Regina brooded. It was something she did often, standing at her balcony with one hand on the cold railing and a glass of untouched wine in the other. She didn't care much for the taste of wine, but there was something comforting about the feel of the crystal wineglass in her hand.
The view from her balcony was spectacular. The White Plains spread out before her, cast silver in the light of the full moon and dotted with faint gold light by the lamps of each village. The whole land sloped slowly upwards from the royal palace, like an old-fashioned stage upon which the great dramas of the modern day were played out for her amusement. The comparison had never comforted Regina as much as mother believed it did.
She swirled the wine with a gentle roll of her wrist and watched it settle again. An icy breeze caught a loose strand of her hair as it passed, brushing against her neck and sending a chill down her spine. The roof of her mouth prickled with the bittersweet taste of magic, a sensation which Regina had grown quite familiar with of late, since mother had… gone elsewhere.
The feeling of ash falling between her fingers intensified.
It's not there, she told herself firmly. She had spent two hours washing it away from her gloves and from the skin beneath them, all the while promising herself that she would never, ever kill again.
(Why not?
Because I loved it.)
Her thoughts travelled in weary circles, a litany of protestations and good intentions that always, inevitably, ended with Daniel. (Didn't everything?)
Daniel had told her, once, that the world and the people in it were essentially good.
"Mother isn't," she'd murmured, but half-heartedly, because Daniel had been tickling the back of her neck with the end of her braid and it felt too nice to spoil with an argument. Daniel never witnessed the full extent of mother's cruelty, and she hadn't intended to enlighten him, then or ever.
"She only wants the best for you," he'd said, in that calm, reasonable tone he always used when the subject of her family came up, and then he'd kissed her and she'd quite forgotten to disagree.
(It had been so easy, a flicker of magic and the heart in her hand.)
Daniel. What would you think of me now?