Meadow Faeoria stood at the edge of the mortal world with a wand in her hand and no face to wear. Her goddaughter was crying into a hearth two miles east, and the ball began at sundown. But Meadow's skin was the color of river stone under ice. Her eyes held the flat gold of coins pressed onto the dead. Any farmer who saw her would drop his rake and run before she said the word godmother. She was the youngest child of Hades and Persephone, and she had spent a hundred years handing wishes to strangers who never saw the hand. Tonight was different. Tonight she had promised a living girl she would come in person. She could not come like this. So she went to the only person she knew who lived above ground and did not flinch at underworld things. The huntress was skinning a hare on a flat stone outside her cottage. Her red cloak was stitched from wolf pelts, uneven at the seams. Her shadow moved a beat behind her, sniffing the air on its own. Meadow had granted her a wish once, years back, and Little Red had never forgotten who signed the receipt. "You look worse than usual," Red said, not looking up. "I need a face," Meadow said. "A mortal one. By sundown." Red set the knife down. "Wands make faces." "Not on the caster. I can dress a pumpkin in steel. I cannot dress myself." Red thought. Her shadow sat back on its haunches. "Borrow one," Red said. "Not a stranger's. A shape people already trust. My grandmother lived in the woods north of here. Old woman. Bent back. Basket of bread. Everyone in three villages let her through their gate without asking. Wear her." "She is—" "Dead six winters. She won't mind." Red met her eyes. "Kindly crone. That's the trick. No one runs from a kindly crone. They offer her tea." Meadow lifted the wand. The star at its tip pulled at the drifting things only she could see. She pictured what Red described: stooped shoulders, soft cheeks, hands spotted from sun she had never stood under. She spoke the shape into the air and touched the wand to her own chest. The cold left her skin first. Her hair went white at the roots and kept going. Her spine folded down a hand's width. When she looked at her fingers they were pink and creased and warm. Red studied her. "Better. Voice too high. Drop it." Meadow dropped it. "Good. Go." Meadow turned toward the road east. Her borrowed knees ached already. The wand felt heavier in an old woman's grip, and the star at its tip had dimmed to a dull blue, spent. She had a face now. She had perhaps four hours of it before the shape slipped, and a girl in cinders waiting at the other end of the road.

Meadow reached the kitchen door before the sun touched the roof. The house behind the door was quiet in the wrong way — the stepmother and her daughters gone to the tailor, the fires banked low. Meadow knocked once. The girl who opened the door had ash on her cheek and a broom still in her hand. "I don't know you," the girl said. Meadow leaned on the wand. The star at its tip flickered blue. "You know my voice. I spoke into your hearth last week. I told you to hold on until sundown." The girl's grip on the broom tightened. Her brown eyes caught the last daylight and held it like a coal. "Prove it." Meadow tapped the wand once against the doorframe. The ash on the girl's cheek lifted and settled into the shape of a small crown, then fell apart. The girl did not smile. She stepped back to let Meadow in. "I'm your godmother," Meadow said. "The face is borrowed. The rest is mine. I came to get you to the ball." "I have no dress. No shoes. No way there." "I brought all three." Meadow set the wand on the kitchen table. "Listen first. I only say this once." The girl sat. She folded her hands like someone waiting for a sentence. "Outside, in the yard, there is a pumpkin. I will make it a carriage. Steel ribs. Glass windows. Wheels that turn on their own. It will carry you to the palace gates and wait." Meadow lifted the wand. "Your dress I will spin from the air. Your shoes will be glass. They will fit only you. If anyone else tries them, they will crack." "And the cost." The girl's voice went flat. "There is always a cost." "Time. That's all." Meadow met her eyes. "Every piece of this magic ends at midnight. The carriage. The dress. The shoes stay — they are yours — but everything else falls. If you are still in the ballroom when the last bell rings, you will stand there in cinders in front of the prince and his mother and every guest who watched you dance." The girl was quiet a long moment. "Midnight." "Midnight." "Why help me." Meadow set her borrowed old hand on the table. "Because my brother and sister have stories. I want one too. And yours is the first that ever answered when I called." The girl looked at the wand. Then at the door to the yard. Then at her own black-streaked palms. "Do it," she said. Meadow lifted the wand and walked to the yard. A pumpkin sat by the woodpile, dull orange in the dusk. She touched the star to its rind. The rind began to shine. Steel curled up out of the vine like ivy learning a new shape. Behind her, the girl stood in the doorway and finally set the broom down.

Meadow stepped into the yard with the wand raised. The ash-girl watched from the doorway. The pumpkin sat by the woodpile, larger than a washtub, its rind gone soft in patches. Black mold spread across one side in a slow bruise. A dead vine curled off its stem like a hook. Meadow could smell the rot from three paces away. She knelt beside it. This was the part she had never done alone. Her mother had shown her once, in a field above the palace, the year spring first reached the underworld. Persephone had pressed her palm to a seed and coaxed it into a full apple tree without a word. Meadow had only watched. She set the star of the wand against the pumpkin's rind. She closed her eyes and thought of her mother's hand on the seed. She thought of green pushing through cold ground. The wand grew warm. Then hot. The rind under the star began to shine. Steel rose out of the vine. It curled up and over the pumpkin in thin black ribs, the way frost climbs a window. The mold on the side lifted, turned bright, and set into panels of stained glass — purple and rose, lit from inside. Wheels rolled out from beneath the rind on their own iron spokes. The stem twisted into a lantern hook. The rot smell thinned and was gone. Meadow stood back. The carriage was taller than she was. Light moved inside it like a slow candle. It rocked once on its wheels and settled, waiting. Behind her, the ash-girl made a small sound. Not a gasp. Something quieter. "It's real," the girl said. "It's real until midnight." The girl stepped down into the yard. She walked around the carriage once. She put one blackened hand against a steel rib and left a print there. She did not wipe it off. "I've never been in a carriage," she said. "You'll be in this one within the hour." The girl turned. In the glass panels, her reflection was orange and pink, warmer than she looked in daylight. "The dress next." "The dress next," Meadow said. She lifted the wand again. The star was still hot. She could feel where the magic had spent itself — a thinness in her wrist, as if she had bled a little into the steel. She had not counted on that. Her mother had never mentioned a cost to the caster. Only to the thing. She glanced at the sky. The last light was going. She had a dress to spin, shoes to shape, and a girl to move from this yard to the palace gates before the bells began. Meadow flexed her fingers around the wand and turned back to the ash-girl. "Stand still," she said. "This part goes on you."

The ash-girl stood in the yard beside the carriage. Meadow lifted the wand. The star at its tip still held heat from the pumpkin, and she felt the thinness in her wrist again, the place where the last spell had drawn from her own store. She had less to spend now. She had more to make. "Close your eyes," Meadow said. The girl closed them. Ash streaked her cheek and her collarbone. Her shift hung off one shoulder, gray with soot. Meadow set the star of the wand against the girl's sternum, over the place where a furnace-heart pulsed slow and warm under thin skin. She could feel it through the wand. It answered her magic the way iron answers a lodestone. Meadow thought of her mother's palace when spring first crossed the threshold. Black stone gone green at the seams. Gold walls flushed with new light. She pulled that memory down through her arm and out the star. The rags moved. Threads climbed off the girl's shoulders and spun in the air. Silk pulled itself from nothing — deep blue, storm-dark, the color of the sky above her father's hall. A bodice set itself against the girl's ribs. Silver embroidery ran across it in shapes Meadow had not chosen: old letters from a language spoken only below. Red stones bloomed at the seams like drops. Thorns of black iron laced the hem and did not prick. Layer over layer, the skirt filled the yard. The girl opened her eyes. She looked down at the gown. She did not smile. "It's heavy," she said. "It will hold." "There are marks on it." Meadow followed the girl's gaze. The runes along the hem glowed faintly, then dimmed. "They came with the cloth. My side of the family leaves fingerprints." The girl touched a red stone at her waist. Her fingertip left a small dark smear. The smear faded into the fabric and was gone. "Shoes," the girl said. Meadow knelt. Her wrist shook now. She pressed the star to the packed dirt at the girl's bare feet and pulled harder than she meant to. Something behind her eyes went cold. Glass rose. It came up in clean facets, mirrored, pointed at the toe, cut like a chessboard along the sole. Small pink stones set themselves at the arch. The slippers rocked once and stilled. The girl stepped into them without being told. Meadow tried to stand and could not, at first. She caught the carriage wheel with one hand and pulled herself up. The wand felt lighter than it should. The star had dimmed to a pale blue. The girl looked down at her feet. Then at Meadow. "You're gray," the girl said. "Around your mouth." "I know." "Can you still get me there?" Meadow wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Get in the carriage."

Meadow leaned on the carriage wheel and looked up at the driver's bench. It was empty. She had made the horses from field mice and the wheels from a rotting shell, but she had forgotten the man to hold the reins. The wand's star flickered pale in her fist. If she pulled another spell from herself, she would fall in the dirt and not get up. Cinder stood in the yard in the storm-blue gown, waiting. The girl did not ask what was wrong. She only watched. "I need a coachman," Meadow said. "I don't have one left in me." Cinder pulled something from a fold of her skirt and held it out on her palm. A small carved figure. A chess knight, black wood, worn smooth at the base. "My father's," she said. "He taught me on this set. My stepmother sold the rest." Meadow closed her fingers around it. The wood was warm from Cinder's skin. "This will cost you the piece." "I know what things cost." Meadow could not spend her own magic. She had another well to draw from, one she almost never touched. Her brother's. Zagreus had left a thread of himself in her wand the day she was named — a older-sibling gift, a spare key. He worked in shapes and returns. He could make a thing wear another thing's face. She set the chess knight on the dirt and knelt beside it. She whispered her brother's name into the star. The wand went cold in her hand instead of hot. That was his magic; it took from somewhere else, not from her. The star burned a low green. The knight grew. Wood became coat. The carved mane became hair, black and tied back. A man stood in the yard in a coachman's jacket, straight-backed, face still, one hand already reaching for the reins as if he had been waiting on the bench a moment before. He did not speak. He climbed to the seat and sat. Meadow stood. Her hands were shaking, but not from the spell. It had not drained her. That was the trouble. She had opened her brother's door and left it open, and she did not know yet what would walk through after. Cinder looked at the coachman. "He has my father's face." "I'm sorry." "Don't be. Keep him until midnight." Cinder climbed into the carriage. She pulled the door shut herself. The coachman flicked the reins. The mice-horses stepped forward. The carriage rolled out of the yard and down the road toward the palace, its lit windows shrinking into the dusk. Meadow stayed on her knees in the dirt. The star of her wand had gone from pale blue to a green she did not recognize, and it would not dim. Somewhere behind her ribs, a second heartbeat had started, slower than her own. Her brother had noticed the borrowed key. He was awake now, and he was listening.

Meadow stayed on her knees after the carriage vanished. The road went quiet. The palace was miles off, and the sun was already low. She could not walk it. She could barely stand. Her wand's star still burned that strange green, and behind her ribs the second heartbeat kept its slow time. Cinder was riding toward a hall full of strangers with no way to know when the spell would break. Someone had to be at the palace at midnight to warn her. Meadow could not be that someone. She pressed her palm flat to the dirt and spoke into the wand. "Zagreus. I know you're there." The green in the star pulsed once. Her brother did not answer in words. He never had. What came back was a feeling in her chest, patient, waiting. He was listening the way he listened to souls at a crossing. "I need you to find her," Meadow said. "The girl in the blue gown. She'll be at the palace by dark. When the clock starts on midnight, tell her. Any way you can. A whisper, a shadow, whatever wearing-a-face thing you do. Just get her out before the gown goes." The wand went colder. She felt him consider it, the way their father considered a ledger. Then a pressure, like a hand set briefly over hers. Yes. "Thank you," she said. Her voice cracked. "I'll owe you." The pressure lifted. The green in the star dimmed by half, but did not go out. He was still there. He would be there until the job was done. Meadow pushed herself up. Her legs shook. She had to get off the road before the last of her disguise burned out and some village boy found an underworld girl in a dead woman's face. She limped toward the tree line and stopped. Under a willow at the field's edge sat two figures. One was a small blonde girl with a bottle in her lap, watching Meadow like Meadow was another door to try. The other was a woman crowned in roses, eyes closed, a staff across her knees. Vines moved on her arms when nothing else moved. "You spent your brother," the woman in roses said. She did not open her eyes. "That will cost more than you think." "He agreed." "He is bored. That is not the same." The blonde girl held up the bottle. "There's a burrow behind us. Stone rim. It goes down. I came up out of it an hour ago and I don't know how. If you drank this you'd fit." Meadow looked at the wand. Green, steady. Her brother at the palace. Her body here, useless, hunted by a dead spell. A hole in the ground that spat out lost girls. "I'm not going down," Meadow said. "I need to be awake when he comes back." The woman in roses finally smiled. "Then sit," she said. "You have until midnight to learn what you just sold."

Meadow sat where the woman in roses told her to sit. The willow made a low roof. The field went blue with dusk. Her wand's star still burned green, but the old woman's face she wore was starting to slip. Her hands looked younger than her sleeves. She had maybe an hour left of the disguise, and her legs would not carry her to the palace even if she had a full day. Her brother was already at the palace, listening. He could find Cinder. He could not speak to Cinder. That was the flaw she had not seen until now. Zagreus dealt in shadows and pressure and the feeling of a hand on yours. A girl in a ballroom would take that for a chill and keep dancing. Meadow turned to the blonde girl under the willow. The girl still held the bottle in her lap, thumb on the label. She had a black band in her hair and dirt on her white apron. She looked at Meadow the way she looked at everything, like a door she had not tried yet. "You came up out of a hole an hour ago," Meadow said. "You said you don't know how." "I fell down a rabbit hole," the girl said. "Every door since has been worse. I'm looking for a garden. I haven't found it." "You've been through a lot of places." "Yes." "Can you get to a palace before midnight if I point you at one?" The girl thought about it. "I can get somewhere. I can't always pick which." Meadow took that. It was more than she had. "My brother is at the palace. He's finding a girl in a blue gown. He can't talk to her. He needs a mouth. Yours." "What do I say." "When the clock starts on midnight, tell her to run. Tell her the gown goes, the carriage goes, the shoes stay. Tell her not to look back at the coachman." The girl repeated it once, flat, in order. She got every word. "Why me," she said. "Because you fall through floors," Meadow said. "A ballroom door is nothing to you." The woman in roses opened her eyes for the first time. She watched, and did not stop it. Meadow lifted the wand. The green in the star pulsed. She spoke into it. "Zagreus. She's coming to you. Blonde, apron, bottle. Let her through the doors. She's your mouth tonight." The pressure came back over her hand. Yes. The girl stood. She uncorked the bottle and drank a small mouthful, testing. Nothing changed yet. She corked it again and put it in her apron pocket. "I'll go now," she said. "While I still know which way is which." She walked out from under the willow and into the blue field. Meadow watched her go until the field swallowed her. Then Meadow lowered her head onto her arms and waited for midnight.

Meadow lay under the willow with her cheek on her arm. The field was dark now. Her disguise had slipped off an hour ago and she had not noticed. Her wand's star was down to a green pinprick. Somewhere far off, a clock began to strike. She pressed the wand to her mouth. "Zagreus. Now." The pressure on her hand came back hard. He was already moving. Through the bond she felt the shape of a ballroom, warm bodies, music, and one small point of cold near the stairs — the blonde girl with the bottle, standing where Meadow had aimed her. Then she felt her brother reach for Cinder and stop. Cinder was on the floor with the Prince. Their hands were together. Zagreus could not push through the Prince's grip without knocking Cinder down in front of a hundred people. He waited a beat too long. The clock struck again. Four. Five. Meadow sat up. "Move her," she said into the wand. "Break the dance. I don't care how it looks." Zagreus put his cold on the back of Cinder's neck. Meadow felt Cinder turn. Meadow felt Cinder see the blonde girl at the edge of the floor, apron and bottle, mouthing the words Meadow had drilled into her. Run. Gown goes. Carriage goes. Shoes stay. Don't look at the coachman. Cinder ran. Meadow felt it through the bond — a bare foot on marble, then a slipper caught on a stair and left behind, then the second slipper still on. The gown tore off her in blue rags on the palace steps. The carriage came apart in the drive. The coachman with her father's face went out like a candle. The clock finished. Twelve. Meadow slumped forward. The green in the star died. Zagreus's presence pulled back to a whisper. The bond had done what it could do. Cinder was on foot, in her shift and one glass shoe, with no ride and no direction, and the stepfamily's house was the only place her feet knew. Meadow forced her head up. There was one person left in the field who could catch a running girl in the dark. Little Red stood at the edge of the willow's shadow, basket on her arm, as if she had been called. She had not been called. She simply came when there was blood in the air. "You look worse," Little Red said. "There's a girl running from the palace," Meadow said. "White shift. One glass shoe. She'll head for her stepmother's house because she doesn't know anywhere else. I need her not to." "Where should she go instead." Meadow pointed across the field, where a small iron cottage glowed between the trees like a lit lantern. "There. Anywhere but home. Ride her out." Little Red looked at the cottage. Then at Meadow. "I can find her," she said. "I can't promise she gets in the basket." "Try," Meadow said. Little Red went.

Little Red came back through the grass without sound. The basket was empty. Meadow's chest loosened for one second before she saw the huntress's face. Little Red set the basket down beside the willow roots. "She's in the iron cottage," she said. "Door shut. She didn't look back." Meadow tried to sit up straighter and could not. "Thank you." "That was work," Little Red said. "I don't do work for thanks." Meadow already knew. She had known since she pointed at the cottage. She pushed the wand across the dirt toward Little Red anyway, because it was the only thing left in the field that had weight. The star at the tip was dark. The twisted blue shaft caught what little moon there was. Little Red looked at it. She did not pick it up. "That's your tool," she said. "I don't want your tool. I want a name." "Whose." "The girl in the cottage. What she is to you. What she can do." Meadow's throat closed. Cinder had a furnace where her heart should be. Meadow had felt it through the bond the first time she touched her cheek. A huntress who mapped fears before she struck would take that name and go straight to the cottage door before dawn. "No," Meadow said. Little Red tilted her head. "No." "She's mine. I don't trade her." "Then we have a problem." Little Red crouched so their faces were level. Her shadow did not crouch with her. It stayed long across the grass, thin, watching from the wrong angle. "I ran a girl to a door for you. That's a debt. Debts get paid or they get taken." Meadow drew the wand back into her lap. She had nothing. Her magic was gone. Her disguise was gone. Her brother had pulled back to a whisper. The only thing she owned tonight that Little Red might want was the one thing she would not give. She made herself speak. "Take me instead." Little Red went still. "I'm the youngest daughter of Hades," Meadow said. "I've never had a story told about me. That's worth something to a hunter who maps names. You keep me in your basket until I earn back what I owe you. Not her." Little Red studied her a long time. The shadow behind her shifted, interested. "A daughter of the underworld," Little Red said. "Owing me." She almost smiled. "That's a name I can carry." "Then it's paid." "Not paid. Held." Little Red stood. She lifted the empty basket. "I'll come when I call it in. You'll answer. Anywhere. Any hour." "Yes." "Say it." "I'll answer." Little Red nodded once and walked back into the dark. The shadow went with her this time. Meadow lay in the grass with the dead wand across her stomach. Cinder was safe behind an iron door. Meadow was not. She had traded herself for one night of shelter, and somewhere a huntress now owned the string.

Meadow lay in the grass until her hands stopped shaking. The iron cottage stood across the field, small and lit from inside. Cinder was behind that door. Meadow had to see it with her own eyes before she could leave. She rolled onto her knees, used the dead wand as a cane, and started walking. The cottage door was warm to the touch. Meadow did not knock. She pressed her ear to the wood and listened. Inside, someone was moving. A chair scraped. Water poured. Then a voice, low and even, speaking to no one Meadow could hear. "Bread. Salt. A knife by the door." A pause. "One shoe. Keep the shoe." Cinder, taking inventory. Meadow closed her eyes. That was the voice of a girl who had landed. Not safe, not warm, but standing. Counting what she had. Meadow eased back from the door. She could go in. She could sit at that table and tell Cinder everything — the huntress, the debt, the brother now awake in her head. Cinder would listen. Cinder would file it under leverage and go quieter. She left the door alone. At the edge of the field she stopped and lifted the wand. The star at the tip was still dark. Her own magic was gone. But her sister's was not. Melinoe's magic sat in the wand like a coin she had never spent. Meadow had been afraid of it since the night it was given. Melinoe worked in watching. In dreams and thresholds. Open her magic and Melinoe would see through it the way Zagreus now heard through his. Meadow thought of Zagreus, already listening. One sibling awake through her was a mistake. Two was a household. She did it anyway. She touched the wand to her forehead and named what she wanted. Not a spell for Cinder. A thread. A window she could look through from home. Just the cottage. Just the girl inside. The wand went cold in her hand. Something behind her eyes opened like a second lid. She saw the cottage from above, then from the hearth, then from the corner where Cinder had set the single glass slipper on the table beside a heel of bread. Cinder sat down. She did not cry. She began to eat. Meadow felt her sister stir at the far end of the thread. Not words. A slow, curious attention turning toward her, the way a cat notices a moth. "Just watch with me," Meadow whispered. "Don't touch her." The attention did not answer. It settled in and stayed. Meadow lowered the wand. She turned toward the dark seam in the field where the road down began. The cottage light stayed lit behind her, and inside her head it stayed lit too, steady as a lamp she had hung in her own skull. She walked home with her sister watching through her eyes.

Meadow reached the seam in the field where the road down began, but she did not step through. The thread behind her eyes still showed the cottage. Cinder at the table. One glass slipper. Half a loaf of bread. Meadow sat down in the grass and kept watching, because she knew what came next. The stepfamily would come home from the palace. They would look for the girl they had left in ashes. Hooves on the road. A lantern swung past the cottage window — no, past the road beyond it, headed to the stepmother's house across the field. Meadow tightened her grip on the wand. Cinder was not there. Cinder was here, in iron walls, eating bread. The stepfamily would find an empty hearth and an empty bed. Through the thread, Cinder lifted her head. She had heard the hooves too. She stood, walked to the slipper on the table, and wrapped it in a rag. She slid it under a loose stone by the hearth. Then she pulled her hair back, smeared soot from the cold grate onto her cheek, and opened the cottage door. Meadow sat up. "No," she said. "Stay." Cinder could not hear her. Cinder walked out into the field, barefoot, toward the house across the way. She was going home. On her own feet. Before they could come looking and find the cottage. Meadow understood. If the stepmother found Cinder missing, she would tear the country apart. If Cinder walked in the back door in rags with soot on her face, the stepmother would only strike her and go to bed. Meadow watched Cinder cross the field. The pale hair caught the moonlight and gave her away as anyone who looked. Cinder kept walking anyway. She reached the kitchen door of the stepmother's house as the carriage pulled up in front. Inside the house, through the thread, Meadow saw it happen. The stepmother swept in, still in her ball gown, mouth already open to complain. She saw Cinder at the hearth, raking cold ash. She stopped. She looked Cinder up and down — the rags, the soot, the bare feet — and her face changed from suspicion to contempt. "Still here," the stepmother said. "Of course." One stepsister laughed. The other yawned. They swept past Cinder to the stairs. Nobody asked where she had been. Nobody looked twice. Cinder kept raking. She did not lift her head until the last door closed upstairs. Then she sat back on her heels and let out one long breath. Meadow lowered the wand. The thread stayed open, steady. Cinder had bought herself another day. The slipper was hidden under a stone in an iron cottage across a field. The stepfamily suspected nothing. Meadow stood. Tomorrow the prince would start looking. Tonight, for the first time in hours, Cinder was safe.

Meadow slept in the grass at the edge of the field. She woke to a horn. Three notes, then three again, carried from the palace road. She sat up. The thread behind her eyes still showed the stepmother's kitchen. Cinder was already at the hearth, raking cold ash, her head tilted toward the window. A rider came down the road. Then another. Then a whole line of them, with a herald at the front holding a scroll. Meadow stood and walked to the fence to hear. The herald read from the scroll. The prince would search every house in the kingdom. He carried a glass slipper found on the palace stairs. The woman whose foot fit the slipper would be his bride. She would be the next princess. Meadow gripped her wand. One slipper. The prince had one. Cinder had the other, wrapped in rag, hidden under a stone in the iron cottage across the field. Inside the kitchen, through the thread, Cinder heard the horn too. She did not stop raking. She kept her head down. The stepmother swept into the room in a fresh dress and slapped her hands together. "Up," the stepmother said. "Wash. Braid your sisters' hair. The prince is coming to this house." Cinder stood. She wiped her palms on her apron. Her face gave away nothing. But through the thread Meadow saw her hand close once, tight, at her side. Meadow understood the problem in one breath. If the prince came to the stepmother's house first, the stepsisters would try the slipper. It would not fit. He would move on. But Cinder had no matching slipper here. Her matching slipper was in the cottage. If she went to fetch it now, in daylight, the stepmother would see her leave and follow. Meadow lifted the wand. The star at the tip was still dim. She had almost nothing left of her own. She thought of her brother's magic, already spent. Her sister's, already stirred. She had one thing left she had not touched. She pressed the wand against her chest and drew a thin line of her own breath into the star. The star brightened a little. Enough for one small thing. She turned the thread. She pushed her voice down it, into the hearth of the stepmother's house. Just a whisper, at the ash, where Cinder was kneeling to sweep. "The stone in the cottage," Meadow said. "I will move it. When they come, ask to try." Cinder's hand paused in the ash. She did not look up. She gave one small nod, the kind a servant gives to a mistress in a room full of eyes. Meadow lowered the wand. The riders were already turning up the lane. She had a slipper to move and a field to cross before the prince reached the door.