In the summer, the roses in her garden bloom like pinpricks of blood, and the world is a kaleidoscopic blur of colour; green grass, golden fields, the sky as blue as her huntsman's eyes.
She visits the far provinces of her kingdom, hands apples from the royal garden to children with bright eyes; she inspects the growing crops and all the land rejoices in her name.
"The land is alive again," the peasants murmur in the countryside and the nobles bring her tales of statues erected in her honour, of festivals held where thousands pray for her wellbeing. "You have cured us of Ravenna's plague."
It is a curious thing, to sit where Ravenna had sat, the sharp steel talons on her fingers tapping on the arm of the throne. The court fills with colour, the sun streaming through the high glass windows and bathing the court in gold, but on odd mornings Snow makes her way down the length of the court, and feels the hair on the back of her neck rise. She thinks that some part of her will always be more suited to the dank cell in the dungeons. Some part of her will always be cold.
"They want you to marry." Eric says to her on a summer's night, leagues away from the fortress on the cliff. He has an odd way of looking at her now, unblinking and too steady oftentimes; as if she would fade away if he looks anywhere else. "Your nobles are talking in the courts. Says that you have to have a husband to command the army."
She is brushing her hair. Dark as a raven's wing, the stories are beginning to circulate. Skin white as snow, lips red as blood; who can capture Snow White's heart? "Are they?" She asks, half-amused. "I seem to recall that the army fared quite well last time without a husband at the forefront."
His mouth quirks. "Ah, lass." He says. "I keep forgetting how young you are."
She threads her fingers through the dark mass of her hair, pulling it into a long braid for sleep. "And yet I am a queen." She turns to look at him, and the amusement fades from her voice. "The folktales call me the Queen of Hearts, Eric. They say that I defeated Ravenna with this," she claps a hand over her chest. "Surely it would be a bad strategy now, to give it away."
You can't have my heart, she had said in what seems to be another lifetime, to the corpse of a golden queen swathed in feathers and the lives of others. How can they expect her to give it away, now?
Ask me for anything else, she might have said, as Eric bows out of her tent. But not that. Let me keep this much.
The mirror is in the vaults.
On dark nights, she pads her way down to the vaults, through the echoing halls of the castle down to where the mirror whispers. She can imagine Ravenna peering into the golden surface, her hands on her beautiful face; looking for any sign of age. Mirror, mirror, she might have chanted. On the wall.
Snow stands, and stares, clutching her furs closely around her, her bare feet cold on the stone. Her own pale face stares back at her, blurred and distorted by the mirror's surface; a fey queen staring back. In this light, she does not look so different from the dead queen at all.
"Mirror, mirror," she says. "On the wall."
Her voice dies in her throat. She cannot force herself to say the rest.
The third winter after her coronation, the harvest fails, and the east rises up in revolt.
The messengers race daily into her court, bringing her tales of the wretched lord's speeches to a furious, starving mob. Your virgin queen, the man had shouted, standing on top of his castle walls. Swathed in her furs and jewels, making the flowers bloom; but what of you? What of your crops?
If she can bring the land to life, why does she not feed your starving children?
"He thinks I am God," she says, and a day later he is marching.
She does not sleep. She issues orders for the army to prepare themselves, for the fortifications to be drawn up, for the riders to guard the path to her door. She stares into the faces of the men who may very well die tomorrow, and knows that this time she will not fight by their side.
"This is what ruling is," Ravenna might have said, and in the dark, lonely hours of the night she feels the dead queen drape herself along her shoulders, dig her way into her very bones. "You chose to play at God. Now you must be omnipotent."
She goes to sleep in Ravenna's bed, and she feels phantom fingers comb its way through her hair, undoing her braid. "God does not bleed."
When she wakes in the morning, an army is at her gates, her hair is undone and she wakes in a cold sweat; she puts on her dress and goes out to greet her men.
When she calls for the lord's head, she does not blink.
"You have betrayed your queen," she tells him, and the courtyard is as silent as death. "You have roused armed forces against your sovereign liege, and made attempts at my life. I hereby proclaim you guilty of high treason, the punishment of which is death."
Her huntsman swings his axe as if he had been born to it. A clean, easy severance and the deed is done.
The leaders of the rebellion are hanged and quartered, and the rest sent home under guard. She is just and she is not cruel; nobody would have done differently. But they speak her name in a different voice now; the young queen has survived her first assassination attempt, she has put down her first rebellion. The girl on the throne is no more.
They do not call her Queen of Hearts anymore. They call her the Queen of Kings.
Snow White, queenkiller, virgin queen, her father's daughter, pads her way down to the vaults by night, and finds that though she can still not finish the chant, the mere thought of them makes her smile.
You have a beautiful heart, her mother had said, so many lifetimes ago. The land has a different pattern now; it breathes in a new way. Do not give it up.
If she takes her huntsman into her bed, and does not love him as she should, as the songs say, then it is a fault of hers that must be forgiven. If her heart is her greatest weapon, then how can she give it up? If her body is her finest fortress, then how can she yield it to anyone, friend or enemy?
If she does not love her huntsman, then the Lord must forgive her. For this is how queens are made.
In time, when she is no longer young, she steps into the vault in the deep, dark heart of her castle, and stands facing the mirror.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall." She says, and the surface begins to swirl. "Who is the fairest of them all?"
The metal falls from its boundaries, drips on to the ground and begins to pool towards her. The figure emerges, a woman in a crown, her skin encased in gold. Her eyes are blue, her lips curving. The talons of her fingers tap against the crook of her elbow.
Ravenna smiles, and says, "you are the fairest, my queen."