"I knew it!" Mulan's words are little more than a growl as she steps round me, sword drawn. "I knew that damn gypsy was hiding something. This has all been a trick! A ploy to get you here. Run Princess, and I'll protect you."
The Evil Queen makes no move, but behind us the scruffily shaven guard and wolf have appeared in the doorway, teeth bared and pike levelled. She waves them off lightly, then holds out her hands in a gesture of submission.
"I never lied to you, Emma," she says.
"No, but you hardly told the truth either." She flinches as though stung, turning her face from mine, down towards the boy at her feet. The boy looks up from the rug, and she nods, silently. He stands up, gathering his book. As he passes me, he stops.
"If you hurt her," he says, glowering up at me from underneath his eyebrows, "if you even try to hurt her..." He trails off, but the growl from the wolf next to him gets the message across. I nod seriously at him, and the glower on his face only deepens.
He stares at me for a moment, until the Queen clears her throat. He carries on past me, and stops by my companion, catching hold of her sleeve and pulling her towards the door. She resists, passively, her steps slow and heavy.
With a glance at the Queen's face, I nod.
"Go, I'll be alright."
They leave, and the door shuts behind them. For a moment, the tower room is filled with silence. The Queen – I have to consciously call her that – just stares at me, wearing a look I can't place. My own eyes can't seem to stay still, and flit around the room, taking in the piles of books, the large framed maps, the amount of mirrors.
I'm still standing there, focusing on everything but the other person in the room, when I hear her sigh and sit back down.
"Now's the time, if you're going to do it," she says. "I won't fight you. Just – look after my son."
I'm confused, completely. This is not at all how I had expected my mission to end. I cross the room in a few short strides and stand before her chair.
"Now's the time for what?" She gestures loosely at my sword, still sheathed. I suddenly understand."No! I'm not going to kill you." The words trigger a memory, and a thought crosses my mind. "Were you the old woman, Gunnhild? I've heard of your disguises, and fallen for them."
My voice sounds more bitter than I intend it to, but given the circumstances, that can hardly be helped.
My gypsy – I really have to break myself of both those habits: she's not a gypsy, and she's definitely not mine – laughs, hands set lightly on the arms of her chair. She looks confident, charming, and – although my mother really would kill me for thinking it – extremely attractive.
"Is that old bat still alive? I thought she'd died years ago." She calms herself, shifting in the seat. "No, I wasn't her."
It's awkward, having this conversation with her standing, while she's sat down. It makes me want to kneel in front of her, bring myself down to eye level, which will never do. Across the room is another chair like the Queen's, but it looks too heavy to simply drag. Instead, I seat myself on the arm of her chair, leaning back against the upright.
As soon as I've done it, I realise my mistake. It feels horrendously intimate, and I'm reminded of all the times my parents would sit like this, watching my latest attempts at dancing or art. I start to move, determined to find somewhere more suitable to sit, but a hand on my thigh stops me.
Literally stops me.
Her hand lands on my leg, thumb lightly stroking along the grain of the fur, caressing. My reaction is almost instantaneous. My muscles tense, and I freeze in position, stuck on the arm of the chair. I wonder if she's used a spell on me, to stop me moving. But there's been no flash from my necklace, and as I shift into a more comfortable position, there's no magical restraints to fight against.
"Stay there," she says. The words could be an order, but the tone in which they're spoken is more of a plea. "It will be easier, if I can't see your face."
As though I want to make things easy for her. Her, whose name I can't bring myself to say, let alone think, who betrayed me, who...
I'm angry, and rightly so, but it's muted, somehow, distant. It's as though there's a layer of ice around my heart, stopping me feeling all the things that I should be. It doesn't stop me feeling the path of her thumb on my leg, though.
"Why didn't you tell me, who you were?"
"If I had, right at the beginning, what would you have done? Arrested me? Thrown me in the dungeon? Does the warrant for my execution still stand?" She sighs, and her hand stills it's movement. "What would have happened to my son then?"
I look at the door that the others had left through.
"The boy is your son?" Beside me, she nods. "But he's like ten or something. And you've got to be..."
She's got to be at least twice my age. Triple, even, maybe. The stories floating round court never exactly specified.
"Sixty three."
Shit. I've been making out with someone who could be grandmother. Who was, in fact, married to my grandfather. Although, if I'm being charitable and assuming me she kissed me that often because she wanted to, rather than to manipulate me, her tastes definitely lie in other directions. I run through some dates in my head, working out how old she must have been, back then, when she was my mother's step-mother. Barely more than a child herself, it turns out. The thought makes me sick to my stomach.
I think of Philip and my parents, all aging as Aurora stayed young and beautiful. Perhaps something similar happened to her – perhaps that's the reason for her disappearance. But that can't explain her ten year old son, or the length of time Gunnhild said the ice had been free of trolls.
"Looking good on it, Your Majesty. That's yet another thing you need to explain."
"I've been...elsewhere for much of it. A land without magic. Now that's something you should see." It sounds like something that will need to be explained, later. First there are other, more pressing questions building up on the tip of my tongue.
"If you couldn't tell me, why did you pursue me? Everywhere I went, there you were." She begins to speak, but I cut her off. This isn't what I wanted to say, isn't what I think the council would want me to ask. But it's the most important thing to know. "You let me trust you, you let me rely on you, you let me l…"
She stands up, away from me.
"Don't say it," she warns. "Don't say that."
"It's true though. I did trust you, I did rely on you. And you could just have disappeared again, back to your land without magic. Or at least you didn't have to tell me where you lived. You didn't have to kiss me, that first day. You didn't have to come to the palace, or the tavern on the road."
She throws her hands up in the air, wheeling away from me, facing the fire. Her words, when they come are full of passion and frustration.
"I did those things because I wanted to! I did those things because I thought I was safe to!" She sighs, resignedly, and lowers her voice. "I thought you would never come here. You don't exactly have a reputation for sticking at things, and I found that I…. that I liked you."
It's as much of an answer, as much of a confession as I'm going to get. She sinks back down into her seat, wearily. The leather of her trousers creaks uncomfortably.
"I tried to tell you," she continues, "not to come here. I tried to tell you to leave me alone. But you and Fa Mulan carried on. What are you going to do, now you've found me?" Her voice wavers and breaks, and I can't fight the wave of protectiveness. I do climb off the armrest this time, and kneel at her feet. So what if it's submissive, so what if it mirrors the oath of fealty I've only just made to another queen.
I'm not breaking my oath. I'm not distracted or diverted – the woman in front of me is my mission – and I'm not giving away any secrets. Rather, in fact, I'm revealing them.
My hands latch onto her knees, running up the length of her thighs. I smile, in a way that I hope is reassuring.
"My mother and the council only want information," I say. "They just wanted to check the realm's security. You're no threat to them, I believe that, I'll tell them. That way, you and the boy…"
"Henry."
"You and Henry can stay here, safe." My throat closes round the words. I find I don't want her to stay here, alone, with only a half-mad troll for company.
"How long would it be, do you think, before Snow and her charming husband sent another knight after me? Perhaps even an army. And the chances are, they won't think as tenderly of me as you do."
A friend who is very, very fond of me. That's how she'd described herself, back when I trusted her blindly. And, do you believe in love at first sight, I'd asked my companion. It seems unavoidably obvious now that I definitely do.
She smiles, weakly, and I feel an answering grin break out across my face.
I've never cried into a kiss before, but it doesn't make it any less sweet, or desperate. Her hands fist in my hair, pulling me out of my crouch and up, until I'm virtually sat in her lap. Her teeth are at my lip, her tongue tracing the captured flesh.
"Wait," I manage to say, our mouths just hairs' breadths from each other, "I made an oath not to get distracted, until my mission was complete."
She stares at me in silence, the room filled only with the sound of heavy breathing. My knees press uncomfortably against the sides of her chair. If there's a moment to back away, to step down, it's now.
"I won't tell your mother's council if you don't." Her words are meant to sound flippant, easy, as though she couldn't care less what I decided to do. But the way her hands tighten in my hair, bringing me ever closer, and the way her voice wavers give the lie to her bravado.
She wants this, I think, needs this, as much as I do.
As I lean forwards again to meet her searching mouth, I realize I've completely lost control of the situation, lost control of mission, and, right in this moment, I simply don't care. Our hands work feverishly at the fastenings of my outdoor clothes, pulling us closer. Together we manage to stand, stumbling towards piles of bookcases. She pulls the necklace she gave me off my neck, pressing it firmly into my pocket.
I begin to protest, but then we're transported in a cloud of purple smoke.
"Can't do that, with the necklace on," she pants, before reattaching her mouth to my neck. She has me pressed against some kind of door, holding me in position. Her hands press me back against the wood, and I step out of my furs, kicking them out of the way.
She surges forward, our bodies pressed flush against each other, as she slowly starts to work her way down my chest and stomach, kissing and biting as she goes.
"Oh god," I moan, and it's pretty much the last coherent thing I can think for a while. When she stands up again her mouth glistens in the ice-filtered light, twisting into a surprisingly shy smile. At last I can look around the room she's brought us to: it's clearly her bedchamber. More tastefully decorated than the troll-fashioned downstairs, the crowning glory is a large, four-poster bed. As the bliss and foggy happiness clears from my head, I try to regain control, pushing her down onto mattress and covering her body with own.
It's later, lying pleasantly spent and sweaty under her sheets, my head resting on her shoulder, arm and leg thrown over her possessively, that I make up my mind.
"Come back with me," I say, determined. "Come to the palace, and speak to my mother. Tell her about the wraith and the land without magic. Bring Henry too. I'll keep you safe." She stopped me from saying it earlier, but she seems in no mood to argue now. "I'd do anything for you."
Regina, the Evil Queen, scourge of my Kingdom and my mother's worst enemy, bends her arm to bring her hand to my hair, stroking gently at the messed curls.
"The feeling, dear," she says, eyes still closed, "is entirely mutual."