Harry, sliding into bed behind her one evening, pressed his mouth to the back of her neck. “You up for it?” he asked. “Or do you want to just sleep?”
“Sleep.” The word came easier than expected as she pressed her face into the pillow. “Tomorrow, maybe.”
He chuckled softly. “You got it.”
Even Gage, after that explosive confrontation, was different. He attempted to apologize a few times, but couldn't find thewords. He was still gruff, but a little more likely now to pause, to search her face, to pull back if she stiffened.
She began to dictate, in quiet ways, when she was touched and by whom. “If you want me,” she told them once, sitting at the table with her sewing, “ask. Don’t just take.”
“Even me?” Silas asked lazily from his spot by the fire.
“Especially you,” she said. “You’re the sneakiest.” They laughed, but no one argued.
The more she said no, the more confident she became in saying yes. She gave only what she wanted of herself and nothing more. The men still swooned over her, but now it was less about the wild side of lust and more about something deeper: affection, protectiveness, and shared pride.
She thought often of her father. Of his booming laugh, his warm hand around hers, the way he’d lifted her up to see the world from his height. She thought of how easily he’d been led by beauty—Liora’s most of all. She thought of her mother. Of the comb, the corset. Of the way Liora had treated her own beauty like a weapon and Snow White’s like a rival.
Now, standing at the stream with wet shirts heavy in her hands and her hair whipped by the breeze, she understood something terrible and important: Liora had been wrong. Beauty wasn’t pain—it was power. Not because mirrors said so. Not because men did. But because when she stood in that cramped little room with three men circling her and saw herself reflected—strong, desired, unafraid—she had felt something click into place inside her, as if she’d suddenly found the hilt of a sword she’d been carrying all along.
Elsewhere,inacastlethat had grown a little colder in the past year, a similar face stared into a mirror.
Queen Liora noticed the gray hair first in the reflection of a silver spoon. She was alone in her chamber—Captain Hunter had left early that morning to discuss patrol routes with the newer men. Liora picked at her breakfast. The eggs had gone cold; the fruit tasted like ash. Her appetite, always fickle, had dwindled further in recent months. She lifted the spoon to her mouth and paused. There, near her temple, glinting in the polished curve of the metal: a pale thread among the black. Her heart stuttered. She was just a few years beyond her fortieth birthday. Gray already? She set the spoon down very carefully. Sudden realization overwhelmed her—she hadn’t performed the ritual with her enchanted mirror in over a year.
She stood abruptly, the chair scraping back, and crossed the room with quick, controlled strides to the great mirror on the wall. “Mirror, soul of silver and glass,” she demanded, after she’d undressed and oiled, “who in this land shall I never surpass?” She watched her reflection like a hawk as the surface rippled. The glass shivered. The room dissolved. For a heartbeat, she stared into a void that ate even her own image. Then a picture formed. Not hers. She couldn’t make sense of what she saw.
A bed. Not her bed. The sheets were rougher, the room darker, lit by a single lantern. A woman lay sprawled across the mattress, naked in the lazy form of someone utterly at ease in her skin. She was surrounded by six, tall, muscular, handsome men. One man knelt between her thighs, shoulders square, head bent in obvious devotion to some task, face below her waist. Another leaned over her, mouth taking hers in a deep, unhurried kiss. A third stood beside the bed, stroking himself slowly as his eyes drank her in. A fourth trailed reverent hands along the lines of her body, mapping each curve like sacred ground. The young woman tilted her head back and laughed at somethingone of them said, the sound silent but visible. She looked utterly in command of the scene, directing her own happiness and pleasure.
Liora’s stomach clenched. She took a step closer. As one of the men shifted, his head moved, and the woman’s face came fully into view. For a second, Liora’s brain refused to accept what her eyes told her. Then the world narrowed to a single, horrifying truth: Snow… White. Not dead. Not drowned. Not devoured by wolves. Alive. Alive and beautiful and strong and adored. Her daughter. Her rival.
“Hunter!” Liora breathed, fury punching through her shock. “Liar!”
The image in the mirror wavered, then faded, leaving only her own face staring back. She saw the gray at her temples then. Saw the faint lines at the corners of her eyes. Saw the way her mouth had hardened and her cheeks had begun to hollow. She looked older. She looked… afraid.
She bared her teeth at her reflection. “I am the fairest!” she hissed. “I always will be!” The mirror did not contradict her. It never had. But now she had seen proof that it could show more than her. She whirled away from the glass, the hem of her gown snapping.
“Hunter!” she called, voice knifing through the thick silence of the corridor beyond. “Hunter!” No answer.
She stormed from her chamber, her bare feet slapping against the cold stone. The servants she passed flattened themselves against the walls, eyes downcast, sensing a storm and wanting no part of it. She flung open the door to the guardroom. Empty.
“Where is he?” she demanded of the youngest soldier there.
“Who, Majesty?” he stammered.
“Hunter,” she snapped. “The captain. My… dog.”
The boy swallowed. “He left a few minutes ago, my queen. On patrol and—”
She cut in. “Bastards! Bring me my captain! Now!”
As courtiers and guards scrambled, Liora paced like a caged thing. Fury and fear gnawed at her in equal measure. She had believed Hunter’s lie because it had suited her as well. Because the idea of Snow White gone—removed from the board entirely—had let her sleep at night. She had given him what she promised, well, mostly anyway. She had not yet made him her king, but had occasionally rewarded him by allowing him into her bed.
Now, with one glance in the mirror, that fragile illusion was shattered. Her daughter was alive. Her daughter was grown. Her daughter had found a way to turn the curse of their shared beauty into something Liora had never truly had: intimacy that wasn’t bought, power that wasn’t extracted by coercion.
Liora’s hands curled into fists. “If anyone is going to kill you,” she whispered, thinking of the girl in the mirror, “it will be me.” She vowed, there in her chamber with the mirror watching, that she would find Snow White herself this time. No more delegations. No more trusting weak men with strong tasks. If the mirror showed her daughter once, then it could be made to show her again. She would hunt her through the glass.
Backinthecottage,Snow White reached for the token at her neck while stirring the stew and felt… nothing. Her fingers met only the fabric of her dress. Her heart lurched. She dropped the wooden spoon back into the pot with a clatter,ignoring Harry’s indignant “Hey!” from across the room. Her hands flew to the neckline of her dress, patting frantically. The cord was gone.
“Snow?” Silas asked, glancing up from the table where he was sorting tools. “You okay?”
