"So the most important player is the king."

Gothel closed her eyes, breathed in once, twice.

"No," she said, for what felt like the millionth time. "The most important thing is to kill the king."

"But doesn't the king win or lose a game?"

She opened her eyes, breathed in and sighed loudly. "Really, Rapunzel, these are the simplest rules. I cannot fathom why you cannot seem to understand them."

Rapunzel was staring at her, wide green eyes of bafflement, small, rosy lips parted in a gormless o, a rook dangling uselessly in her right hand.

It had all started out somewhat innocently, and somewhat unexpectedly, this attempt to teach Rapunzel chess. It was a rainy and windy spring day in May, as many days had been that month. Rapunzel had been a little fidgety, for it was the seventh day of rain; not too fidgety, mind, for the girl was rather used to keeping inside, and she had a plethora of books and puzzles and even a few paints that Gothel had bartered from that particularly attentive gypsy on her most recent outing (he had rather known how to appreciate her and had shown skills with more than mere paint making, which Gothel still found just the tiniest bit thrilling. It was utterly exciting to be able to make day trips now that Rapunzel was old enough to occupy herself for the majority of a day).

No, Rapunzel had been far from irritating that day. Indeed, after they had broken their fast, she had clung to Gothel and stared up at her with eyes the colour of spring trees in the dawning sun and said, almost plaintively, "Mother, will I ever be as pretty as you?", which had soothed somewhat the needle voices that pierced her conscious thought every so often (but how can I leave this prison who will appreciate my beauty is it worth being young for this), and had actually put her in rather a good mood for the next hour.

The next hour had been almost equally as promising, for Rapunzel had wondered why it was that nobody seemed to come calling at the tower, and all she had needed to say was the truth – "Your father has turned people against me" – before Rapunzel was swearing that she hated her father, that she hated men and, indeed, that she hated people for being foolish enough to hate her beloved mother.

Oh, have I trained you well.

It was only after lunch that Rapunzel had started becoming fidgety ("But Mother, I've read all my books at least twice over now"), and she had hit upon the genius idea (or so she thought at the time) of teaching Rapunzel to play chess. It was easily another distraction, and hopefully she could capitalise on Rapunzel's proclivity to declare enmity on those whom her "mother" disliked and – her heart skipped upwards – instil in the young girl's mind an intrinsic distrust of kings.

Or so she had thought.

Now Rapunzel paused, bit her lip, and picked up her king.

"Petal, you have to move a piece when you pi-"

- and then moved it two squares towards a rook, before moving her rook to the square over which the king had crossed.

Gothel stared, blinked.

How did she-

She wasn't even sure what it was that was churning in her stomach. Resentment? Over what, precisely? Pride? That her teaching had been effective? Frustration, that she would actually have to work to win this game (and to a novice, too!)?

"Mother?"

Rapunzel's hesitant voice broke through the dark swirl, slicing her ribs into knives.

"Mother, it's a legitimate move, isn't it? You described it as a move, and I haven't moved my king, and you haven't called check-"

"Aye, it's a legitimate move," said Gothel's voice from Gothel's lips, as she narrowed her eyes and stared at the board. "It's quite a smart move, too."

Rapunzel beamed, sat upright in her chair, and the light from her face was almost as radiant as her hair at night.

"Really, Mother? You think it's a smart move?"

Had she just complimented the girl? If light and enthusiasm were physical, the girl would have swelled so large that Gothel might have been clean knocked out of the window!

"Quite, but not unbeatable," she said, tartly, formulating her next moves in her mind.

"I'm protecting my king," Rapunzel pointed out.

If irritation was an instrument, Rapunzel was a virtuoso player.

"I have told you," said Gothel, quietly, "that protecting the king is not the mindset one should have in this game. The best defence is attack; the point is that in chess we must try to attack the other person's king, not defend our own."

"But-"

"And, moreover, the king is the weakest player, almost as weak and constrained as a pawn when it comes to moves. Gracious, Rapunzel, haven't we been over this already?"

"Yes, but-"

Gothel picked up her bishop pawn, moved it forwards. An undefended king, she thought, with a rush of vicious triumph. As it should be.

"Mother, what are you doing?" Rapunzel's startled voice exclaimed, somewhere in the distance across the small table.

Killing the king, she thought, and suddenly those undefined feelings and colours in her stomach from before reared, became pointed, and she was back in the bedroom of the royal couple, leaning over the silent infant, knife in hand.

I should have stabbed him. I should have stabbed his precious queen.

They would have looked for her, of course; but it was not as if she was not hiding still. She could have made them bleed, the way her flower had bled as they boiled it, forced it to reside in the body of a child, a child who still did not understand that her essence, her being, was stolen, that she was a child of thievery and brute violence.

Silently, she moved her knight pawn forwards, forwards, wiping Rapunzel's rook off the board.

The girl stands no chance against you, a part of her mind reasoned, pitifully, she's never played before.

Then this is the best way to learn.

And it would have been so easy to stab the king; she had not anticipated that the castle would be so poorly protected that an old woman could climb in through the windows and steal the crown princess. They had been lying there- useless, even more useless than chess pieces- the pathetic queen and her pathetic illness (and why should the queen have uprooted a flower and an entire kingdom in the panic to save her life, what right did she have to life that any other woman in the kingdom did not have? If Gothel had fallen sick, who would have cared for her? Who would have sent soldiers out, storming forth from the castle walls, to seek a cure?) – the king, so weakened by luxury he had his guards and advisors do everything for him.

Useless, she thought, viciously, as her king stayed motionless on the board, and she moved her pawns forwards, one by one. Useless. Useless.

"Checkmate," she said, presently, triumphantly, as Rapunzel stared at the board, stared at Gothel's still unprotected king.

"It's called a pawn storm," she couldn't help but drawl triumphantly, when Rapunzel eventually raised her questioning eyes from the board. "My little flower, this is what I meant when I said that the aim of the game is to kill the king."

She watched Rapunzel's eyes, as best she could, watched the confusion darken and dawn into a light quite unlike the light of the sun or candle flame, the light that whispered, yes, I feel it, too, and smiled.

"Shall we play another round?"

Rapunzel did not mention anything more about saving kings.

A/N: I'm alive! And I have finished my first degree, with First Class Honours in English! Alas, that has not shown in this story, which is far from being the best thing I've written. This is, in part, because my own education in chess is limited to a 1.5 hour tutorial with a friend during a frozen yoghurt date earlier this year, but also because I'm sorely out of the practice of fiction writing. Thanks for reading! Please do leave a review

Gothel's passion for regicide is a little out of the blue, perhaps, but I like to think she uses – or used – chess as an outlet for it. What can I say? She's a rage-filled, poisonous woman and I find myself utterly fascinated by her.