CHAPTER ONE
The storybooks would make one think that all girls want the same thing: the fairy tale. A charming prince to love them, to provide for them. Rescue them. That might be how the story starts after the happy ending. But the fairy tales never tell little girls what goes on in the middle of the stories.
In the beginning, the storybooks promise magic. A glass slipper. A spinning wheel. A single dance that changes your fate. They whisper of once upon a times and happily ever afters as if love is a crown and marriage the throne. The prince arrives at just the right moment, says all the right things, and somehow—without even knowing her name—he loves her.
But in the middle?
In the middle, the heroine gets pricked by a thorn. Fed a poisoned apple. Put to sleep while the prince goes off on his… let's call them adventures. Then the story skips to the end. The spell is broken. True love's kiss is given. Happily ever after commences. And the page goes blank.
In the middle, princes stray. At the center of it all, men lie. They spend late nights out at taverns or at war. When they're at home, they leave their dirty stockings on the bedroom floorbefore they climb in, rut on their tired wives, and then turn over on their backs to snore without checking to see if she achieved her pleasure. Most times she did not.
Damsels, princesses, and little girls were sold raw deals by fairy tales. If they learned the truth, it would not be to swoon over the prince but instead to make a play for his castle.
In a castle, the walls don’t wander. The hearth never lies. The roof shelters. The layers of brick endure. The structure will stand firm in the face of battle, never asking its inhabitants to shrink. In the storybooks, the castle is never the villain. It is always the safe haven for the fairy princess. It offers its spine of stone and marrow of secrets. A castle will keep a girl warm when the king grows cold.
Queen Raveena of Everfrost stood in the highest turret of Thornhall Castle. The wind coiled around the turret like a serpent, hissing through frost-rimed stones, whispering rumors through the arrow slits. Raveena stood against the biting cold, her cloak a shroud of midnight blue that snapped at her ankles. Below her, the courtyards burned in golden torchlight, alive with murmurs of wedding proposals, of soldiers returning from war, of joy, of surrender.
Her fingers curled around the ledge’s worn stone, the ice beneath her touch slick and biting. She welcomed the sting. Far below, on the polished flagstones of the western walk, her stepdaughter smiled up at a charming young prince.
Snow White stood in a pearl gown embroidered with the silver thread of innocence. A sash of deep sapphire cinched her waist, the same solemn blue as a morning sky. Her sleeves, sheer and pale as snowdrifts, shimmered with frosted lace, while a single red ribbon crowned her hair—a pop of blood in a kingdom of white. She looked every inch the naïve maiden from a storybook illustration, all softness and virtue, as though shehadn’t spent the last three years quietly sharpening her smile into a blade.
She laughed softly, delicately, one hand at her throat, the other resting lightly on her suitor’s forearm—as though she hadn’t spent the last year after her father’s death weaving a net from pity and perfection.
Prince Charming stood beside her in all his golden glory—chiseled jaw, broad shoulders, trim waist wrapped in royal blue velvet that matched hers. His smile gleamed with practiced brilliance. His lips were the kind that made a girl wish for a curse just so she could bite them. He looked like he’d stepped out of a stained-glass window, every inch the hero of a tale that rarely told the truth.
Raveena’s gaze narrowed, fixed not on the prince but on the girl clinging to his arm like she was the prize. She was playing the role perfectly; the grieving daughter, the dutiful bride-to-be, the unsuspecting heiress.
Raveena saw through it. Snow had been born to steal. She wasn’t after the prince. She was after the one thing Raveena loved most.
Not the man.
The castle.
Raveena tilted her head, watching them from her perch like a hawk considering prey. A prince and a princess. A storybook illustration. The stuff girls were told to long for, to train for.
Be lovely. Be docile. Be desired. Be chosen.
Chosen.
What a brittle, breakable thing.
Snow turned her face away, laughing into her shoulder just like Raveena had done with Snow's father years ago. She'd thought she'd caught the girl spying during her seduction.
With Snow laughing, that was when Prince Charming looked up. His gaze swept the turret as if summoned, pausing until itlanded squarely on Raveena’s shadowed perch. He was too far to make out the color of his eyes, but Raveena felt the weight of them all the same—bright, amused, and burning with that awful male confidence that made women believe their every word in a grim fairy tale.
He tilted his chin, subtle, practiced. A man who had offered that same look to chambermaids and noblewomen alike. A smile curled at the corner of his mouth, slow and secret. It said:I remember how you tasted. I remember how you begged.
Raveena hadn’t begged.
Well—she had. Because nothing swelled a man's pride more than a husky plea. But she hadn’t meant it.
Men like Charming needed the illusion first. A little breathy desperation. A few well-placed sighs. They needed to feel in control, to believe they’d conquered something that had already laid itself bare.
It was the same game it always was. She’d played it before—played it well enough to win herself a crown, a castle, a kingdom. Charming thought he was the most powerful player on the current game board. The fool boy was playing checkers where every move was a straight line and every piece played the same role until it reached the other side.
This was chess—a game of queens. Queen Raveena was the powerful piece on the board. Moving diagonally, vertically, horizontally—any direction, so long as it served the game.
The king, for all his glory, was slow. Limited. One square at a time. If he fell, the game was over.
