She looked from the mirror to the bed where he'd lain with her just last night. He had moaned her name like it meant something. Gripped her hips like she was the only woman he'd ever touched. She’d made the boy howl his pleasure—and gods, he’d howled.
A simpering miss like Snow White couldn’t do that. Couldn’t even imagine that her cuny could perform such acrobatics on a male's cock. Snow had all the appeal of a pressed flower—white and soft and quietly wilting. Untouched, untried, untested. The kind of girl a man tucked on a shelf and praised for her virtue while sneaking off to find a woman who knew what to do with her mouth. A woman who knew how to make a man forget his own name.
Raveena had made him forget. Unfortunately, Charming remembered his duty the next morning. The boy had stumbled back into his obligations, murmuring some apology that sounded too much like his mother’s voice to be his own thoughts. Back to the little heir in her dove-gray gowns and breathy politeness.
Raveena could stomach a great deal. But not being discarded. Charming may have scrambled out of bed last night, but that glance this morning told her that he wanted more. She knew how to keep him wanting. Knew how to manipulate his pride, his hunger, his need to prove himself a man beyond his mother’s leash.
Charming didn’t want Snow. He wanted approval. A throne. A crown. He just didn’t know yet that the fastest path to all of that was still through her.
He was a boy playing at politics. She was a queen who had survived them. If he wouldn’t choose her outright, she would simply go over his big head instead of putting his little head in her mouth. That, after all, was the art of ruling men—reminding them they had power only so long as it served their queen.
Raveena turned from the mirror and walked through the halls of the palace with her head high and her cloak trailing like storm clouds behind her. Her guards opened the double doors to the parliamentary chamber. The hush that followed was immediate.
The Parliament of Snow convened but once a year. A gathering of crowns to discuss borders, alliances, and wars, both current and future. Treaties would be signed, broken, and rewritten before the ink dried. Promises would be made in one breath and gutted in the next. Behind the formalities, behind the icy pleasantries and diplomatic airs, another kind of hunt would begin: the marriage mart.
Princes, young and old, would be paraded like prize stags. Their mothers showed them off, counting muscle and scars like coin. Some were eager, some reluctant. All of them dangerous in one way or another.
And among them: Charming.
With his golden army, his honeyed tongue, and that smile he gave like a favor. If he married Snow—godmothers helpthem all. Snow, who held birthright to this castle. Snow, whose bloodline would give her claim and whose new husband and his regimented soldiers would give her the means to seize it. Snow who was weak and would let this castle fall easily into the hands of a cunning queen mother with obvious ambitions.
Dozens of women turned to look at Raveena as she strode to her place at the table. Not one woman smiled. They were exquisite, every one of them. Eyes lined in charcoal and cunning. Some wore crowns of white gold. Others simple circlets. Some wore no coronet at all yet carried more power than empires.
There were no men in the room. Here, the queens ruled. Here, the knives were at the ends of perfectly manicured fingertips.
Raveena's gaze swept across the chamber, calculating and cold. She wasn’t looking for smiles. No one here wore them sincerely. She was searching for the most symmetrical face in the room—the one that had haunted paintings and parades, lullabies and lies.
She turned to a passing attendant, a mousy thing in livery too stiff for her narrow shoulders. “Where’s Snow White?”
The girl startled at the question, nearly dropping the tray of crystal goblets she carried. “I—I believe she was last seen in the stables, Your Majesty. Tending to the animals.”
“Of course she is,” Raveena said dryly. Of all the places to be when power was gathering like a storm—Snow had chosen the hay.
“Queen Raveena, how lovely of you to finally join us. We were beginning to worry. At your age, one never knows when a simple cold might take a turn for the... inconvenient.”
Lady Charming sat beneath a tapestry of her house’s crest, gold thread glinting in the firelight. The sigil—a falcon mid-swoop, talons poised—loomed behind her like a quiet threat. Her gown was plum silk edged with ermine, her jewels ancestraland ostentatious. She wore no crown, but her bearing made one unnecessary.
“And you, Lady Charming, are as stately as ever. One might forget you’ve stepped back from courtly affairs.”
“Stepped back?” Lady Charming sipped her mulled wine. “No, no. A wise woman simply learns to rule from the shade.”
“A wise woman also knows when to step into the light. Especially when the stakes rise higher than her… reach.” Raveena finally spared the woman a head-on glance, looking down her nose at the smaller, plumper woman with a few wrinkles around her eyes that magic could no longer hide.
“Yes, well. The strength of a kingdom is rarely decided in a throne room. More often, it begins in a cradle.”
Raveena’s smile didn’t falter. “Cradles break. Thrones endure.”
“Not without an heir. Not without a legacy. Forgive me—your reign has been most... singular.”
“My stepdaughter still has some rearing needed before she finds a castle of her own. Meanwhile, when I wed again, the daughter I bear will inherit this castle."
“You plan to take another prince? At your advanced age?”
“One of the reasons I sought you out, as you had your magnificent son when you were ten years my senior. A fine prince your son is. But I imagine he still needs a firm hand to guide him. Not a young thing like my stepdaughter.”
“Young things are soft. Malleable. I think my son would do well with something fresh.”
“Then he should marry the queen who already holds the scepter.”
