Queen Snow was fantasizing about capturing Granny and using her magic to keep the woman as a wolf—long enough to skin her. Then wear the fabulous fur coat draped around her feminine shoulders.
If only James were alive to see that. He'd be able to die a happy man.
It was amazing how brief of a time she'd known him yet how permanently he belonged to her heart. She still loved him and always would…in the way someone breathes. Without needing to do anything special to keep the love alive.
No man could compare, least of all his dumb twin, David. Yet, she used the man to lash against the deep hole in her heart, the hole only James had the potential to fill.
What a tragedy that he was dead. What a tragedy that live men didn't have the capability to soothe her.
Damn David looking exactly like his twin yet lacking the connection she felt for James. It wasn't that terrible that other men didn't have his soul—it made him special to her. In the way her legs were special to her because they carried her around better than a strong man could. But the tragedy lingered in the fact that she was still brutally alive—and very aware of a time when she felt she had company outside of her head.
She hadn't minded being alone in the preJames era and had even preferred it because she hadn't been lonely.
Life without him was loneliness. It was waking up each morning aware that the only person who'd understood her was gone from the world. It was waking up knowing she hadn't been looking for him…or even aware there was a void in her life. But the moment she met him, it felt like she'd known him forever. It felt like he was destined to sidle her hip for the rest of her life.
Curse that filthy Reul Ghorm. Grind her teeth, snap her back, make her smile full of black holes so she no longer pranced around like a gloating gnat…
Snarling to herself, Queen Snow thought she ought to have made that vermin walk shamefully for years to pay for what she'd done.
But, she smiled to her gorgeous reflection, being a queen means I have more important duties than babysitting a misbehaving fairy.
Queen Snow had changed so much in her reign. It was almost hard to believe ten years were gone since the queen had a fairy advisor. It felt more like a hundred years had passed. Now no one guided Snow. She didn't listen to chattering teeth sitting on her desk in the shape of a human skull. With wings fluttering senselessly behind the spine. No, she did what her gut told her was the thing to do.
Which meant tariffs for other countries trying to dip their filth in her beautiful kingdom.
"No, James," she chuckled as he removed her high heel then dangled it from the tip of his finger and waited on her response. "I am not going to go easy on them just because last winter, they brought a cure for the deadly illness that would have demolished thousands of citizens. Didn't the illness originate in their country?"
"No, it was Maurice's country," he corrected, moving his pointer finger of the other hand from right to left to emphasize. "Two countries over."
"Oh. Didn't it kill everyone in a country between them though?"
"Yes, but first it was…" he screwed his eyes shut to remember. "Maurice's wife's cousin's daughter…it started with her. No doctor had seen such an illness before then. Horribly contagious, one would almost guess it was…breeding like rabbits. But…my queen…" he placed the shoe on her vanity table and forced himself to take her hand. To caress it in spite of the dead feelings behind his troubled eyes. "They were so generous. Helped keep our people from dying. I'd think a little gratitude…in the form of lowering the tariff…is in order. It is much too high." He kissed her hand with a bow. "Please think about it. They need a few of our plants for their medicines."
Admiring her lovely collarbone, the Queen murmured, "Well, you do have too soft of a heart to be my husband." Taking her hand back, she shook her head and smiled into his eyes. "But if I didn't know better…" She rolled up the sheet of paper lying flat on the vanity table and slapped it once against the wood. "I'd think you were trying to fill the shoes of the fairy advisor."
David's complexion lost several shades of color. Really. This was why she couldn't make him king. He was her toy, not her partner. And a poor one at that. "No, I would never…you know what you're doing." He bowed. His mouth tried to open—perhaps to warn her of being beheaded in her bedchamber—but he refused to give his tongue consent to say whatever was on his mind.
"That's better," she cooed, "now, go take that shirt off and put on the one that's ripped from the collar to the top of your stomach." She made shooing motions at him. Lifting a fancy feather pen out of a goblet, she murmured, "You are so dashing in that shirt." Dipping the feather in a tub of ink, she added her signature to the tariff then blew on it.
David looked like he itched to rip that paper out of her hands, tear it to shreds, and stuff it in a horse's stall to be mucked out. He crab-walked out of the room with a plain inward struggle beating at his face.
It was such a pity he was a good man. Maybe that's why their lovemaking would never feel right.
It could also have to do with the fact he would never sleep with her if she hadn't tore his heart from his chest and turned him into her slave…she could still remember the first time she'd placed her hands on his chest and let them drape beside his neck and clutch the back of it. He'd firmly removed her hands from him, stepped back, and uttered apologetically, "Sorry, princess, but this shepherd boy isn't attracted to you." Then he tried to turn his back on her.
Reflexively, she'd reached up and pulled his heart out of his chest. He'd crumpled to his ankles with an, "Oof!"
"Sebastian," she'd purred saucily. Then she'd licked her lips and asked, "Can I change your name to Sebastian?"
"I'd rather you didn't," he had informed her tightly, staring at his heart. His eyes glowed in the red light. She'd seen his wish—that he knew magic and could take his heart back. It shone in his expression. But he'd known he was defeated. He knew he could never wrestle the heart and win as a simple man who couldn't wield any magic. A boring man who had no spells on his heart to keep someone like her from juggling the glowing lump in his chest.
"I don't care if you find my body desirable…or personality despicable. You're my toy now. Now that y-your brother…met Reul Ghorm." She had thought of him dying plenty of times, but she'd never had the stomach to say it aloud. For every time she tried, she knew if she went through with it, she'd let out some very un-Snow White tears.
David's upper teeth had covered his bottom lip. Turning away, he'd murmured, "I wish I felt sadder for his fate, but the truth is…we weren't friends. He was never kind to me. Any sorrow I feel is limited to the fact that he was human. And in reality, I know he didn't deserve it. Far as I know, my brother could be mean and petty and enjoy being cruel to giants or ogres…I don't like his sense of fun. I found him boorish. And, honestly, if he wanted to pick on someone taller than him, why not trolls?
"Regardless, I know you're hurting. That's fair. But I don't think…making me your, ahem, toy, is going to make you feel any better for losing…your bully of a lover."
"It will," she purred seductively, "if I silence that tongue of yours." She had proceeded to tell the heart all the things he was no longer allowed to say. And from that moment on, he'd been her puppet. If he'd gotten slightly too saucy with her, she'd quickly pulled out his heart and compressed a new command into it.
Would've been easier to cut the tongue out of that pretty mouth, but she didn't want the awkwardness of actually needing him to answer a question and finding all he could do was make vague noises in response. Not to mention, sometimes she still found…other…uses for that tongue of his. Or else, it would have had to go.
Sitting primly at her vanity table, she got lost in a daydream. Stroking her hair with a soft brush on the throne she sat in before her mirror, she lapsed into the thought of The Tattletale crouching before her with horror circling her mouth and terror creasing her brow. Heard the grown woman plea, "Don't do this to me! I never meant for James to die!" As if she cared.
But what permanent damage could Snow do to Regina? Kill someone she loved? The child had been an orphan. Far as the Queen knew, Regina loved no one and nothing.
She didn't own a horse, or that'd be the obvious solution. If Regina had kept the same horse for years. If they had a bond that was unbreakable and would shatter with tears upon death. It would be immensely fun to make that equine into stew and tell Regina when she was ready to eat anything, the horse stew would be waiting for her.
Snow's eyes crinkled with pleasure at the fantasy of Regina starving herself for a week in a dirt hole-made-prison. Lying there and waiting for death to take her pain away. Finally growing so hungry that she lost herself and hailed the maid. With parched lips, she'd beg the maid to give her the stew. Delirious with hunger, the imagined orphan was not in her right mind…until she sat in her cell with half the soup already down the chute. Dropping the spoon and sloshing the rest down her torn dress skirt and drenching her hair and face with the meat from her horse. As it sinks in what she did when she lost consciousness.
Queen Snow laughed a hearty, evil laugh at the mental pictures playing in her mind. One which caused a male servant passing by to nearly topple over his feet. He'd come to ask her a question about dinner.
After the exchange in which she enlightened him of her dining choices, she gave her reflection serious eye contact. The fact was nothing she could do to Regina could make Snow feel better for more than a few minutes. That was why she desired nothing quite so strongly as gripping Regina's heart in her fist then crushing it.
Because killing Regina would give the Queen the utmost satisfaction. That James was—at last—avenged. Reul Ghorm had given her a smidge of satisfaction, but she couldn't rest as long as that thug was still at large. Queen Snow had trusted her with a large, untouchable prize. An honor. Keeping a secret for her. And the child hadn't seen it as worthy of being kept.
The street rat, the filthy urchin, had betrayed the country's ruler. For that, she must perish. Even if she hadn't gotten James killed, what she did was sinful and something nobody could come back from.
It was treason. Disloyalty to her land. She deserved to rot in the afterlife. She didn't deserve any of the extra breaths she'd been taking since James' demise.
The question was how was she going to trip the ruffian and seal her up so she could get that heart and crushed it under her heel? She'd escaped so many of Snow's careful plans, at this point Snow was terrified she would die without crushing that worthless snake's heart.
If only she could enlist Robin Hood's help. She'd once heard a whispered saying that Peter Pan never fails, but far as she'd heard, Robin Hood had succeeded in all endeavors…
…wait a minute. Peter Pan never fails?
A cruel smile stole on Queen Snow's lips as if pushed on by their shadow. She saw herself wearing Granny's grey wolf coat in a flash before her true purple silk jacket reappeared on her reflection.