“My original plan was very different,” the Queen began. “Much more subtle, more seamless…you would never have realized that anything bad had happened to your friend. You might not even have missed him…I heard you arguing with him the first night, and I thought, ‘there’s a pair who care for each other a great deal, but can’t express it without aggression.’ So I planned to drive a wedge between the two of you, with the issue of marriage—”

“Is that why you brought that up??” Pitch sneered. “Didn’t work out very well for you, did it…?”

“You weren’t supposed to want to leave,” said the Queen, as that dull, heartless expression crept over her face again. “You weren’t supposed to miss living in the dirt like a fugitive! You were supposed to feel pressured, to sacrifice something for this new life of comfort, that I gave you! Everything has a cost, Margaret!!”

“What will it cost for you to stop stalling and tell me what you’ve done with Azor?!”

“Patience…”

The Queen ran her fingers along her reddened, blemished face. “…Your friend ended up being even more powerful than I had hoped,” she said. “Probably more powerful than he himself realizes. To take a simple curse and age it, like a fine wine, for hundreds of years; cultivate it into a new state of existence…and then waste it, obsessing over useless flowers…”

“And I suppose you would use it for something better??” Pitch retorted.

“Yes, I would. And I have.” The Queen smiled. “I’ve taken all the magic he held, and I’ve invested it in our future. In my promise to you…and in my status, as the fairest in all the land.”

“The instrument in my chamber is not a ‘magic machine’ in that it can just magically make one beautiful,” she explained, as horrified tears welled up in Pitch’s eyes. “It is a ‘magic machine’ in that it must consume magic in order to operate. And in rather large quantities…only the purest sources will do.”

“Elves are easy to find and capture, but they usually contain just a few weeks’ worth of magic at the most,” she went on. “Fairies are more concentrated and just as common, but some of them can be very dangerous— you’d be surprised how many of my knights have been killed by fairies. Unicorns are the best source I’ve found so far, but they’re just so very rare…their blood alone can power the machine for months, but I’ve never received more than one per year…”

“Of course, thanks to your friend, I don’t think I’ll have to send anyone out to hunt for quite a few years…perhaps a decade,” the Queen finished. “I look forward to finding out just how long his power lasts—”

Before she could finish, Pitch ran out of the room, heading straight for the north tower.

The Queen sighed, and slowly followed after her.