Regina woke to incessant screaming coming from the princess' bedchambers during the middle of the night. It was the fourth night since the newly-wedded queen had moved into the monstrous sized castle, and she had not slept a single night in peace since.
Lazily blinking herself awake and furrowing her brow, Regina hesitantly pulled back the covers from a bed that was much too large for her body and swung her legs over the side. Quickly shivering as the cold night's air rose to greet her skin, she stood with bare feet and a long white nightgown.
Reaching over to her bedside table, she felt around the surface before finding what she had been searching for. Fumbling for a moment with one of the wooden matches, a spark soon ignited and she moved to light the single candle she always kept next to her while she slept. She found solace in the flame and picked the candle up by its golden base as she made her way across the vast room.
With reserved strength that her weary state hadn't given her permission to use, Regina opened the heavy doors of her room and hurriedly stepped out into the long corridor, making sure to cautiously close the entrance behind her, lest she should wake the king. She was grateful that she had at least been provided with her own separate bedchambers.
Feeling goose bumps prickling her arms and quickening her pace, the young queen made her way down the wide passage she was gradually familiarising herself with, the dimming candle throwing light onto hung portraits of the queen who lived there before her. She stopped for a moment to examine one of them, knitting her eyebrows together and her face falling to the ground before quickly springing back up as another scream pierced the air, amplified by the silent emptiness she had found herself in.
Rushing past shadowed furniture and wall hangings, Regina made a left turn and slipped into the girl's bedchambers, racing over to the side of her bed.
Firmly but gently placing a hand on Snow's arm, she softly shook the girl into consciousness. Still plagued by nightmares resulting from her mother's death, Snow's eyes darted frantically around the dark room before they adjusted and she saw her step-mother crouched over her.
"Regina?" She locked eyes weakly with the other woman, tears still spilling from her green eyes, bright even in the shadows cast by the dying light of Regina's candle.
Moving the candle from her hand to the table opposite Snow's bed, Regina lightly pushed against the child's legs, which then shifted to make room for the queen to sit down. She placed one hand on the young girl's knee and brought her other up to grasp the girl's significantly smaller one, intertwining their fingers together and softly squeezing it.
"It's okay, dear, it was just another bad dream," she cooed down at the little princess, removing the hand she had placed on Snow's knee to wipe a tear away from the girl's soft face with her thumb, letting her hand rest against the blush of an otherwise pale cheek.
"Go back to sleep." She leaned forward to place a tender kiss on the girl's forehead and started to pull herself off the bed when Snow's tiny hand leapt out to suddenly grab the woman's arm.
"Wait–" she began in a rushed breath, loosening her grip slightly and meeting gazes with the older woman who gave a startled expression as she looked back at her.
"Please don't leave me," she begged almost inaudibly, her eyes more pleading than the vulnerable crack in her voice.
Regina froze and her lips parted as if she were about to speak, but her legs shook for a moment and she instead started to lean back down at an almost glacial pace and tentatively wrapped her arms around the girl. Although the child was much lesser in all measurements against her, she felt just as small, suddenly fearing that a gust of wind might abruptly burst through one of the closed oversized windows and shatter them in their fragile embrace.
Regina's hand trailed instinctively from Snow's back and up to tangle through long hair as black as ebony, and if there were a mirror in front of her at that moment she would have been able to clearly see an expression resembling pained confusion lining her own features.
"Never, dear. You're safe now," she whispered reassuringly into the younger girl's ear and pulled her more tightly against her chest, their shared warmth starkly contrasting the sharp atmosphere surrounding them.
Regina's heart swelled with something she couldn't quite place, but decided was not an entirely unpleasant feeling. "I'll never let any harm come to you, Snow," a pause tugged at her throat before she continued with, "I promise."
The words seemed to echo into the quiet of the night and fill the room, their last verbal exchange before they parted from one another and Regina made her way back to her bedchambers while Snow drifted off into a dreamless slumber.
Years later, by the time Snow had turned eighteen, they had both broken promises to each other.