The Fairest of Them All (28 page)

I pressed my face against the glass.

Her face loomed up at me like a reflection in water.

She was so young, lush. Like a piece of fruit
hanging from a tree, so full it was about to burst.

Snow White
.

I slammed my fist against the glass, waiting to hear the cracking, but nothing happened.

Snow White is a thousand times more fair.

I ran from my room, from my chambers, to find her.

“Where is the princess?” I asked a young maid scurrying past. “Tell me!”

“She is bathing, I believe.”

I ran to her chambers, pushed open the doors.

“It is the queen, mademoiselle,” I could hear one of her ladies saying, rushing before me.

She stood naked in the bath, her ladies positioned around her.

“Your Highness,” she said.

I took her in, the length of her body. She was shorter than I, and more rounded. Her breasts were full, her nipples a perfect pink. Her hips flared out from her waist, her sex a patch of dark. Her skin luminous,
as white as milk. Those violet eyes, lined by thick lashes. Her black hair tumbled down to her shoulders, wet and curling.

When had she become a woman? She was only fifteen, wasn’t she?

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Her voice was cold, hard.

I stood there. Foolish, a witch queen, speechless in front of a bathing child.

But what could I say?

Two of her ladies stood on either side of her, their
hands filled with wet cloths. Behind her, another was waiting to plait her hair, the way she always wore it now, braids lining her face.

I turned and left. I started running, desperate to escape, to get as far from her as I could, far away from all of this.

I
rushed back to my rooms, and the mirror.

I bent toward it, lowered my voice to a whisper. “Who is the fairest
of them all?” I asked.

It was like water after you throw a pebble across the surface.

The voice came, unmistakably:
She is
.

“Who is?” I asked.

The answer came more quickly, with no hesitation.

Snow White
.

“You are wrong,” I said, as the image of her naked, in the bath, flashed through my mind.

For a moment, I imagined casting a spell around her body and changing her into a stag. I laughed
as I thought of it: that perfect beauty metamorphosing, her lovely face growing a long snout, the black wet nose, the big soft eyes, antlers twisting from her head. Her hands dropping to the ground and becoming hooves. The way she would bound through the forest, her eyes glittering, speaking of enchantment. The consciousness she would have, knowing that she was a princess trapped in the body of
a beast.

The mirror rippled. The herbs smoked in their jars, with anticipation.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I asked. “Tell me. Will she marry? Will she be loved? Will she have many heirs?”

A terrible pain seared through my chest as I asked the questions.

What I saw in the glass made me cry in frustration, in grief.

T
hat night, I dreamed of the crane and the falcon.
I was the falcon, flying above everything, weightless. Faster than any other creature as I moved through the sky, from the castle to that enchanted forest, the old tower, and back again. It was such a feeling of freedom, the way the air rushed toward me and then split in my wake. Below me, the ground was emerald green. I came upon a stake with a crane tied to it, and as I darted down from sky to
earth, a hunger moving through me the way it had when his child had been growing inside me, the crane was her, Snow White, tied to the stake with her violet eyes sewn shut.

Gilles walked up to her as she writhed there, her black hair tumbling down to her shoulders, her skin as pale as cream. I was ravenous. I would need two mouths to eat enough to fill me.

Before I could move, he reached in
and pulled out her heart. Bright red, like her lips, like the flowers that hung over my son’s grave, like the blossom Mathena had plucked from the stag’s remains. He held it in his hands and it burst into flames.

And then everything shifted, and I was in the ballroom, perched on the back of a chair, and Snow White was in her father’s arms, naked and lush, red blood flowing from her open breast
down her pale skin. There was a sickness in me as I watched, and I hated her for lying that way in her father’s arms,
hated his hands on her skin, though she was dead and I knew I had killed her and all around them the courtiers wept.

“My love,” he said, looking up at me, as my wings spanned out on either side. “Open your mouth.” He let her fall from his arms and walked toward me, lifting her
flaming heart over my face.

I woke, gagging, unable to breathe.

A silver light moved through the room. My breath came in rasps. I clutched my chest. The window was open, and I could smell the faint perfume of flowers. Slowly, the room came into relief. The same bedposts and curtains, the same hulking wardrobe filled with colorful silk dresses.

I sat up. In the clear quiet of night, everything
seemed to make sense in a way it didn’t in the daylight. I thought of Snow White standing in the bath, staring brazenly at me with her head high, and my heart twisted in my chest. I hated her. In that moment I hated her so purely and fully that I felt it through my whole body, as powerfully as the desire I’d felt once that had brought the prince to the forest, when I was locked in the tower. It
was a hatred made of light, of diamonds, shaped like an arrow moving from my heart to hers.

Her heart in flames. I could almost taste it.

And then a sadness and pain broke open inside me, like a physical wound, as if it were my heart that had been pulled from my chest. Everyone loved her. All the court, all the lords and ladies and knights, the cooks and maidservants, the people in the villages
and the countryside and even the East—all of them loved the daughter of the dead queen, with her glowing youth and her book learning and the pure love of God that moved through her. I, too, had loved her ferociously, loved watching her laugh in the garden as I showed her the magic hidden in plants, loved
watching her ride next to me as we raced through the kingdom. Even now, thinking of those
days, her scrunched-up little face, I wanted to cry out with grief and loss.

But everything was different now. I’d felt her rage like a physical thing. I wanted to scream into that quiet night, that castle filled with black hearts. I, too, had been born with gifts beyond measure. I should have been loved, the way she was. I should have been happy and surrounded by heirs, the way she would one
day. This was not what my life was supposed to be.

I grabbed my head in my hands, trying to make the thoughts, the pain and rage, go away, but it was flowing through me like an angry river, and I felt suddenly like I wanted to die, I wanted to fall wounded onto the ground, let my body turn to plant, to roses.

I’d killed the stag, I’d killed Teresa. The only child I’d birthed had been twisted
and wrong, but I loved him, my twisted, dark heart, the blood-red flowers that grew from his grave.

I
was
a witch. The girl in the mirror, wild and feral, her hair full of leaves. I was never the regal queen, even when I played the part well. I’d never belonged in the palace, only to the forest and wind.

Something in me snapped. I pulled a dressing gown around me, grabbed a torch, and stalked
out of my room and through the greeting room, into the hallway. A guard was sleeping outside and I stole past him, tears falling down my face.

I slipped down the hallways and made my way to the west side of the castle, past sleeping guards and servants. I stormed down the hallway, pushed out into the night air. Overhead, the moonlight bathed my skin. I was weeping, my bare feet pressing into
grass and earth.

I could see the silhouettes of soldiers stationed at the castle walls and I started running then, without even knowing where my feet were taking me, stumbling over roots. Then I was at the mews, at his door, the one man who cared for me, my one solace.

I walked into the mews, past the birds tied to their perches, and went back to the room where he slept.

“Gilles,” I said.

He was awake, hunched over his desk, reading by candlelight. The flame flickered, casting shadows against the wall.

He turned to me as I entered the room. Even in the dim light, I could see his face fall open as he saw me.

“Rapunzel,” he said.

I stumbled to him, dropped to my knees.

“My love, what is it?” he asked. His face was full of worry.

“I need you to do something for me,” I said. “I
want her heart.”

“What?”

“Her heart.”

“Whose . . . ?”

“Snow White’s.”

The words hung in the air like a storm about to be unleashed. The thought, niggling in the back of my mind, had burst forth like an arrow to a stag’s throat. And once it had a shape and a presence, it became larger and larger, and it was everything I’d ever wanted, all my pain and grief, all the things I should have had
in my life and didn’t.

If she wouldn’t love me, if the people would love her and not me, if the king would lavish her with attention and love while I wilted away in my chambers, growing older and older and less and less beautiful with each passing year, if she would live instead of
my son,
then I would have her heart.

He looked at me in horror. “Rapunzel, you are asking me to kill the king’s
heir?”

“Please, Gilles,” I said. “Do this for me.”

I could see his horror and love, his fear and confusion, playing out over his face.

“No one loves me but you,” I said. “I have nothing but you. Please help me.”

I could feel the love coming off of him. I took it inside me as if it were a piece of warm bread he was offering. I focused in, made it into a point of light, used every bit of power
I had to sway him, if his love for me was not enough. I leaned in and kissed him, letting it flow back from me to him.

He looked back at me in horror. “How can you ask such a thing?” he said.

I could feel him weakening under me. I slipped my arms around him and I was on top of him, straddling him on the chair, my feet bare and covered in grass and mud. “Bring me the heart of Snow White,” I whispered.
I took his face in my hands, brought his lips to mine. “Will you do this for your queen?”

His eyes glittered in the dim light. He didn’t have a choice.

His voice cracked as he answered.

“Yes.”

W
hen I woke up the next morning, the sun was falling through the open windows, streaming in like water.
I sat up, and all the events from the night before came rushing back to me. My feet were scraped up, my nightgown wet and stained. A maidservant, who’d been hovering near the doorway waiting for me to wake, entered the room, casting her eyes down when she saw the state I was in.

As soon as I was dressed, I went to Mass and to eat in the great hall, looking for Snow White all the while, wondering
if I’d really asked Gilles to bring me her heart and if he was going to do as he’d promised. Snow White was not in her usual place next to the king. A shiver moved through me. Quietly, I ate my bread and meat, forcing myself to swallow.