“Aric’s too, then,” Agatha realized, new to the Dean too.
“I’m afraid so,” Dean Brunhilde sighed.
Sophie shuddered even hearing the beast’s name. “Well, what are we waiting for? We’re all together now. Can’t loaf around drinking cider and ordering food. Let’s find the genie—”
“Not yet,” said Tedros.
Sophie and Agatha looked at each other.
“But what if the Snake comes?” Agatha pressed Tedros.
Sophie piled on: “Didn’t you hear what Reena said before? Sultan already told the Snake we’re here! Japeth’s on a ship to Shazabah! And when the Sultan finds out we’ve escaped, he’ll see his compass is missing. He’ll know we’ve gone to the caves—”
“Japeth will track us there!” Agatha finished.
Tedros grinned. “Exactly.”
The two girls stared at him, confused—
“Did someone say ‘food’?” a voice trilled.
From the kitchen, a big-bellied woman flounced out in a sequined headscarf and tunic, her face spotted with flour, her arms piled with sumptuous spreads: red lentil soup, cucumber salad, hummus with mushrooms, spinach and feta pies, crispy yellow rice, stuffed grape leaves, garlic shrimp, milky pistachio delights, and towers of cookies and cakes.
“Mother!” Reena said, hugging her. “I told you not to go overboard. Last thing we need before a battle is bloated bellies.”
“For once I wish you were more like your father. Eating is exactly what knights should do before battle,” her mother ribbed, before barking at a scrawny man, struggling to get more platters through the kitchen doors. “Yousuf! Hurry and bring the kebabs before they all get dry! Then what will we do? Use them as stones?”
Sophie, meanwhile, had forgotten all about arguing with Tedros and was stuffing her face with cucumber salad, savoring the tarty lemon dressing, unable to remember the last time she ate a well-seasoned meal. In the corner, the prince was talking to Merlin, the young wizard surprisingly quiet and attentive, perhaps because of the chocolate cake Tedros seemed to be withholding from him. Nearby, Dot was complaining to Hester over spinach pies: “Maid Marian is the only link I have to Daddy, but she avoids me every time I try to talk to her. Been that way since we met!” (Hester responded: “Ani and I avoid you, but you always corner us. Try that.”) Even Agatha was lost in a mound of honeycake, before she caught Sophie’s eye. The two girls smiled and moved for each other, before Nicola cut in, pulling Agatha aside. Sophie stopped short—
“So Reena tells me you met my husband,” Reena’s mother said, appearing next to Sophie. “And from the face you just made, I see nothing about him has changed.”
“Wait, you were the queen?” Sophie said, understanding. She looked around the smoky, cramped pub. “And now you’re . . .”
“Happier than I’ve ever been,” said Reena’s mother, unoffended. “I’ve taught my daughter to ask herself the same question I did. What matters? Look in your heart every day and ask: What really matters in life? Doesn’t matter who you are. It’s the same answers for everyone. Love. Purpose. Food. That’s it. That’s all we need.”
Reena’s mother was studying Yousuf, dropping kebabs as he tried to serve them to the witches. Yousuf caught her watching and the two exchanged adoring smiles. Suddenly Sophie understood. At the palace, Reena’s mother could have everything she ever wanted. But only in leaving it could she find the things she needed.
Sophie repeated these to herself.
Love. Purpose. Food.
“I don’t know if I have any of those,” she confessed. She thought of Agatha and Tedros, committed to the cause of Good. She thought of Reena, sacrificing the spotlight to find quiet love with a boy. She even thought of Hort, who wore love and purpose on his sleeve. Tears sprung to Sophie’s eyes before she could stop them. “Well, I have food, I suppose,” she said weakly. “If you consider what I eat food.”
“I probably don’t,” Reena’s mother teased. “Listen to me, sweet girl. So many of us make the mistake of denying ourselves what we want. Out of fear that we don’t deserve it. And it’s a good thing too. Try to have everything you want and you’ll end up like my husband! But the things that matter, those cannot be compensated for or bargained away. They are our birthright in this world. We must find them and hold on to them, even if it takes us deep into the desert, far, far from where we thought we should be . . .” She hugged Sophie so close that Sophie could smell the spices flecked on her skin. “Give yourself permission to be happy. That is the magic spell. Then everything will be possible.”
“I’m not sure how to do that,” Sophie whispered, but she was alone again, Reena’s mother back to the kitchen.
Sophie wiped her eyes, her hands unsteady.
“You okay?” a gravelly voice asked behind her.
Sophie turned to see Hort holding two plates of rose-colored cookies, the weasel looking especially shifty.
“I asked them if they had anything without sugar or milk or all the other things you don’t eat and they said no, but these were pretty, so . . . ,” Hort mumbled.
“Shouldn’t you be sharing those with your girlfriend?” Sophie asked.
“We broke up,” Hort said.
Sophie’s eyes widened. She looked over at Nicola, talking animatedly with Agatha. “Does your girlfriend know that?”
“Ex-girlfriend. And yes. It was her idea.” Hort took a deep breath. “She thinks I’m immature and lost in my own fantasies and a sad, soft boy.”
“All true, I suppose . . . ,” Sophie considered.
“Thanks,” said Hort, wounded. He walked away.
Sophie wanted to finish her sentence: “That’s why I like you.” But she neither called him back nor moved from her spot, her cucumbers soggy on her plate.
“Nic looks less upset about their breakup than you do,” Agatha said, accosting her, clutching another hunk of golden-brown honeycake, “presuming, of course, that’s what you two were talking about. She’s fine about it, actually. I think she finally realized that Hort from the storybooks is different from the Hort in real li—”
“Can I have some of that?” Sophie asked.
She was pointing at the cake.
Agatha gaped at her like she had two heads. “Um, take it all.”
Sophie didn’t think, the cake already pried out of her best friend’s hands and stuffed into her mouth. She closed her eyes, the fluffy weight of flour collapsing on her tongue into a cool melt of honey, a burst of cinnamon at the center. With each chew, the alchemy repeated, as she let the sensations dance on her tongue, then down her throat, surrendering herself to the riot of flavors, as if for once in her life she wasn’t in a rush to make pleasure mean something. She’d always thought of cake as fleeting, pointless, but here in the span of one taste, she’d understood why it mattered. Because life was fleeting and pointless unless you let yourself enjoy it, savor it, down to its lightest, most insignificant moments. She could feel tears falling, as if she’d opened up the forbidden gate . . . as if she’d lost and found something at the same time . . .