She adjusted the basket over her arm, and, as if by accident, let the cover fall away from it.
Oh, lovely. So red. Like slick, fresh blood spilled in the shape of an apple. The princess could hear nothing the witch was saying, could only reach out and take the fruit as it was offered to her. Her own awareness spoke to her in a serpent’s hiss.
Taste, and see.
The juice burst into her mouth as Snow White sank her teeth into the apple. The flesh melted across her tongue as she chewed and swallowed. She tried to take another bite, but it stuck in her throat. She couldn’t breathe, but this time there were no corset laces to command.
The taste and the smell of apples dissolved to the rusty odor of blood.
Snow White fell to the ground and into the soft black embrace of unconsciousness at the same moment. Dimly, at the edge of her awareness, she heard the witch laughing, but her own thoughts were also amused. I knew, silly witch. I knew who you were, what you came for. Did you?
Death and sleep were both within her, but it was the sleep she fought. The thing she least wanted in the world was silence extended forever. She could not evade the promise of it, the wholeness of the spell, any more than she had been able to disenchant the corset or cleanse the poison from the comb.
But I do not want to sleep forever, and I do not want to die.
The game was almost over, she realized. What move could she make? Was it checkmate already? The understanding came to her slowly, as if the apple had altered the pace of her thoughts as much as her body.
I am all the way on the other side.
It was not checkmate, but just as her father had told her when she was a tiny girl: a pawn was only a princess, waiting. It was time for her to become a queen.
Chapter Six
The prince found Snow White by accident, if there were accidents in the world. The sight of her, so cold, so still, so lovely, taken in her prime—it stirred him, brought him off his horse and down to his knees beside her crystal coffin.
The longer he stared at her, the more the reflections of the woman’s face in the glass between them seemed to shift and taunt. So beautiful, and how much more beautiful would she be if she were to laugh? Smile? Speak to him?
As he stared, her expression seemed ever more languid, her smiling softer, her lips more lush. The sunset gave the black tresses spread across her white pillows an eerie luster, and her lips were red as rubies. No. The prince revised his opinion at once. Red as garnets, darker than rubies – red as spilled wine, red as fresh blood.
Slowly, he opened the lid of the coffin. The prince thought he could taste his own heart beating, the thud of it building to a powerful rush. The scent of the woman’s skin was like the winter sky before a storm, but her breath, as he leaned closer, smelled too sweetly of apples.
Her breath?
Was she alive, this sleeping woman? He wondered what it was that had happened to her, what enchantment, what kind of curse. There was no change in her stillness even as he leaned in, not a rustle as she breathed nor the sound of her heart beating.
His hands moved without conscious intention, a hesitant stalking that crossed the empty space between them to the softness of her cheek. Like petals. Like satin. A silent whisper came from her motionless lips and moved through his mind.
“Here I am, and you have found me. You are the one who has found me. Does that not make me yours? Here I am. Come closer. Closer to me…”
Closer. The coffin lid fell open completely as he let go of the lid and was caught by golden hinges before it could shatter against the ground. The whisper intensified, an intangible presence, a voice in the back of his head, even though there was no one who could make such a sound.
No one, but the enchanted woman…
On his knees by the coffin, the prince strained closer still, stroking her cheek again with the back of his hand. Ah, those closed eyes. If they could open, would they be green as grass or blue as the sky? And the taste of her mouth—
What would it be, when her breath had the scent of apples?
Apples.
Only half aware he was doing so, the prince drew himself forward until he was a breath away from her face. This close, the sweet scent carried something faintly metallic, but he did not care about that. The prince brushed his mouth against the softness of her lips, then pressed his own against their delicate curve.
There was only a moment for him to glory in the sensation. Too quickly, it turned sharp and lost all promise of tenderness. The silky mouth opened to close sharp teeth on his lip, chewed at the tender flesh and sucked the fresh, stinging wounds.
Something in the flavor of her kiss kept him there, kept him from fleeing, jerking away. Something in the way he had stared at her for so long, hypnotizing himself with her beauty, breathing the scent of a fruit no man should ever taste.
The poison was sweet, perhaps, but deadly, and the eyes that opened to stare up at him were black as night.
Snow White woke to the waning pressure of something soft against her lips. There was the taste of blood, but it had turned sweet as sugar. Moisture was on her mouth, faintly squirming. Then it retreated, and she found herself the one in motion, following it.
Was it instinct that drove her to drink from the beckoning red flow? Whatever it was, it was the same as the thing that enticed the fledgling to throw itself from the nest. No longer quite a girl, she reached up even as she was opening her eyes, coughed and felt the piece of apple lodged in her throat fly out of her mouth.
Broad, the shoulders under her hands. Hot, the body between them, which Snow White had pressed herself against. The stranger smelled of musky maleness and of horse, and the sounds of him… His breathing, his heartbeat, the blood rushing in his veins, were a whirlpool that drew her in.
Thudding pulses grew in her awareness, pounding before her eyes, a deadly vibration that chattered through the atmosphere. Her body moved under the command of an urge she did not yet understand, and Snow White opened her mouth wide.
An ache grew in her teeth as they lengthened, elongating into needle-sharp canines that threw back the rising moonlight.
Soft.
Flesh.
Drumbeat.
Together they were the essence of the sparkling truth as it filled her.
Magic. It was burning, scalding, the white-hot chill of ice over her skin, then fire, as she sank her teeth into the man’s throat. She experienced no guilt over him, this man who had stolen her first kiss, taken it from her while she was unaware. Only the flavor mattered, as she sucked the blood from his veins, drinking deep as if he were a cup of rich, dark wine.
The prince struggled at first, but only a little. Snow White’s cold, pale arms had grown strong enough to hold him.
Little darkling, her dwarves had called her, and for how long? It seemed a blessing now, which had come true. But in the taste of the man she had drunk was a mortal feeling that reminded her of her own heartbeat, the pulse it seemed she had lost. As she stole the stranger’s, he slumped, and began to grow stiff in her arms.
His warmth did not last. The theft of her own quickness, the swift-beating heart that had been her personal signal of life…that did.
A drop of blood stood out on her lip, and she licked it away. Snow White pushed the man’s body aside, and took only his red velvet cloak. Soft. Pretty. The color of his life. As she stood, slipping out of her crystal coffin, the horse the prince had ridden peeled back its lips from its teeth, screaming at her, then turned and fled into the wood.
She let it go. She was too busy comparing her skin to the white of the snow falling from the sky in translucent flakes. Her name was no longer a lie, and as much as the loss of her heartbeat pained her, that pleased.
Finally, she turned to the cottage behind her. From the door, the dwarves had been watching her.
The seven brothers exchanged one glance, came to share one expression. Unafraid, only wondering, the eldest stepped forward as she looked between them and the forest. “Wha
t now, little darkling?”
Diffidently, she peered back at him. “There is a kingdom nearby. It needs a new queen, I think. Come visit the castle when you like. You will always be welcome.”
As one, laughing, they followed her without pause, falling into line as she strode toward the trees. “As if we would miss out on the death of that witch.”
“As if we would!”
Alone in the clearing behind them, before the cottage door, the prince lay in Snow White’s glass coffin, his open eyes already glassy with death. She stared into them for moment, before she left the place behind forever. His pupils reflected the crows as they descended, wheeling toward the shining promise of a stare that no longer saw their approach.
Chapter Seven
The forest breathed around Snow White. She could hear the tiny feet of squirrels scratch-stomp-skittering up the sides of trees, the rustling of the leaves from the subtle motions of insects and the quick moving stillness of predators at work. The hush and flutter of bird-wings lifting from the canopy was become a second wind.
The air was a soft flutter of perceptions that hoarded lights, noises, and sensations. Behind her, the dwarves came in silence, not speaking, following her path without question. A shining trail was laid in the air before Snow White, and she passed along it quickly, drawn by the tug of another new and irresistible feeling.
As the princess walked, her feet moved faster, faster, until the wind was cutting her cheeks, the cold numbing her face. The taste of her own blood came sharply from a bitten lip and made her laugh.
She did not taste like the prince she had drunk, but the fruit that had changed her.
Echoes of her laughter carried across the hills and through the forest.
The closer she came to what had once been her home, the more familiar the passing landmarks seemed. At the edge of the forest would be the village, and beyond the village the road that led to the castle. And in the castle…
Now, Snow White understood what it was that had led her here. Had she not always wanted the witch for her very own? Her power…power that she no longer had, would never have.
But her witch had gifted her with strangeness in the guise of death.
Truth stirred in her, that new, primal hunger an origin point. She was not following this road to fulfill her half of the queen’s vendetta, though perhaps that would be the ultimate end of her arrival. Something older than vengeance was moving within her now, moving her now.
It came to Snow White as a word. Prey. Tendrils of bloodthirsty power flowed out across the landscape, seething, seeking, tasting. Like mist, it moved, like mist came back to her, breathing across her tongue as she opened her mouth.
The night was still not bright enough for the moon to reveal many secrets, but she stalked up the road of savage instincts and found a gliding rhythm for her steps, half-animal, half madness in the making.
As she moved, she looked about her. Here were the landmarks of childhood – there, just there, was the clearing where innocence had been laid to rest. The shadow of a knife, the way her eyes reflected in the steel light of the huntsman’s dagger…she remembered it all, and smiled as she passed.
Here was the house of a woman who had fed her honeyed treats; there, the field where once she had seen a farmer struck by lightning. As she moved up toward the castle, Snow White thought she was now what that farmer had been: infused with electricity, awake but not fully aware of it—dazed by the stunning silence of the strike, which had come without accompanying thunder.
The castle was a hulking citadel of soft stone that seemed more crumbled than Snow White’s memory allowed for. Had it been longer than she thought it had? Perhaps while she lay bewitched in that crystal coffin, years had passed and the world had changed.
But the stairs under her feet said this was not so. The way up into the main hall seemed to magnify at her approach, to sharpen its edges, and she saw that it was the witch who had done this. Responsibility belonged with the magic of a queen who had entangled herself in fear. In the overuse of her power; in the choice of reflection as reality, instead of the truth of the world beyond her black tower door.
What a mirror showed was always a distortion of the truth. Crawling corrupt from its source, the witch’s magic had stained her surroundings with her doubt, her failures. With her vanity, she had crumbled the castle walls, brought decay to roost in the silent spaces between the stones.
“Fairest of all… Who is the fairest? What is the fairest? Who judges? By what standard? For what prize?” From the days before the silence took her, the days before her father died, Snow White remembered the lessons of her tutor. “It was not just Eve; an apple undid Helen, too. And beauty…didn’t you learn? Don’t you remember?”
This queen, who had thought to pluck the bud while it was still in its infancy, who had tried to take Snow White’s beauty, shear the princess’s petals and adorn herself with them as with shining gauze… What had she gained by it?
“The fairest is no one, mother. Or everyone. Why should the mirror matter? The fairest…” She laughed quietly. That does not matter at all.
The echo of her amusement became another portion of the witch’s entanglement. The rebound of it was not sound, but silence. Liquid, grasping, the magic wandered over the princess and left her untouched.
Having played the game to its last move, Snow White drew out these final moments before her victory to their fullest. From the gate to the scullery, she checked every room and tower but the one that called to her. As a mist, a shadow, an emptiness, her presence passed among servants and courtiers undetected.
At the base of the western tower, the witch’s tower, Snow White paused, and stood with her hand pressed against the dark-painted door.
Was the wood shivering against her hand, or was it just her own skin crawling at the touch? She opened the door, and went up the stair, and there she found her witch…and her witch’s mirror.
The tower room was just as she remembered it, the round walls covered over by velvet hangings, the silver cauldron with its white-stained sides still positioned over a smoking fire. Simultaneously, she took in the shining edge of the dagger in her witch’s hand, the sharpness of the expression on her face.
Feral thirst curled the queen’s lip, but the irony was sublime. Snow White had a more threatening grimace, needed only to lift her lips to make the witch drop her knife. In this room, the princess smelled not only the stink of magic, but the spicy sharpness of whatever spell it was that had caused this change in her.
The princess’s grimace became a smile instead. “Hello, mother.” The words were neither sarcastic nor mocking.
With one hand, Snow White reached out and took the crown from her witch’s head. Cold and gleaming, the gold rang like a bell when she dropped it to the bare stone floor. But the woman’s eyes were almost blank now, fixed not on Snow White but on the mirror, its shifting, empty surface and whatever her magic showed her there.
“Oh, mother…” It was a sigh. An acknowledgment. A breath of hatred and a breath of love, a sound of victory mingled with the contempt only the defeated know. Snow White stepped forward twice and took the witch’s hand in her hand. She touched her face as a lover might, stroking the lines of her cheekbones, her jaw, caressing the fear-parted petals of her lips.
She had aged, but she was still the most beautiful woman Snow White had ever seen. Still witch-lovely, even if the wakefulness in her face, the shining restlessness of her hair, had been diminished by so many years of doubt. “Mother, I win, and I came for my prize and your punishment.”
The witch finally spoke then, defiant. “To see you still alive is punishment. Finish it, girl. Or should I?” She bent and picked up the dagger again. The knife edge was sharpened by the firelight, dulled by the smoke. It slashed once, twice. Snow White bled from her chest and throat, but the blood flowed white from the wounds, not red. The scent of apples stained the air.
Snow White brought ivory-stained fingers to her lips and suck
ed them clean, then contemplated as one hand snaked out on its own and took the witch by the throat. A pulse beat strongly in the silence, not her own. Strongly, beneath the thin skin of her witch’s neck.
Tenderly, but still with irresistible strength, Snow White took hold of the writhing length of the witch’s red hair. Furious now, the tempting thrum of that beat assailed her. The rhythm alone was not enough, but as she leaned forward, sank her teeth in deeply, the taste of blood filled out drumbeats to a symphony. The flavor became a melody, a unique sensation of song.
It slowed as Snow White drank, more quickly than the rich throbbing of the man whose heart she had taken first. When she lifted her mouth, she cradled the witch against her stained chest as if she were a child. “Do you want to be mine forever? You are already mine, you know.”
The woman had not much strength left, but she shook her head, her eyes wide with terror and denial. Snow White laughed, a sound like high, steel bells. “Then it will be an excellent punishment, won’t it, Mother?”
Her own ichor, the sweet, fruit-scented flow of it, was still sticky and oozing at her breast where the witch had slashed her. She crooned as she forced them past the queen’s lips—two fingers, wet with her own white magic, her own white blood.
Out Now From Belinda Burke
Origin
The Beast and His Bride
Excerpt
Chapter One
The sunset flowed over the edge of the horizon, a wine-red spill of fading light that Nyctimus watched in silence over his father’s shoulder. Music played on in the background, then grew inaudible beneath the discord and debauchery of this, his twenty-seventh brother’s wedding feast.
Nyctimus sat with a jaundiced eye, passing his gaze now and again over the assembly, then turned away as his newlywed brother plied his new bride with drink. Phineas did not make innuendo, did not ask their other brothers to light torches and lead the way to his marriage bed.
White Magic: A Tale Grimmly Told Page 4