A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables #1)

by Alix E. Harrow

It’s where I always planned to die, in my morbid preteen phase.

Shes so real for this

(I know they promoted a reductive vision of women’s agency that privileged traditionally male-coded forms of power, but let’s not pretend girls with swords don’t get shit done.)

Maybe the universe doesn’t naturally bend toward justice either; maybe it’s only the weight of hands and hearts pulling it true, inch by stubborn inch.

I open my mouth to answer but Primrose beats me to it, stepping forward with her chest thrown out and her voice pitched loud, and for the first time it occurs to me that princesses grow up to be queens.

Strangers tend to imagine that sick people are looking for ways to die with dignity, but mostly we’re looking for ways to live.

I gave you the hope that when you wake you will be forgotten, no longer a princess but merely a woman, and freer for it. The hope that the world might grow kinder while you sleep.”

“Well, Harold,” I say gently. “They’re lesbians.”