That is the prologue. If anything in it rings hollow or false, it is because I am a different person now than I was then, and can no longer recall what love was like before it became tangled up in hatred. The hatred I do remember well, though it has long since chilled into aimless spite. What follows is how it began in earnest.

Spring came, and the worst days of hunger ended. I was not happy, but I had much hope for future happiness. My handsome wolf and I set a summer date for our marriage. I sold the farm for a good sum of money and retreated into the woods to spend what was left of the period of mourning in austerity and solitude.

One day as I was hunting, I happened to see a part of the royal guard riding by on horseback. At first I was afraid they had returned to do my home further injury, but then I noticed they were escorting a pair of young aristocrats. The nobles, a boy and a girl, appeared to be twins of about thirteen years of age. Their hair was the yellow of fresh, fatty butter, their skin that delicate pale shade only ever seen on lords and invalids. The boy dressed smartly yet sensibly — but his sister, on the other hand! Her dress was made of yellow silk and trimmed with black lace. I say "trimmed"; really, it was bloated with it. Her petticoats were black lace. She had pearls on her fingers, in her ears, strung around her neck. The falcon on her arm mouthed them lazily as she rode. Her horse's mane and tail were braided. Her saddle was polished black and studded with silver, which made the dead hares hanging from it seem entirely out of place. I had never in my life beheld such a creature. Fascinated, I watched her from hiding.

"Oh, honestly, Len!" she was saying. She spoke so loudly I could hear her quite clearly even at a distance. "They're rabbits. They're for hunting. If you don't stop being squeamish, I'll tell the cook you don't get any."

"If you say so, your highness," her brother replied with a wan smile. Him I had to strain to hear, but the "your highness" I picked out quite clearly. "Still, I do worry…"

"Hm? What do you worry about?"

"The town near here. Isn't it one of the ones that were taxed so heavily last year?"

"Is it? How would I know?"

"It just feels…"

"Yes?"

"You have to promise you won't laugh!"

"Don't you like my laughter, Len?"

"Oh, well then! It just feels a bit like poaching." She did laugh, loudly, and he broke out in a blush.

"Oh, Len, I love you dearly!" she exclaimed. "You're so sentimental. Ah, but they're rabbits too! Their lives are so filthy and short, the pitiful things! But don't you worry about them. They breed so, filling up their dirty little burrows, I dare say we'll never run out of them."

"If you say so, your highness."

"Len, you mustn't go soft on me. I'm telling you: it's no good. They'd be poor if we never taxed them a penny. They'd be poor if we stripped ourselves bare and gave them everything we own. They wouldn't know what to do with wealth. Poor's in the blood; it's the natural, animal state of things. It needs to be bred out over generations."

"If you say so, your highness."

"You don't believe me at all, do you? Don't you know, Len, that all the flowers in all the world's gardens are distantly descended from wild plants? But do you think any gardener in his right mind would plant a weed among rose bushes and try to grow it into one? I'm sure you can guess what would come of that. No, the weeds mustn't be allowed to strangle the roses. If they get into the garden, there's always the compost heap. Oh, that's not so shocking, is it? Don't look like that. That's how you look at my birds when they bring us tasty rabbits. I think it's terribly ungrateful of you. Is it a bird's fault she has talons, or that rabbits are so tasty, or that— Len!"

He had jumped in front of her, knocking her off her horse, and now lay beside her on the ground with an arrow sticking out from his shoulder. I felt nothing but a cold, gray calm. My mind was clear and still, no longer pounding with the unbearable understanding of what my father had died for. I hadn't skewered her through the throat or punched a hole into her skull, but at least I'd succeeded in shutting her up.

And then I noticed the royal guard charging toward the bushes I was concealed behind.

I felt a tug at my back, and my quiver lifted over my head. Suddenly he was beside me, taking the bow from my hands. "Run, you little fool," my fiancé hissed. "Hide! Quick!"

"How—?" I began.

"No time!" And then he shoved me to the ground and broke through the thicket to stand in the way of the mounted soldiers. I lay stunned and uncomprehending; in all the time I'd known him, until that moment he had never laid hands on me.

They took hold of him easily; he put up only a token resistance. The queen screamed her brother's name again, and then, "Regicide! Regicide, you dog, you mutt, you cur!" She ran at him, fell upon him, pulled out his hair in large, bleeding tufts. She drew her hunting knife and gouged his arms, slashed his face, cut off one of his ears and put out one of his eyes. I will never forget the sight of his blood on her delicate, manicured hands. I was too terrified to show myself and rescue him. I was too horrified to flee and leave him behind. I could only watch.

"Your majesty!" the queen's twin called out weakly. "My lady! I need help!" That snapped her out of it; she looked from my fiancé to the knife in her hands as though embarrassed by her behavior and by how far beneath her both of them were. She remounted her horse, then pulled her brother up in front of her. Cradling him in her arms she turned the horse toward the city and spurred it into a smooth but swift canter. The soldiers followed behind her, one taking the reigns of the wounded boy's unmanned mount, the other two dragging my poor love between them.

To this day I do not know how he managed to be there just when I needed him. Maybe he'd heard there were soldiers nearing the town and gone to scout them out. Maybe he'd been keeping an eye on me all through my mourning, and only then felt it necessary to intercede. But it does not matter how it happened; what matters is that it happened, that because of me his life ended, and because of him mine continued on even as my last hope for happiness perished before my eyes.

I collected what supplies I had with me at camp and headed out for the capitol. In my mind my intention was to save him any way I could, but in my heart I knew it was already over. The journey took almost two days on foot, but I arrived in time to stand in the crowd at Justice Square. It was a large one; only once have I seen larger, and that would not be until more than a year later. I learned afterward that she had purposely drawn it there, intending to set an example for as many people as she could. She certainly set one for me — though perhaps not in the way she intended.

That's me telling jokes — rotten jokes — to eat up space and time. I don't think that I can write this. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't have the words. I ought to lay my pen down now and forget this whole ridiculous exercise. But I can't do that either. I'll skip ahead, then. Many others saw what happened that day. Perhaps some even wrote about it. None saw it through my eyes. None felt my heart die and begin to rot in my chest. But that's something that can't be written down, so what does history care?

There's just one thing that needs to be said. When, once it was all over, the young queen stood at the side of the scaffold, flanked by heavily armed and armored soldiers, and demanded of the people watching, "Now you will all bow down to me!"; when, draped in ominous, reverent silence, the crowd kneeled down to scrape the dirt with their noses; when, as the executioner pulled his head from the basket and held it aloft, and the dams beneath my eyes burst, and the tears came running hot and thick, I silently swore to someday pay her back — I dropped to my knees with all the rest.