Girls made of snow and glass

At 3%

Your features are delicate, Lynet, like a bird???s. You shouldn???t be climbing trees, Lynet, not when your hands and feet are so soft and delicate. Emilia had died, he said, because her body had been too delicate for childbirth. Being delicate had killed her mother, and yet he was so eager to bestow the quality on her.

Everything Lynet knew about her mother, she had learned from Nicholas. She was fragile, he said. She spoke in whispers and murmurs. She was sweet and gentle. Like you, like you, he said, but Lynet had never felt fragile, though she looked it. If her father had never truly recognized his daughter, then had he remembered his wife wrong as well? What if everything he???d ever told her about her mother was only how he???d seen her, not how she truly was?

There would be no other chances, no other roles but the ones that had been set for them from the beginning???the bitter, aging queen and the sweet young princess poised to take everything from her.

Mina gave her a sad smile. ???You???ll see too, one day. Once you grow older, someone else will be waiting to take your place, someone younger and prettier than you. I knew that day was approaching for me. I knew even when you were still a child. So why am I so surprised to learn that I???m being thrown aside? Why am I always so surprised????