“She is here, Your Grace,” said Beatrice, returning with a pair of silk shoes. “She awaits you in your antechamber.”
Beatrice placed the shoes on the floor, and the queen slipped her feet into them. Then she snatched a gray tuft off a table and marched out of her dressing room, heels clicking against the stone floor.
The princess stood silhouetted in a window in the queen’s antechamber, twisting the ring on her left hand. It was the Ruler’s Ring—a gold oval with a unicorn in its center, framed by diamonds—and had been handed down through the centuries from the Greenlands’s monarchs to their heirs.
The queen could not think of anyone less suited to wear it. She walked up to the princess, took her hand, and smoothed it open, then dropped the fluff into it.
“Fur,” she said. “Pulled from blackbriar thorns. The wolf didn’t jump to its death, did it?”
Sophie stared down at the fluff. She made no reply.
The queen took hold of her chin and raised it. “You let it escape.” “Yes.”
“Why?”
Sophie’s eyes, bright with emotion, sought her stepmother’s. “I—I felt sorry for it. It was so frightened.”
With a snort of disgust, the queen released her. “The hunt was a chance for you to show strength, Sophia, not weakness.”
Sophie lowered her eyes.
“You are soft when you should be shrewd, forgiving when you should be fierce,” the queen continued. “You allow wolves to escape. You champion cowards and kennel boys.”
“Ten lashes will kill him,” Sophie said quietly.
“Ten lashes never killed anyone. And even if they did, what of it?” the queen snapped. “The boy, his father … They don’t matter. Monarchs matter. Don’t you see that?” She held her two hands out, palms up. “In my left hand, a boy. A weakling who likely won’t live to see manhood,” she said. “In my right hand, a queen … a ruler who must protect not one subject but an entire realm.” Her left hand sank. Her right hand rose. “What is the life of one boy compared to a queen’s?”
As the question hung in the air, the queen lowered her hands and asked another. “What kind of example does it set to allow disobedient creatures to go unpunished?”
It took all Sophie’s courage to meet her stepmother’s withering gaze again. “The dog was afraid. Is it so terrible to show a scared creature mercy?” she asked.
The queen laughed. It was a dry, dusty sound. “Mercy is just another word for weakness. Let a wolf live, and she’ll repay your kindness by tearing out your throat. Fear is the only thing that keeps a queen safe. People obey me because they’re frightened of me.”
“People obeyed my father because they loved him.”
The words popped out of Sophie’s mouth before she could stop them. She regretted them immediately. Her stepmother hated any mention of her late husband, a man revered by his people.
“Your father had the luxury of love. He was a man,” the queen spat. “No one, not even his enemies, questioned his right to sit on the throne. I do not have that luxury. You will not, either, you little fool. The people need a firm hand to keep them in place. I have been queen regent these past six years, ever since your father’s death. Tomorrow is your coronation day. Tomorrow you become queen. How can you rule a country, Sophia, if you cannot rule yourself?”
Before Sophie could attempt to stammer out an answer, the sound of drums, beating like a dirge, was heard.
“Ah, I believe the captain of the guards is about to carry out my orders,” said the queen. She opened the window and looked at the courtyard below. After a moment, she turned back to Sophie. “Would you like to watch?”
Sophie shook her head, her eyes shiny with tears.
“No? I didn’t think so. It’s too hard, too painful, isn’t it? But that’s what ruling is—hard and painful. It’s making difficult decisions and handing down harsh sentences in order to keep your subjects in line and your enemies at bay.” The queen pointed at her. “It’s your fault the boy is being whipped, your fault the hounds will be slaughtered. Had you not set that cowardly dog free, none of this would be happening. Do you see now the havoc kindness wreaks?”
Sophie was unable to speak. Tears trickled down her cheeks. She pushed them away with the heel of her hand.
The queen clucked her tongue. “You are fortunate to have me here to help you rule until you marry.” She jabbed a pointed nail into Sophie’s ribs. “That thing in there … your soft, stupid heart? It will get you killed. Put it in a box and put that box on a high shelf. Never take it down.”
“Am I dismissed?” Sophie asked in a small, broken voice, desperate to escape the terrible sound of the drums.
“Not yet. There is a ball tonight, as you are well aware. There are to be no red eyes, no blotchy cheeks. You have a stunning gown to wear, and a selection of jewels from the crown’s vault will be brought to your chambers. You have your beauty and your youth. Use these things to secure a strong ruler for this realm. Today you have shown me, yet again, that it will need one.”
Sophie, crumbling, gave a nod and hurried from the room. Adelaide watched her leave. Outside the window, the drumbeats stopped. The captain of the guards shouted his orders. The queen knew what was coming next. She could have closed her window, but she did not. Instead, she stood motionlessly, listening silently as the whip cracked. She did not blink. She did not flinch.
And if something flickered in her eyes, something like sorrow … well, what did it matter?
There was no one there to see it.
FIVE
There are bogs in the Darkwood, treacherous and deep. Take one wrong step, and they’ll swallow you whole.
Most people stay well away from them, but in years past, when I’d stalked a stag too far into the forest and had to make my way home in the dark, I’d seen a lantern bobbing through the thick, clutching gloom that shrouds them. And then, days later, there came news of someone gone missing—a husband too ready with his fists, a mistress grown demanding, a miser with a sack of gold hidden under his floor.
The bodies were never found. The trials never held. The guilty went unpunished to comfortable graves in the churchyard. Time moved on. People forgot.
But the bogs never did.
Years, decades, sometimes centuries later, they gave up their restless dead, pushing the old bones out of their sodden black depths to the surface.
The truth is like that, too. Bury it deep. Hope that it rots. But one day, it will come back.
Tattered and shuffling and stinking of death, it comes home to knock on your door.
Adelaide committed many crimes. Rulers often do. A king beheads a wife for giving him daughters. A prince poisons a mutinous noble. A bishop burns a man at the stake because his God speaks English, not Latin. It is not murder, the history books say, but execution. Done to preserve the peace. Distasteful, yes, but necessary.
But in Adelaide’s time, and perhaps still in yours, there was one crime that could not be countenanced. There was one abomination no king, no prince or pope could forgive …
A woman who wears a crown.
Mirror, mirror on the wall … who’s the fairest of them all?
Do you know the villain yet? Do you see his face?