Chapter One: Regina

She was alone.

That was rare as queen, and hard to manage. Since her wedding day, she had had shadows in maids and secretaries, guards and petitioners and servers. Only at night was she truly alone, and even then, guards were stationed just outside her room. In the twelve months since the King's Rock was slid up her finger, she could count the times she had spent in sunlight on her own in the single digits. Those times she treasured, and dreaded as well. They would end, and she did not want them to end. To never have privacy was to be in prison, albeit an ornate one.

She rushed down the hall of the Black Court, the merriment from the carnival in the garden carrying all the way. He had outdone himself for Snow's thirteenth birthday, as Regina dreaded and expected. A tenth of the coins in the treasury had gone to the elephants and camels, the transfiguring balloons and fireworks, the clowns and fortune-tellers. Tables were set for three hundred guests, all to receive a five-course meal and a present of a portrait in honor of the birthday girl. Jugglers, tight-walkers, contortionists, puppeteers, knife-throwers, dancers, musicians, jesters, poets, the list of entertainments to be acquired had spilled from the planning scroll.

Leopold lived by the cry, "But tomorrow I might die!" and thus excused his profligacy of court funds. But tomorrow he might die! So why not enjoy himself to the fullest now? This meant not sitting by mornings in his seat to judge matters of the realm, nor answering the increasingly desperate correspondence from the Holds. Tomorrow he might die! He busied himself with making the invitations to the grandest thirteenth birthday party the land had ever seen. In the afternoons, he gaddled about between the playhouse and the alehouse and the whorehouse for tomorrow he might die. Scorrus was his advisor, and his advice never ran counter to Leopold's impulses to frippery.

Regina had shuddered inwardly to hear Snow echo her father once the blindfold was taken off to show her the grandeur of the garden in celebration. Tomorrow she might die! The queen suspected that there was a little of the father's gaddle flowing in the girl's veins. Everyone clapped and cooed as she ran from one entertainment to the next, seeing only a child overexcited for a special event and not one incapable of maintaining her attention on any matter for more than a handful of minutes. Regina had seen over and over the girl's high maid having to start and restart the dressing of the hair since Snow could not stay still. Time would tell if she matured out of it, or if like her father, it was a flaw of her personality.

Regina was meeting Skin in the farthest room, and he was going to give her the Book. To sink a claw into her so deeply pleased him, that much she had heard in his silly little giggle and saw in the fluttering of his fingers beneath his mouth. Her heels rang out on the tiles of the hallway as she hurried to retrieve what she wanted so desperately, and what she did not want at all. She had hated her mother's Book, kept in the cabinet in the study throughout Regina's childhood. From those pages came the spells that stripped her riding clothes to gowns, dropped branches from trees to ensnare her, even once zipped her mouth closed since her mother was weary of her voice. Regina's voice had a rasp, and her mother wished to hear only the soft cooing of a dove.

Doves! Those had also been on the scroll of entertainments, thirteen imported Alasian doves to be released at the exact moment of Snow's birth. The cost was astronomical. Prince Carlisle had brought them yesterday afternoon. He spoke long at dinner of the trouble in getting the doves through the Draman Forest, what with the centaurs and d'bei in yet another scuffle that set the trees ablaze and rendered the roads impassable. Regina thanked him repeatedly for his sacrifice as was her duty, and concealed her disgust for the king's younger brother. Carlisle was nothing more than a chair swinging, bottle cracking bar fighter who happened to have royal blood. When he had swung down from his carriage, the first thing he did was stare openly at her belly to see if one of the king's seeds had taken root. She had never met a man of greater crudeness. Even drooling Prince Stuart was not so revolting.

The king had not touched her, not once in that fashion. It was the only way that she would agree to the marriage, and he was more than amenable. His heir was his daughter, and he wished no other competitors to the throne. Snow was his pride and joy, the light of his life. He could never love another child like the one he had. Regina was relieved that he did not go back on his word. She did not want him in her bed, or to see any more of his doughy form than she had already.

Once he was the most handsome man in the realm. Only forty-two now, the fourteen years of his reign had transformed him from that divine form to a pudgy, slightly unkempt one. Carlisle had the same look to him. Their younger sister was still trim and put together, but she was the High Guard of the Southold. One could not do that work and be slovenly in figure or spirit. Zara was at the carnival as well, her pale blue eyes tight and angry at the waste of it, shunning a dress for the green-and-black of her guardsman wear and her weasel sitting upon her shoulder. At dinner while Carlisle recounted his noble quest to get the doves to the palace and the king crowed about the tests of strength he had devised for the noble boys to engage in at the party, Zara fixed them both with incredulous stares. The basilisks were rising, which meant the giants were coming, and she had lost a full third of her guard to cuts in the treasury. She was here to petition for funds to cover more guards and some scouts, not enjoyment. The king poured her another drink, since tomorrow they might die.

At last Regina reached the final door in the long hall. She opened it and went inside. The room was nearly bare, used as storage at one point, a sickroom when the other one overflowed at another point, and before that it was a space that the court librarians used for repairs. The shelves along one wall were still packed with books. It was the room that no one knew what to do with exactly, so it did a little of everything. And right now, it was a meeting room. Skin was not yet here.

A Book of her own. She had performed paltry magic with the scraps Skin allotted her until now, namely floating a quill for several seconds and changing the color of her nightgown. The latter had not gone well, since after the red flushed to blue, the fabric disintegrated. Thankfully, she did this after dismissing her maids so she was not suddenly naked before them. Regina was thrilled to have caused any magical effect after so many failed attempts at the spell, although she was more than a little horrified to consider that she might have disintegrated along with it. Her mother made magic look very simple, but that was not the case. Currently at the carnival, Mother was thrilled to be attending it as the mother of the queen. No longer one of many courtiers, she had moved one giant step closer to the center. Instead of revolving around the power points, she was now a power point around which people revolved.

"My Queen," Skin said, and Regina jumped to find him standing behind her. He giggled to have caused a startle. His skin was brown and mottled, with drops of flesh standing upon his cheeks rather than smooth to the surface.

"Where's the Book?" she asked, for nothing was in his hand.

"The Book, dearie? Was I supposed to bring something for the birthday of the little princess?" Once more he giggled. At least he amused himself. "But not so little any longer, is she? No. Has the king chosen suitors among those noble boys? Is he busy, busy, busy making a match?"

"Is this the information you wish in trade for the Book?" Regina asked shortly. She could not be away from the carnival for long, and did not want to indulge his games. Even now, someone might be noticing her absence.

"Oh, child, I wish no trade for the Book. It is a pleasure to do business with you. But I wonder, I wonder, for what purpose do you want this Book? You see, upon the instances we speak, you express such conflicted desires-"

Conflicted desires? How else was she to feel about magic and how it stripped her of her clothes, her freedom, her very own mouth? It had made her feel like a plaything, a doll to be changed and set in a corner or at a tea party depending on its owner's fancy. She could not even ride her horse now without a guard following along behind, and people trying to spy over the fence to see the queen's form on horseback. It was bizarre that as a ruler of the land, nothing was in her control any longer.

Skin was waiting for her reply. "My reasons are my business."

"Oh," Skin said in playful disappointment. "Come-come, tell your friend Skin! To banish Prince Carlisle to another realm where he can whitterpate no more to your ears? Maybe you are trying to solve the basilisk problem, or perhaps you simply want to make the king young and handsome again, so that your heart pitter-pitter-patters to see him?"

She swallowed on her revulsion. Her heart had gone to the stablegirl, and her mother took that heart away. It was something that Regina only allowed herself to think about in the dead of night, and rarely even then, to keep herself from screaming. Crossly, she said, "Skin, are you going to bring me the Book or not? I don't have all day to stand in here discussing it with you!"

"Bring you the Book, dearie? How can I bring it when it has been in this room the whole time?" Skin giggled and fluttered his fingers. A book edged out from the shelves. When Regina began to stride to it, Skin held up his hand. At once, her body arrested in place. "Why do you go to the Book, when you should know how to bring the Book to you?"

She was not that strong. Her hand lifted against her will, and then he released her from the invisible bondage. Focusing on the Book, she drew it out smoothly within her mind and floated it to her hand. The actual Book scratched and scraped along the shelf. The spine was dark blue and jeweled, with no lettering upon it. This was going to be far too much weight for her to keep afloat. The quill had felt like an anvil upon her magical pull.

The edge of the spine passed over the shelf. She stared hard at it, coaxing with her mind as it came begrudgingly. Skin watched in quiet amusement, and she hated the sense of mockery. She would float the Book across the room to her hand and wipe the smirk from his mottled brown face!

It promptly tumbled to the floor and landed with a colossal thud that echoed in the bare room. He laughed as she bent to retrieve it. "Well then, child, I must be going! You have a lovely time among those pages. Give my regards to the little princess." And he was gone in a swirl of purple smoke.

Regina clutched the Book, almost wringing it from a mixture of humiliation and triumph. This was going to be the answer to getting back a little of what had been taken from her, what was stillbeing taken from her on a daily basis. Not for much longer would she be the doll in her mother's corner, the sweet young thing upon the king's arm to please the people who wished him to have a queen after so long in mourning for Snow's mother. One day she would call some shot in her life, rather than have all of them called for her. Within these pages was her salvation.

The Book had to be placed in her room, and after that she needed to return swiftly to the carnival. Smile and nod, offer her hand to be kissed, chuckle at jokes and coo about how sweet Princess Snow was in her new birthday dress. Clap at the cutting of the cake and remind the child to thank the givers of her gifts. But later, deep in the night when Regina had as much privacy as her life allowed, she was going to open this Book.

And begin.