Cora's icy gaze swept over her older daughter, twelve-year-old Zelena.

The one she kept.

She had hated her second baby clandestinely the entire pregnancy, painting on a phony smile and cooing about how excited she was for the royal family's new addition.

When she gave birth, she called a huntsman in. Commanded the wolf man to take her child deep into a forest and kill her.

As soon as he left with a picnic basket containing her magically-silenced wailing newborn, she called her husband into the room.

Weeping heavily, she informed him their newborn daughter was a stillborn.

After he left her chambers, his head bowed in the deepest sorrow, she watched the huntsman from her crystal ball, the tears gone from her smooth cheeks.

He took the baby deep into the forest, raised a dagger to kill (Cora felt a wave of hysterical excitement watching), and—

Purple magic swirled around him. Man and dagger became a stone.

Cora couldn't believe what had transpired…yet she could.

Dowsing her insides with a glass of champagne in a stemmed glass, she decided to let the child be. She didn't know who her mother was, even if she survived all alone in the forest, she was hardly likely to come running up to the castle's grounds and dangle herself under Cora's skirts.

If she did, Cora could kill her herself. No harm done!

She hated "that thing" enough to do so, but she knew if she had, someone would have figured it out. Hence why she'd had the huntsman do her dirty work. She could try to hire another man, but she didn't want to.

But she wanted that thing to know one thing. Her mother had chosen to abandon her.

Gold smoke wafted from Cora's hands as she performed a spell to imprint the knowledge in her secondborn.

Now the baby is a ten-year-old and her two-year-old is twelve. Cora was smug knowing she won't be knocking on their door. Cora rose regally from her throne.

Zelena was everything Cora could ask for in a daughter. Proud of her progeny, Cora regarded her. Cold, calculating, devious in unpredictable, malevolent ways.

Zelena was not wading in loneliness nor desperate for affection. She simply was.

Right now, the princess was crackling. One of the maids had called her a "stupid child" when she assumed she was out of earshot. Zelena's eyes were deliriously happy.

Her shoulders tensed, but she never lost glimpse of her smile.

The maid saw a shadow moving, froze, and screamed when a zombie appeared and grabbed her. Swung her around in his dead arms. Made her dizzy, and—

The world went black.

Zelena kept her composure until her mother left the room.

Then she wilted.

Her mother wasn't terrible, yet Zelena had this bizarre feeling Cora didn't love her.

She was certainly proud of her, but when Zelena had attempted to embrace the woman on various occasions, it'd felt like hugging a bay.

There was no warmth. Only an empty chill.

There was something absent in her eyes, something she'd often seen in the castle staff when they were reunited with their children in front of Zelena.

At least Cora didn't glare with hostile hatred at her daughter. Being hated by her would be worse, but the indifference was enough to prick at her feathers.

Which may have been why when she noticed the assassin, Zelena pretended she hadn't.

She knew why he was here. Cora had tried to seduce a happily married man. He'd blocked her, but now his wife loathed Queen Cora.

Zelena knew the woman had hired him and why. It was a feeling she got when laying eyes on him.

Along the wall he moved, swift, sly, and deft. Only Zelena noticed him. Only Zelena had the option to raise an alert.

She could have warned Cora but chose not to.

From another room, she heard her mother scream from shock more than pain. It was the last sound she uttered, aside from a hitched, ragged breath.

Queen Cora was dead.