12:00:00 

The sound of the clocktower’s bell thrums through my skull, each clang wrenching me back to consciousness in waves. I am kept afloat for another moment, though I almost sank into the blackness. I can’t let that happen. It’s midnight. The portal will now begin to close, and I have five minutes until it is gone forever.

I duck into a disused chamber in the palace, clutching one hand to my abdomen. Hot, sticky blood seeps through the gaps between my fingers, and seeing it makes nauseating pain shoot through me anew. I have to staunch the bleeding. Breathing shallowly, I rip fabric from the bottom of my ridiculous, poofy silver ball gown—look at that, practical after all—and wrap it tightly around the gash in my stomach. I wish I could also rip off my delicate crystalline heels that make running almost as painful as this dagger wound and throw them across the room, but my handler’s reminder floats annoyingly into focus: leave no trace. The job must be clean.

I slip back out, scanning my surroundings for the guards that were hot on my trail. All clear. I sprint.

12:01:46

I round a corner at breakneck speed, adrenaline dripping into my bloodstream and pain a distant thunderous throb. The thing is, the job was clean, as a whistle, until the mark had to go and reveal his own sly secret. Surprise, I was here to slit his throat, not waltz the night away, and even bigger surprise, we weren’t alone in that palace garden. Of course there was a bodyguard hidden in the shadows. Way to steal my thunder—shit!

Lost in my frustration, I fail to notice as the hem of my dress catches on a loose stone brick and my knees slam to the floor. My vision blurs. 

12:03:23

I’ve made it outside to the courtyard… somehow. How did I get here? All I remember is following the sound of revelry, my sight dimming, brightening, spinning round and round like the bodies that now surround me, suffocate me. The portal. Get to the portal. I push forward.

I leave a bloody handprint on the silken shoulder of a chittering guest. She turns, gasps, shrieks. A palace guard from somewhere to my left whips around, yells “There!” and I hiccup in panic. The guards pursue.

12:04:02

Voices and music fade as I dip into the statue garden. I weave through the effigies, shadow to shadow, solemn stone faces judging my fate, stark in the moonlight. Guards track me like hounds, and I hear the scrape of their boots, their echoing shouts. I try to lose them in here.

I don’t lose them.

12:04:35

They’re right behind me, I know, but I can’t look back. I have to look ahead of me to the end of the open air passageway, at the mirror that is not actually a mirror, for now. In seconds it will remember to just be reflective glass, and I will be trapped. I grit my teeth and force myself faster, faster.

12:04:40

A body slams into my right side, and the prince’s personal bodyguard and I both topple to the floor and writhe. 

12:04:47

I crawl towards the mirror.

12:04:54

My legs are through, but he’s got my arm.

12:04:55

I yank one of my shoes off with my free hand.

12:04:56

“You won’t get away with this,” he snarls, grip tightening.

“Watch me,” I bite out. “Oh wait…” 

I stab the heel of my glass slipper into his eye, and leave it there.

12:04:59

He gives a choking cry, releases my arm, and I topple backwards through the portal.

12:05:00

I stare up at the calm face of my handler peering over me, her eyebrow raised. “That was rather close! Nice work on Charming. But I thought I told you to leave no trace, Agent C.”

That stupid shoe. I groan, wincing as my pain fizzles back to the surface. “Sorry, Fairy Godmother.”