“The truth?” sneered Charming. “When has a dwarf ever had truck with the truth?” He looked towards Rui and something he saw in the huntsman’s face made him school his own expression into one of rueful dismay. He ran his hands through his hair. “Forgive me. I don’t know what came over me. To speak to you thus… I am not usually so churlish.” He offered her a charming smile, but no one had ever looked less charming to Snow White’s eyes. He gave a deprecating shrug. “You can understand why? To be attacked thus, and by a servant, no less.”
“I understand,” said Snow White stiffly.
Charming took her hand, and she forced herself not to shudder at his touch. He pressed a kiss against her fingers. “Say you forgive me,” he whispered.
“Of course, my lord. And you will allow me to punish Gault as I see fit?”
His mouth thinned. “Of course, my dear. I trust that you will deal with him as he deserves.”
“You have my word on it.”
He gave her another tight smile and nodded at Rui who took a knife from the belt at his waist and cut the bonds about Gault’s wrists. Gault’s hands fell to his sides. Both Charming and the huntsman offered her a bow as they left the garden.
Ander ran to Gault’s side, taking him in his arms, but Gault shrugged him off wildly. “Leave me alone. Don’t touch me!”
“Gault?” said Ander, his voice breaking.
“Leave me alone,” Gault repeated in a low furious voice. Weaving from side to side, he made his way past Snow White and the other dwarves into the palace.
Ander dropped his face into his hands, his shoulders shaking.
“Ander?” Snow White said gently.
He lifted his head, his expression ravaged.
“Go to him,” she urged softly.
He set his shoulders, ducking his head in a taut nod.
Kaliko placed his warm fingers in Snow White’s cold hand. “Come inside, Snow,” he said.
“How can I marry that?”
Kaliko squeezed her hand. “You can’t. You won’t.”
“There is a contract…another three years until I can rule in my own right. If I repudiate Charming, I only set myself in Anais’s hands until then. And her hands are guided by Rui Alvarez. None of them wish me well.”
“You have us. You have me. They will not touch you!” Kaliko drew her closer and kissed her.
Hiram cleared his throat, and they broke apart. “Happy as I am to see that you two have finally realised what has been obvious to the rest of us for some time…”
Kaliko scowled, and Snow White blushed.
Kaffion cuffed Hiram about the ear. “Show some respect, little man.”
“I am the very picture of respect,” said Hiram pertly. His expression sobered. “We have much to discuss. Charming has showed his hand. He might think he has papered over the cracks, but once he realises just what he has revealed here today, who knows what action he may take? And Alvarez…that one is pure poison, for all his sweet looks.”
Snow White shivered. She let Kaliko lead her inside, her other dwarves trailing behind, their faces grim.
It was hours later, as they sat about the remains of a barely touched supper, that Ander finally reappeared. They had been quiet for some time. Even Hiram’s natural ebullience had been quelled by the events of the day. His face drawn and pale, Ander sank into a chair by the fire with a weary sigh, meeting Snow White’s anxious query with dark haunted eyes.
“He’s asleep. I slipped something into the wine…”
“Did he tell you what happened?” asked Shyla.
Ander’s lips drew into a tight thin line, his hands clenching on the arms of the chair until his knuckles turned white. He gave a terse nod.
Snow White knelt beside him, prising one hand free to clasp it between her own. “Will you share it with us? I need…we all need to know.”
Another nod. Ander swallowed hard, running his other hand across his face. “Yes. You do.” In a soft voice he began…
Ander found Gault crouching against the far wall of his room, knees drawn up and head buried in his arms. Closing the door behind him, he stood quietly for a moment. Gault lifted his head, and Ander felt pain and grief slice through him along with a burgeoning fury at those who had done this to him. For all his apparent indifference and coldness, there was a fragility to Gault that only Ander ever saw, and the look on his lover’s face now made it apparent that Gault was very close to breaking…if not broken already.
He made himself put his fears and his grief aside and crossed the room to kneel beside Gault. When he extended a hand towards him, Gault flinched.
“Don’t,” he said hoarsely.
Ander let his hand fall to his side.
“What happened?” he asked gently.
There was only silence. Ander didn’t press, although his hands ached with longing to take Gault in his arms and hold him. His heart ached with another kind of pain.
Finally, Gault spoke. “I was watching them.”
As he had been for weeks. It was Gault who first discovered the truth about Charming and Rui Alvarez. What they were to each other. They had grown careless or perhaps they were simply too arrogant to believe that anyone could catch them at their game.
Armed with that knowledge, the dwarves had argued over the best way to inform their princess. In the end it was Kaliko who had said, “She must see for herself.”
“I was on the other side of the wood,” Gault continued. “Kaliko brought Snow and they watched for a time…” Ander took note of Gault’s use of the nickname the dwarves used for their princess, and his heart ached anew. It showed an affection for Snow White that even he hadn’t realised Gault felt. Gault gave his heart to so few.
“After they left…the things those two said, Ander. What they plan to do. They were so arrogantly certain that no one could gainsay them. I just wanted them to know that someone knew what game they were playing. That they weren’t going to get away with it.” He uttered a harsh, despairing laugh. “I proved myself as arrogant as they. Still, the shock on Charming’s face when he caught sight of me… It made it almost worthwhile.”
He swallowed. “I simply stood there and stared at them. Charming’s face went from white to red and back to white again, but Alvarez…his expression never changed. You know I don’t fear much, but I was afraid then, Ander. Afraid of him. I took a step backwards, and he sprang to his feet. I’ve never seen a man move so fast. I took another step back and turned to run and I tripped over a tree root. Then Alvarez was on me. He took me by the shoulders and dragged me out into the clearing.
“Charming hit me. Knocked me senseless for a moment. When I came to, I was on the ground and he was kneeling over me. He hit me again.
“‘Isn’t this a pleasant surprise? I was only thinking of having you beneath me the other night and now here you are. Such a pretty little spy.’
“He kissed me, and that’s when I hit him. It was more luck than anything else, because my head was ringing and I could scarce see out of this eye.” Gault touched his swollen face with one fingertip. Ander wanted to kiss the bruised flesh around his eye. His swollen mouth. He clasped his hands together firmly. “He didn’t like that.” A laugh shivered through him. “He had my arms pinned above my head and he leaned forward and said, ‘When I’m finished with you, you will take my cock in your mouth and thank me for the privilege.’
“He tried…he, he touched me. Tried to make me…but he couldn’t. He didn’t like that either. Alvarez laughed.
“‘What price all your vaunted charm now?’
“‘Do you think you can do better?’
“‘With my hands tied behind my back.’”
Gault fell silent.
“He hurt you?” Ander prodded gently.
Gault gave a despairing laugh and dropped his head to his knees once more. When he spoke, his voice was muffled, but Ander could still hear the self-loathing that laced his words.
“Gods no. When he…there was nothing but gentle
ness in his touch. And pleasure. He made me want him… And I can never forgive him for that.”
Even though Gault sat beside him, Ander could feel him withdrawing until the gap between their bodies might well have been a chasm rather than a hand’s span. He stared down at his clasped hands.
And tried not to weep.
He was weeping now. With a quick look towards the others, Snow White indicated that they should leave. Only Kaliko remained, his hand resting on her shoulder. She kissed the back of Ander’s hand. He gave her a bleak smile.
“It will be all right. Gault will be all right,” she said softly. “You love him.”
“Sometimes love isn’t enough, Snow. And there are some hurts that even love can never heal.”
The Queen
Anais had noticed a cooling in the Snow Bitch’s attitude towards her betrothed. It was nothing blatant. Perhaps a tightening of the skin around her eyes or a thinning of her lips. A smile that never reached her eyes. There was wariness in Charming’s eyes too. A calculating expression on his face. They were nothing but polite in their dealings with each other, but Anais could sense a change.
When she mentioned it to Rui, he had laughed it off as pre-wedding nerves. “Nothing has changed,” he said, kissing her roughly. “We need to keep moving. Entice him to your bed. We are so close to attaining everything that we desire.” He sounded angry, and there was anger in the way he made love to her that night too. Still, at the end, she clasped him to her, his hair soft as silk beneath her hands.
“Must we do this?” she murmured. “I have no wish to lie with another.”
Rui gave a furious exclamation and rolled off her to sit on the edge of the bed. “Are we to go over this again and again?”
He was angry. Anais touched his shoulder, and he jerked upright and strode to the window, gazing out with a brooding expression on his face. Anais slid from the bed and wrapped her arms around him, pressing herself against his firm, warm body.
“She will be queen this time next week. What makes you so certain the first thing she does won’t be to banish you and me from the court? What makes you so certain that we will even have a year in which to act?”
He turned in her arms, and she stared into his face. “Charming will keep her so busy she won’t have time to think on you and me. She’ll be flat on her back.”
“She doesn’t like him. In fact, I begin to think she hates him.”
His hands dug painfully into her shoulders. “Don’t think,” he said and kissed her. “Trust me,” he said against her mouth.
“We could go away. Just you and I together,” said Anais. Rui became still in her arms, his mouth resting against her cheek. “I love you.” She had never said it out loud before.
“Go away together? And do what? Give up all this? Would you have me exchange a kingdom for a pigpen? If you love me, then you will do this for me.”
He had pushed her to the floor and made love to her again, more gently this time. It was only later, after he had left her, that Anais thought upon what he had said.
And what he hadn’t said.
He hadn’t said that he loved her.
Charming came across Anais in the rose garden where she sat upon an ornamental stone bench staring pensively at the soft green covering of new leaves with their promise of spring. Two of her women sat nearby idly chatting, their heads bent close together. All the talk was of the wedding in five days’ time. Anais’s head ached. She was weary of the tedium of the court and its fascination with the Snow Bitch and her Prince Charming. Weary of Rui’s demands. His words hammered her heart as relentlessly as his body hammered hers.
If you loved me, you would do this…
Yet love him she did. Despite her fears.
She pasted a smile on her face as Charming approached, allowing him to take her hand and bow over it. His fingers lingered on hers perhaps an instant too long. He gestured to the seat beside her.
“May I join you, Majesty?”
Majesty. In five days’ time, she would no longer have the right to that title.
Anais gave him a gracious nod in acquiescence, and he sank onto the stone seat beside her. He was very graceful, Anais noted. He had a loose-limbed litheness to him that reminded her of Rui.
But his eyes were black, not blue, and she could read nothing from them.
“So, Your Highness. The contracts are signed and all is in readiness for your wedding day?”
“Indeed,” he murmured. “But please, call me Charming.”
“Then you must call me Anais. After all, we will be relatives of a sort in a few days.” Anais smiled brightly.
“Hmm,” he said absently, leaning back and gazing up at the sky.
“You seem distracted, Charming. Thinking of your wedding night, perhaps?” This last was said a touch more sharply than Anais had intended.
He laughed. “Perhaps. Although not in the way you might imagine, Anais.”
She lifted an eyebrow in polite enquiry. Charming turned his head to look at her, taking her hand in his and absently stroking it. She suppressed a shiver. He leaned a little closer to her, and she forced herself not to move away. “In truth I don’t anticipate much pleasure from my wedding night,” he said conversationally. “A well-broken mare is a much sweeter ride than an unbroken filly.”
This startled a laugh from her. “That is hardly a flattering analogy, my lord! For the mare or the filly.”
He grinned, and for once Anais could see the charm in him. Just for one brief moment, as though he had let his guard down for an instant. “Perhaps not. Would you prefer it if I compared a princess to a queen?”
Anais felt her face colour. “I will be your stepmother.”
This time it was Charming who laughed. He lifted her hand to his lips. “Let me assure you that what I feel for you is nothing remotely resembling filial devotion.” His tongue stroked her palm, rough and wet, before he released her.
Her heart was beating a tattoo. She felt as though Rui stood at her shoulder watching her.
She smiled at Charming. “How intriguing. Perhaps we could discuss exactly what it is you feel for me after supper this evening?”
His wide mouth curled in an answering smile. “Nothing would please me more. In the meantime, perhaps you would like a taste of exactly what it is I feel for you? Just so you are in no doubt?” He placed Anais’s hand between his legs. She could feel his erection straining against his breeches. He gave a little grunt of pleasure as she pressed her palm against him there.
“Gracious, my lord. It appears that you feel a great deal for me.” She patted him again, letting her voice drop to a purr. “A very great deal indeed.”
“You have no idea,” Charming said huskily.
Rising to her feet, Anais shook out her skirts. “Until tonight then, Charming.”
“I am counting the hours.”
He remained sprawled on the seat, watching her with heavy eyes. Anais could feel his gaze locked on her back as she walked away.
If you love me, you will do this for me…
She didn’t realise she was weeping until she reached her apartments and met the startled eyes of one of her ladies-in-waiting.
Anais dismissed her women and lay upon her bed with a cold compress upon her aching forehead. Something startled her awake some time later. She sat up, gasping, her eyes widening with fear as she took note of the man sitting in a chair by her bed. He held a dagger in his hands which he was turning over and over in his hands. At Anais’s gasp, he lifted his head.
The tallest dwarf, the angry one. He studied her with expressionless black eyes. Where Snow White’s other dwarves clung to her side like leeches, this one had not been seen about the court for many days. One side of his face was a patchwork of fading yellow and green bruises. There was a half-healed scab on his bottom lip.
He could mean her nothing but ill.
“What do you want? What are you doing here?” Anais forced the words through a throat gone tight with terror.
>
“I won’t hurt you.” His low, husky voice, although soft, did nothing to reassure her.
Anais’s hands fisted in the bedclothes as she scuttled across the bed. “Leave. Immediately. Or I shall scream.”
“Scream if you want to,” he said tonelessly. “It won’t do you any good.”
For no reason that she could fathom, Anais believed him. She didn’t scream. “You are her creature. Do you mean to kill me?”
Anger flared deep in his eyes. “I am no one’s creature. And I told you. I won’t hurt you.”
“Then what do you want?”
Rising from the chair, he sheathed the dagger at his hip and held out his hand. “I want you to come with me.”
Anais shook her head.
A brief, humourless smile touched his mouth. “Don’t you wish to see how your lover besports himself when he isn’t in your bed? Don’t you wish to know where his heart truly lies? If he says he loves you, then he is a liar.”
His words struck Anais like blows. “You are the liar,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Mayhap. But have you courage enough to put that to the test?”
“You are mad! Return to your mistress and be assured that she will hear of your audacity.”
Again that unsmiling smile. “It is not my mistress who means you ill. You have invited a rabid dog into your bed, my Queen, and he will turn on you and rip out your throat…”
“Get out,” she hissed. “Go. Go!”
He merely held his hand out to her again.
Anais would never know why, with a despairing sob, she lurched across the bed and took his hand. His fingers were warm and dry in hers. Instead of leading her from the room, he moved to the wall, stretching up on tiptoes to press his fingers against a carved wooden rose. With a soft snick, a section of the wall swung inwards, releasing a whiff of stale air.
Letting go of her hand, he took a small tinderbox from a pouch at his waist and lit one of the candles that sat on a chest by the door. With a faint look of challenge on his impassive face, he took her hand in his and led her into the passageway.
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