The Stepsister Scheme

left. The knife spun harmlessly off of the platform, ripping through leaves and branches as it fell.
    The wind died down. Talia tugged Danielle away from the edge, then drew her sword.
    Charlotte clutched her necklace in both hands, whispering an incantation, when something silver plunged into her forearm. Charlotte screamed and ripped out a metal snowflake, slightly smaller than her palm. Blood dripped from one of the sharpened points.
    She tried again, taking the necklace in her other hand, and then Talia’s boot slammed into her stomach. Charlotte dropped to the ground. Before she could move, Talia grabbed her hand and twisted, flipping her onto her stomach. Her screams died abruptly as Talia’s sword touched the back of her neck.
    “Another attack, mundane or magical, and you’ll be dead before you feel me move.”
    Charlotte stopped squirming.
    “Give me your arm,” Snow said, kneeling beside Charlotte. She tore away Charlotte’s bloody sleeve and wadded it into a ball. “Never rip the blade from the wound,” she muttered. “That only makes you bleed worse.” She pressed the makeshift bandage over Charlotte’s arm. “Danielle, I’ve got a bunch of long, clean rags in my bag. Can you get me one?”
    Danielle finished unwrapping the whip from her arm. She would have a few rope burns, as well as a nasty bruise, but it was far better than the alternative. She glanced over the edge and shuddered.
    Snow’s bag was near the doorway into the bar, well away from the edge. Danielle dug through the bag, shoving past dresses and cloaks and bits of silk better left unexamined until she found Snow’s medical supplies. “You have an awful lot of bandages in here.”
    “I travel with Talia a lot.” Snow tied the bandage into place on Charlotte’s arm, then used the end to clean the blood from the metal snowflake. “Aren’t they pretty? Talia made a set for me last year,” she said. When no blood remained, she slipped the steel flake into a hidden pocket on the side of her trousers. “They were a birthday present.”
    Snow used another bandage to bind Charlotte’s wrists. Only then did Talia step away and retrieve her whip. Danielle followed her.
    “Thank you,” Danielle said. “If you hadn’t caught me—”
    “You should have expected something like this.” Talia shook her head. “But I should have, too.”
    “You’re very good with that.” Danielle nodded toward the whip.
    “A zaraq whip was the last thing I saw before I slept, and the first weapon I mastered after I awoke.” A short, bitter laugh escaped Talia’s lips. “It was an assassination attempt gone wrong. My parents did what they could to protect me. We had bodyguards and wizards, food tasters and trained guard dogs. Everyone in the family drank a cocktail of various antitoxins each morning, mixed into our cactus juice.” She made a face. “The cactus juice tasted worse than the antidotes. Not that it mattered. The poison on the needle of that zaraq whip had a magical component. I was asleep before I hit the floor.”
    “Someone tried to kill you?” Danielle asked. “You were just a child.”
    “I was a princess.” Talia wound the whip with quick, economical twitches of her wrist. “I’m told the tale of Sleeping Beauty first spread to your country in a book of stories. Nobody knew how to translate ‘zaraq.’ They just looked at the pictures and decided it was a spindle from one of your spinning wheels. I used to wonder what kind of spinning wheels you people used, that could kill with a mere prick of the finger.”
    Snow hauled Charlotte into a sitting position. “That’s all very interesting, but don’t you think Danielle would rather hear about Prince Armand?”
    Talia rolled her eyes. “Well, Princess? What shall we do with your stepsister?”
    Danielle stared at Charlotte. Ever since they’d left the palace, a part of Danielle had refused to believe. No matter how much her stepsisters hated her, she couldn’t convince herself that they truly wanted her dead. She had made excuses for Charlotte’s earlier attack: someone else was manipulating her; her newfound powers had gotten the best of her; she was only trying to scare Danielle.
    Yet the very first thing she had done after Arlorran’s summoning was try again to murder Danielle.
    She knelt next to Charlotte, whose face was turned away so that only her scarred eye was visible.
    “Careful,” Talia said. She held her sword so that Charlotte could see the