied craftily. “I used what I learned. I practice a little magic to hide our home. To maintain our lives, it takes a lot of power. But I am not a witch. You, on the other hand, are the most powerful thing in Algid since the Snow King. We are honored to have your presence.”
“You want to use my power. But the joke’s on you. What I have can’t be contained or tamed. I am at best a storm. Only, I can now determine the time and place.”
“You can do much more than that. I understand why you would lie to me. But do not lie to yourself, Your Highness. Yes, you are a force of nature. But nature is where most magic comes from. It’s a conversation between the Witch and the River. Or the Witch and the Woods. Or the Witch and the Fire. When the prophecy comes true, it is believed that you will be able to talk to all the Elements—that you will have all their power. Or at least that’s my interpretation. But for now, you need to focus on the one that you were born with: your snow. In time you will learn to thread that force like a needle.”
“I never was much of a seamstress.”
“Perhaps you did not have the right teacher.”
I focused on the walls, and suddenly they were once again lined with bottles of every shape, color, and size. Their contents reflected hazily on the multiple surfaces of the mirror shards.
“Then, if you were not born with this power, how do you have so much of it?” I asked.
“You flatter me. Magic likes poetry and sacrifice. Pretty words over an open wound. And poof! You have magic.”
She picked up a vial and opened it. A stream of vapor left the vial and wrapped itself around her arm. She closed her eyes, and the vapor became solid. It slithered up her arm. A tiny garden snake. She opened her eyes, and it became a pretty, metal arm bracelet.
“There is magic in nature just waiting to be tapped. You are attuned to snow. There are others who are attuned to water, like the River Witch, and still others to fire. Like the mirror, water can reflect power,” Queen Margot explained. “With the right words and sacrifice, water can also be infused with power. I wish I had more potions. I wish I could crack them all open and drink them all up. That is who I am. That is who we all are. Moderation is really the only curse, but it is a necessary one for now.”
Looking at Margot, I realized that she would trade everything—the Claret and every bottle in her arsenal—to have the River Witch’s natural gifts or mine.
Power trumped beauty. And then there was the matter of her real daughter. What was her daughter worth to her? Would she give up magic and power? It was a calculation I hoped was true, but I wasn’t so sure.
I thought about telling her about Magpie. But the story wouldn’t necessarily endear me to her.
“How did you learn the spells?” I asked, pushing the mystery of Margot’s daughter aside for the moment.
“I was lucky enough to learn from a great witch, like I said before.”
“And what kind of sacrifice do the potions require?”
“That’s where you come in, my dear.”
Finally, we get to the heart of the matter, I thought, my brain ahead of my body for once. But unlike before, I wasn’t afraid of the answer. I needed to know.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I just want a little blood. Your blood. That’s what the magic requires. You will give me your blood. Then you will help us steal the piece of the King’s mirror at the Duchess’s palace, and in return you will have our assistance in retrieving the boy you love.”
Blood? Jagger had shown me Algid’s magic, but not where it came from. Nor its cost.
“Before I agree to anything, I must know if you possess what I need. I’d prefer to ask rather than take. It’s much more polite that way,” said Queen Margot, taking a step closer to me.
“That’s not creepy at all,” I blurted, remembering what the River Witch had said about magic. She was right. It was a dirty business filled with sacrifice and, I assumed, blood.
“There are much greater sacrifices,” Queen Margot said evenly, although her tone carried the edge of a threat. Margot may not have been a witch, but when her eyes caught the light I saw something that reminded me of the River Witch. Something that made me want to run in the other direction as fast as I could.
But I didn’t run. Like it or not, we were in this together. I needed Queen Margot as much as she needed me. She was the key to getting Bale back and returning to my world. I had no choice but to agree. I was careful to choose my right arm. The one without the map of Algid on it. Taking a deep breath, I held out my arm and pulled back my sleeve, revealing the faded puncture marks of hundreds of Whittaker needles.
Margot unsheathed a deadly-looking, bejeweled knife—but she hesitated for the briefest of moments at the sight of the needle marks. Whatever she was thinking, it was only a short pause before she slid the blade across my palm.
The cut wasn’t deep, but it still hurt. The pain was physical and tangible—not the swarm of conflicting emotions and confusion that had been circling me since I stepped through the Tree.
What was I doing? How much blood did she need?
I pulled my arm back, putting pressure on my palm to stop the flow of blood. It was my turn.
“You want Jagger to take another trip to my world to find your daughter, right?” I asked.
Margot looked up sharply. “Jagger told you that? Jagger talks a lot, but he so rarely gives as much information as he takes. One would think being surrounded by pretty girls all the time he would eventually become immune to their wiles, but you must have had quite the effect on him,” she said.
“Let Jagger take me and Bale with him when he goes, and you can have as much of my blood as you want,” I offered.
“Dear, do you think this is a negotiation? I think I could have every last drop of your blood if I wanted.”
It was clear that Queen Margot felt she had the upper hand despite my lineage and where I had come from.
“And I could level this place,” I countered, almost biting back the words as I said it. I had failed to defeat the Enforcer. How did I expect to defeat the King alone?
“Could you? You admitted yourself that you do not have control. Something tells me that you’d rather not rip apart my palace if it means killing all those innocent girls and my Jagger.”
I answered with an icy, silent stare, and Queen Margot continued her examination of me by candlelight.
“How does it feel knowing that a whole world was destroyed because of your existence?” Margot asked, a hint of excitement in her voice.
“No different than not knowing.”
It was a lie. But I could not wrap myself around her claim, or the River Witch’s, even after what I’d seen. Everything in my life had taken place in the tiny Whittaker snow globe, and now they were spinning some epic tale with me in the starring role. I did not want to be Algid’s savior,
and I did not want to be its curse. I wanted to go home.
“Jagger told me about your life in the Other World. Dreadful conditions for a princess. What happens when you go back? Do you really think Queen Ora is going to let you go home to her? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life trapped in that place?”
“I’ll confront her with the truth,” I challenged back.
“And then what? She’ll pretend you’re crazy and give you the cocktail again? Keep you drugged and safe until the prophecy passes?”
The cocktail? Jagger had more than told her. He’d gone into every detail. And hearing about it from Margot’s lips brought it back all over again.
“I don’t know, but I’d rather take my chances there than here.”
“But don’t you see? Once the prophecy passes and the Lights are extinguished, you will have no choices left. There will be one moment when you can ascend the throne. After that, the world belongs to him, and everyone in it will suffer.”
“This is not my world.”
“So you would leave us and not look back? You’re just like your mother.”
“She was saving me.”
“But what of her land? What of Algid? She was our queen. She put your life above all others, and you are doing the same with yours now.”
“I am, and I cannot care about a place that doesn’t care for me. I don’t know this place. I don’t need this place. And from what I’ve seen of it, it’s not worth saving. It’s filled with liars and robbers and bad people all around.”
Another lie. Gerde had gotten hurt and tried to save me. And Kai had used his Hopper. Even the River Witch in her twisted way had tried to help me. But I wanted Margot to stop talking, and this was a much better way than the icy alternative.
“Your Highness …,” Queen Margot began, and then quieted, reconsidering. “Very well. Once I have your blood and its magic and the mirror, your fate is up to you. I will grant your request.”
I had been convincing. I had effectively lied to the queen of thieves. I had shoved aside everything I felt for the good people of Algid, and then I held out my arm again. My blood pooled into a silver chalice that appeared from out of nowhere in Queen Margot’s hand. Margot smiled and held it up to the light. It did not look special to me, but she looked at it like she’d found the answer to everything.