The Dark Queen (The Dark Queens Book 5) (27 page)

Still dressed in her buckskin clothing and with her dirt-smudged cheeks and face, dirty and split fingernails, and cracked and bruised lips, Snow had definitely looked better.

Now the girl looked dead and gaunt. Sterling’s severed horn–which Fable gripped tight in her right hand—was a reminder all over again of everything she had lost to the princess.

There’d been no prince to kiss Snow White awake. That simply wasn’t the way Snow’s story would end. Not here in the real world anyway. Maybe in fairy tales, but in this world only the queen’s desire to awaken the child could do it.

Kneeling, Owiot gently laid Snow White’s body down beside the other sleeping bodies, taking care to arrange her limbs thoughtfully and respectfully. He glanced up at her with questions burning in his eyes, but ones Fable had no answer for.

For once she was willing to own up to the fact that she’d done wrong, but that didn’t mean that any of this was easy for her. Waking Snow White now would come with its own set of problems. Having to confess to the girl who’d once been more like a daughter to her that she’d been so very, very wrong in her treatment of her. How in Kingdom was she supposed to do that?

Pride could be such a terrible and heavy burden to bear. In no way did Fable want to have this conversation, but if she didn’t she’d never truly heal either. Not completely or fully, not the way she needed to. It stuck in Fable’s craw to admit it, but she needed to hear Snow White say she forgave her before Fable could truly begin to learn to forgive herself for all her past misdeeds, not just the death’s of George and Brunhilda, but everyone else she’d harmed in her tenure as queen.

Sleeping as Snow was, it was easy to remember the innocent, beautiful girl who’d once hugged her with such vigor and whispered repeatedly how much she’d loved her.

Slipping Sterling’s horn into a pocket hidden in her gown, Fable took a deep breath full of misery and regret. The lives she’d stolen, the dreams she’d shattered, all the terrible, awful things she’d done since becoming ruler of the Enchanted Forest began to bear down upon her with its crushing weight.

Fable shoved her hand against her rapidly beating chest. So much had happened to her in a few short days. Things that had changed her outlook on life forever. She was no longer the same woman. But who would believe her now, after all she’d done? Who could truly forgive her for the heinous crimes she’d committed?

If Fable were in their shoes, she’d never believe the change could be real. So why should they?

Owiot gripped her fingers tight. “You’re not alone, my darkness. I’m right here.”

She looked over at him and instantly felt her beating heart begin to still and settle into a more normal rhythm.

“What if she—”

“
Ssh
.” Owiot turned into her and planted a delicate whisper of a kiss against the corner of her lips. “Don’t do that to yourself. First, let’s look to see if we can find the witch’s mark upon her.”

Biting down on the corner of her lip, she nodded anxiously. “Okay.”

They looked for all the big things first. Pieces of jewelry, articles of clothing that seemed incongruent to a girl living wild and struggling to make ends meet.

“Nothing,” Fable whispered brokenly several minutes later after rolling Snow first one way then the other as she’d run her hands over the girl’s body.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not there, Fable. Keep looking,” Owiot said, eyeing her sternly.

And she would probably never tell him so, but she loved that he didn’t let her walk all over him. Owiot, calm and patient as he was, was all male and very much his own man.

No one would ever take control of his mind and heart. He simply was who he was, and that was probably the best part about him.

That, and he was the sexiest thing alive too. That certainly didn’t hurt.

She smirked, and he narrowed his eyes. “What’s the matter with you, you suddenly look like you want to ravage me.”

She snorted. “And so what if I do, male? You’re mine now. Or have you forgotten.”

He waggled his brows. “I’ve not forgotten, female. And I have a surprise for you once we finish here. But come, let’s finish first. It feels strange to flirt with my blushing female over what amounts to cooling corpses at the moment.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, boss.”

Owiot only snorted.

Kneeling down beside him, Fable decided to take things more slowly and really look rather than simply rely on touch alone. Starting with Snow’s feet, she slipped off the girl’s boots and looked not just on the soles or the tops of her feet, but between each toe.

Nothing but smooth skin.

“Owiot, sweetheart, turn your eyes away while I take the girl’s pants off.”

He snorted again, but did as asked, standing and turning his back to them. Fable smirked, she wanted Owiot to see no woman nude—dead or alive—except for Fable herself.

Yanking Snow’s pants down, Fable studied one shapely leg, then the other, moved to the apex between them, only giving it a very cursory glance, she was pretty certain Brunhilda had likely not marked the girl down there, but one had to be thorough.

After determining there was nothing at all, she flicked a little magick over the girl to cover her up with a blanket of shadow and moved up to her chest and back and hips.

And again, nothing.

She studied the front, sides, and backs of her arms, between her fingers, and was starting to get a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that Snow hadn’t been enchanted to hate Fable at all, she simply did.

And the truth of it was, Fable could understand why. Evil or not, George had been the girl’s father, she’d only been a little thing when she’d witnessed her evil stepmother brutally slaughter him.

Of course, there was hate.

Fable hated The Blue, and all the fairy had done was trick her. Not stolen the life of someone she’d actually loved.

It was a sobering and disturbing thought and also a disquieting one. At this point, Fable no longer believed that Snow would ever forgive her, that there was no magical curse upon the girl, but rather one of Fable’s own making that had caused such division between them.

Once she’d traced her fingers across the length of the girl’s neck, front and back, and peeked inside each nostril, she finally had to concede defeat.

“Oh, Owiot, what have I done?” She sniffed and stood, shaking her head miserably as her heart bled with the heavy burden of her sins bearing down on her.

He hugged her tight, kissed her brow, and then asked, “Did you check her hair?”

“No.” She sighed. “But there’s no point. I know there’s nothing there. The child hates me, Owiot, and she has every right to. I never wanted to accept that as fact, but I’m ready to now. I killed her father, justified or no, it doesn’t matter to her.”

“Would you mind if I checked?”

She waved her fingers. “I don’t care. Do whatever pleases you. But I already know the truth.”

He knelt beside Snow and Fable hugged herself tightly, allowing herself for once to feel every pain, every hurt she’d ever inflicted upon the child.

True, Snow had hurt her too. But the truth was, Fable had hurt her first by killing the one thing she’d loved most in the world.

How could she possibly blame the girl for that?

“Fable, come here,” Owiot said slowly a moment later.

Blinking, she looked at him from the corner of her eye, her pulse beginning to stutter with skipped beats.

“It’s not possible. You didn’t find—”

“Just come here, love.” He waved her over.

Her steps felt like lead as she moved to his side.

“Here,” he held his finger over a spot on her scalp, “tell me what you feel.”

Frowning, she dropped to her knees, and moved to where his finger was, but no sooner had she gotten close to his finger she felt the very faint, but obvious pulse of black magick.

Gasping, she gently moved aside his finger and where it had been she saw a very tiny, fractured heart shaped mole on the girl’s scalp.

“What is this?” she breathed, looking at Owiot.

His look was grim as he said, “It is the very epicenter of hate. The witch did mark her, Fable.”

Shaking and jittery, she looked back at the tiny, tiny mole no bigger than a freckle and shook her head.

“That poor girl,” she breathed, strangled by the knowledge that unlike Fable herself, Snow White had had no choice but to drown in the darkness of Brunhilda’s curse.

“I blamed her for everything, Owiot. All my pain, all she’d done, I didn’t know...”

He took her trembling hands in his and held on tight. “But you do now, my beauty. And you can fix this. Free her, Fable. She may never love you again, but you can at least free her of this terrible curse.”

Nodding gently, she murmured, “To free her I would need to tap into my own darkness, you understand that.”

She glanced at him.

“Yes. But you have light in you now too. Use both, and you will not drown.”

“That’s what Baba Yaga does, isn’t it? It’s why she didn’t lose herself as I have?” She’d noticed that the day of the battle with the witch.

Baba walked in neither light nor darkness, but in shades of gray. Neither wholly good or bad. It had come as something of an epiphany to Fable, that so long as she kept just enough of the darkness out and let just enough of the light in, she too could walk the gray path unhindered.

He nodded. “It appears so.”

Wetting her lips, Fable closed her eyes and slipped deep inside of herself, into that endless well of yawning power.

But this time, when she looked there wasn’t merely a void of black, but also a pool of lambent white. She took not just from one, but from both, drawing on the ancient powers of both darkness and light and wove a spell of breaking.

When she opened her eyes, she held not a sphere of black magick, but a ball of radiant gray. She grinned at Owiot, who grinned right back at her.

“What that witch has done, let now it be undone. So say I, so mote it be.”

Then she held the sphere of power over the girl’s head. Instantly the ball sailed out of her grip, and toward Snow’s face. Going down, down, down, until it touched her flesh, and then sank right in.

The transformation was immediate. A bright wash of golden light poured through Snow’s pores, making her glow from the inside out, at first bright and intense, but slowly fading with intensity, until finally, she was simply flesh and blood again.

Fable frowned.

“Did it work?” Owiot asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope so. I’m not familiar with gray magick.”

He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Then I guess the only way to find out in truth, is to wake her up. Wake them all up.”

Stomach a twisting nest of nerves again; she prayed to the gods for courage, and without giving her much time to think it through, snapped her fingers and called a cease to the spell.

Sleeping curses took differently for everyone. Some woke up immediately, and others took far longer.

The peoples in the halls were the first to rise. Men, women, children, animals, they all woke, some more lethargic than others. But all of them looking around in a confused stupor.

She stood where she was, not daring to speak a word as they turned to her, all of them looking upon her with recrimination burning brightly in their eyes. They knew what she’d done, but she was the Evil Queen, and none would dare say a word to her face about it.

Owiot stood by her side as promised, clinging tight to her hand, and she was glad he had because otherwise she might have scampered away like a bunny being chased by a wolf.

The only thought hammering through her skull was that her sins were far too deep and ugly to ever be forgiven by anyone.

One by one the people’s left, murmuring in their wake, casting curses at her and glancing worriedly at Snow White still lying still at their queen’s feet.

An hour had finally passed, and the only ones that remained were Fable, Owiot, and a still sleeping Snow White.

“What’s happened,” she finally whispered, “why hasn’t she stirred, Owiot?”

He shook his head, no doubt as confused as she was.

“Did I do wrong when I lifted the curse from her? Did I—”

He shook his head. “Don’t, Fable. Don’t do this to yourself. We will figure this out. But in the meantime, she cannot remain this way.”

“No,” she looked down at the beautiful girl she’d once loved so well, and realized now that she wouldn’t stir, she still very much did, “No, we can’t.”

Waving her hand, she created a box for her. A beautiful glass box with etchings of briar roses along the sides and bottom, and changed Snow out of the ugly clothing into that of a beautiful snow-white gown with designs of blood red flowers along the hem, it was a gown fit for a princess.

Building a pedestal made of gold for that box, she sat the sleeping princess upon it, and each day and each night she returned to that box, peering into it as she pressed her fingers upon it and whispered the same thing over and over, “Please forgive me, little princess. Please forgive me.”

From that day forward things changed in the Enchanted Forest. Fable and Owiot themselves went to every hut, every home in the village and she apologized for what she’d done. Making restitution whenever possible and promising to be a good Queen now, an infinitely better one.

And though none believed at first, as the years slipped by, the people began to see the change in their Queen—many, if not most, attributed this change to their new King Owiot. That his love for their Evil Queen had changed her heart.

But Owiot knew the truth. He’d never been needed to fix the hurt and pain in Fable’s heart, she’d simply chosen to finally be brave enough to right the wrongs herself.

And as the years rolled by, very few remembered Fable the Evil Queen. Instead, she’d become Fable the Kind-Hearted, and he’d become Owiot the Benevolent. The kingdom thrived and the peoples rejoiced, but always there was one point of sadness amongst the realm.

That of the sleeping princess who’d never awoken in the twenty years since their Queen’s return.

Until one day, a fairy who’d once been Blue but now was Pink returned to make things right...