A/N: Good grief, I'm writing another fairy tale retelling. I get to mutilate Snow White this time. ^_^ Anyway…yeah. I was going to say something else, but I forgot what, so I'm going to stop talking now. Really.
Rosa Vela Salrali tirDelen, daughter of Lord Telor Rashma tirDelen, Lady of the tirDelen House, beloved by all who met her, at the moment had but one ambition: to get her sister Telta to shut up.
Telta Dora Liara tirDelen's voice droned on and on, pouting and whining and complaining and generally trying to make Rosa feel sorry for her. All she was succeeding in doing was making Rosa very much want to strangle her older sister.
"I really don't see what you're complaining about," she snapped, turning from the bay window to glare at Telta. She had had more than enough of complaints and whining. "At least you get to get out of this place."
"Oh, but I'm sure it'll be ever so horrible there," Telta whined, poking out her lower lip elegantly. "And why do I have to marry a man I've never even seen before?"
Rosa brought her fist down on the edge of the table with a thud. "You're going to be a queen, Telta! You're marrying the King of all Torlemont! While I get to stay here and stitch embroidery and pray that I get a marriage offer half as good as yours, just because I had the bad luck to be born the younger sister." Lips curling in disgust, she turned back to the window and stared out at the bay, not really seeing any of it.
"Even if he is a King, I'm sure he'll be perfectly dreadful," Telta declared, tilting her nose upwards condescendingly. Rosa firmly throttled the urge to scream in frustration.
"Who cares if he's dreadful! He's a King! And like I said, at least you can get out on your own and live your own life without Father hovering over you everywhere you go."
Telta frowned, her desperate search for a witty comeback written all over her face. She evidently couldn't come up with one, and at last settled for, "I'm too young to get married." Heaving a dramatic sigh, she added, as though Rosa had forgotten, "I'm only eighteen, after all."
"Most other women are married with a herd of children by the time they're your age, Telta! Stop complaining. It could be worse."
"How?"
Rosa rolled her eyes in exasperation. "You could be thirteen, getting married to some old fart with hardly a title to his name who has a dozen beautiful women in and out of his bed every day."
Telta blinked, looking shocked and turning an interesting shade of red. Rosa wasn't sure if she should laugh or get even more annoyed, so she decided to do neither, instead crossing the room and taking a seat in the chair next to Telta's. "Come off it, Telta. You're not going to be a virgin much longer, you'd better get used to the idea."
"Yes, and you're not one now," Telta said boldly, raising her head to gaze calmly at Rosa. "That's the real reason Father isn't marrying you off to this King, you know."
Surprisingly enough, Rosa felt her cheeks getting warm. "Don't be silly," she said nonchalantly. "Father doesn't know."
"Yes, he does. I don't know how he knows, but I overheard him telling Mother that--that--well, what he actually said was that you and Prince Telmar were screwing in the garden." Her entire face turned scarlet.
Rosa firmly throttled her surprise, not willing to give Telta the satisfaction of knowing she'd been shocked. How had he known about that amorous encounter, anyway? There hadn't been anyone else around in the gardens to notice them, although she hadn't been paying too much attention to their surroundings at the time...
"Anyway, I still don't know why you whine so much," she said, trying to unobtrusively change the subject. "You get to be a queen, and live in a palace, and--"
"But I don't want to go!" Telta wailed, bursting into tears as their father entered the room. Rosa wondered why she even bothered; it wasn't as though a show of tears, however impressive, was going to change his mind for him.
All her complaints and whining and pouting were for naught, as Rosa had known they would be. A week later, Telta was Queen of Torlemont and living in the Palace, and whether she was happy with matters or not, no one knew except perhaps the King.
It was a full year later that Rosa first met her sister's husband.
The party was full in session, the ballroom packed so full of people that it was difficult to take a step without running into someone from behind. Everyone was busy either with dancing or with the food and drink handed out by servants in the blue livery of the Royal Palace; in one particularly disgusting example, Lord Jakel was shoveling food into his mouth so fast that his cheeks bulged, with his wife watching in annoyance as he dropped little bits of dinner on the front of his tunic.
When Rosa entered, almost everyone looked up. She drank in their gazes as a flower drinks in sunlight, basking in the warm glow of men's admiration and women's envy. She knew she looked positively ravishing; the green and silver brocade gown was the perfect thing to offset the deep red of her hair, and the sapphire brooch she wore exactly matched the shade of her eyes. She'd picked out her outfit very carefully, every inch of it designed to impress, and knew beyond a doubt how beautiful she looked. When she saw Telta, still as short and plain as ever but now fat with eight months of pregnancy, she couldn't help but feel a certain fierce joy in that knowledge--a joy that only increased when King Charlta gazed at her appreciatively, intense interest gleaming in his jade green eyes.
She gazed back at him just as boldly, looking him over and feeling an interest rise in her that more than matched his. Oh, yes, her sister's husband was certainly handsome. His silvery blonde hair was almost too long to be fashionable, but merely looked striking on him; his body was perfect in every way. His eyes held hers, drawing her in, filling her entire body with the intense heat of desire.
It was a week later that they first made love.
Rosa lay beside Charlta, their naked forms still tangled together, both of them exhausted from their recent exertions. She let her fingers run idly down his side, spreading a fire through his warm body as they went; he grunted, pulling her closer.
Smiling, she pressed her lips softly against his bare shoulder, running a hand down his back; sated though he was, she could feel his arousal at her touch. He grunted again, reaching out and playing with one of her breasts.
She laughed softly, curving her body around his and making him gasp; he pulled her against his chest, kissing her, at first gently but then with a rising passion that was close to need. She couldn't help but feel entirely satisfied, and not just because of their lovemaking; he was hers now, completely and entirely. Her sister's husband, perhaps, but her lover and her beloved...
"Aren't you ever tired?" she teased him, laughing, and then all thought became impossible for a very long time.
Telta's daughter was born the same day Rosa discovered she was pregnant.
The daughter was perfectly healthy; Telta died in childbed. Rosa certainly wouldn't miss her. They might have been sisters, but there was little love lost between the two, especially since Telta's husband had become Rosa's lover. She had lived long enough to give the girl a name; Rosa couldn't remember exactly what it was, but it was something completely idiotic that only Telta could have thought of. Snow White, or something like that. Her sister had obviously hated the child, to give the poor thing a name like that.
But little Snow White wasn't the baby Rosa was worried about. She was more concerned about the one in her own womb.
She'd had plenty of men in and out of her bed since that encounter in the gardens with Prince Telmar; a charm against pregnancy, purchased at a cheap price from a village hedgewitch, had always taken care of that possibility, at least up until now. But now, suddenly, it had failed her. Maybe the things stopped working with age, or maybe it had never really worked in the first place. Gods knew you couldn't trust anything those so-called witches in the smaller towns said.
Later that night, before she got up the nerve to tell Charlta about their child, he proposed to her.
She accepted. She wasn't an idiot.
A month later they were married. Seven months later, right on time, Rosa's child was born.
The child had Charlta's looks right from birth, with an exquisite mass of blonde fuzz atop her head and sparkling jade green eyes. She couldn't help but think it was a good thing; born seven months after their marriage as she was, her heritage might have been doubted had she not looked so much like her father.
Rosa named the child after herself; Rosa Telya Jeriria tirVardossa, younger princess of the royal family, half-sister to Telta's Snow White Harmony Grace tirVardossa. Rosa laughed every time she heard the poor child's full name; it wasn't as though naming the girl after all those virtues was going to give them to her.
That night, Charlta took her on a walk in the gardens, leaving Rosa the younger behind with a nurse. Rosa the elder protested, but he was not to be dissuaded; he practically dragged her along behind her, leaving her burning with curiosity.
Outside, she took a seat on the edge of the fountain, letting her fingers trail lazily through the water. She heard Charlta's soft footsteps behind her, and smiled in fond adoration--mixed with a healthy dose of cheerful lust, of course. She was contemplating the day when she would give her darling a son and an heir when a burning pain seared through her shoulder, and Charlta cursed.
Jerking upright, her hand flew to her shoulder and pulled the dagger free from the wound. The blade of the knife was stained red with her blood; her shoulder throbbed unbearably. Charlta snatched for it, but she jerked it from his reach.
"What is going on?" she hissed at him. Instead of answering, he snatched for the knife again. His hand closed around her wrist like a vise, and they wrestled fiercely for a moment before he managed to pin her down against the base of the fountain and snatch the knife from her hand.
He grabbed for her, but she jerked out of his grasp, lurching backwards and falling back into the fountain. Dress soaked--no doubt the velvet was ruined, dammit--she got to her feet, backing up against the centerpiece of the fountain, a ridiculously hideous piece depicting a nude female mermaid (complete with strategically placed tendrils of green hair).
"You're trying to kill me, aren't you?" she gasped, breath making clouds in the chill autumn air as she stared at him in horror. "But why?"
Her instincts made a sudden leap, and without knowing how, she knew. "You killed Telta, too, didn't you?" she challenged, holding his gaze with her own. "You killed her when she didn't bear you a son, so you could take another wife. That was me, and now you're going to kill me too, and you'll keep marrying wife after wife until you get an heir--you idiot! A woman can have more than one child, you know! And if all you want is different women in your bed, get a fucking mistress!"
He lurched for her, still as silent as a stone statue, grabbing her by the shoulders and wrestling with her. She struggled furiously, managing to get in a good kick in the nuts before he wrestled her to the ground. "You bastard!"
There was something Rosa knew, something that no one else did; her secret, which she had kept since she was twelve years old. Her mother had been of the ancient blood, possessing ancient sorcery that everyone else thought was either long forgotten or had never existed in the first place. She had passed it on to Rosa, but not to Telta; Rosa's daughter had inherited that gift, and Telta's had not.
Rosa herself had first felt in rising in her when she was twelve years old. She had never learned to master it; it followed her will, but she had no true control over it. She had killed with it once, accidentally. She hoped sincerely that Rosa the younger would learn better how to use her gift.
She felt it in her again now, a touch of power rising along with her anger. "I hope you're impotent for the rest of your life, you son of a bitch! And I hope both your daughters hate you forever!"
She screamed the words into his face, as if volume and not her sorcery would make them come true. He snarled at her, and drove the knife straight into her heart.
She never really felt the blow. The force of her magic cradled her in warm darkness and carried her towards the sky, killed by the one man who had ever possessed more than a tiny portion of her heart.