Malefica's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Malefica stood with her back to the closed door. The huntress waited in the middle of the chamber, basket still on her arm. The shadow on the wall behind the girl shifted its legs, patient. Malefica did not look at it. She looked at the girl's mouth, at the silver in it. "I need to know you will do it," Malefica said. "Not sell the work to her father. Not lose your nerve at the door of her room. Kill her." The huntress set the basket on the table. Inside lay a hunk of raw meat, an apple, and a small bone. "I have never lost my nerve," she said. "But you cannot know that from where you stand. You are asking a stranger to cut a child." "Yes." "Then price it," the huntress said. "You said price. I am saying name what you will give." Malefica walked to the wall and pulled the cloth from the mirror. She did not ask it about Snow. She asked something she had never asked out loud. "Show me if this huntress will keep her word." The glass held her own face. It did not wipe her face away. It did not show the girl. It showed nothing but Malefica, waiting. She understood then. The mirror answered about the fairest. The mirror answered about the dead centaur, once. It did not answer about what a living stranger would choose tomorrow. No glass could. She had trusted the mirror for eleven years because it took the choosing out of her hands. Now the choosing was back. She covered the glass. "I cannot verify you," Malefica said. She turned. "So I will pay you in a way that makes verification pointless. Name anything within my power. Land. Gold. A name struck from a ledger. A person delivered to your door. If you bring me proof she is dead, it is yours." The huntress tilted her head. "Anything." "Within my power." "I do not want land," the huntress said. "I do not want gold. I have a debt owed to me by a daughter of Hades. Her name is Meadow. She has to answer when I call. I want a place she cannot refuse to come to. I want your chamber, for one night, after the work is done. You will open the door for me. You will leave. That is my price." Malefica did not ask why. She had asked the mirror one true question tonight and it had refused her. She would not waste more questions on the living. "Done," she said. The huntress lifted the apple from the basket. "Then I go tonight." She walked past Malefica and out the door. Malefica stood alone with the covered glass. She had bought the girl's death. She had also sold her own chamber, and she did not know to what.