Snow (3 page)

“She dances well,” said Anais tightly.

Rui lifted one straight black brow. “Well enough,” he said lazily, kissing his way down her throat until his teeth grazed the sensitive place where her shoulder curved into her neck. He brushed his knuckles across her satin-clad breast. “Not as well as you, my Queen.” His hand opened and he squeezed her breast roughly. “Now come to bed or I swear I will have you there on your throne with all the court to watch on.” His voice was hoarse. She could smell the excitement on him, a dark feral scent. Her wild huntsman.

Her terror.

And her love.

The court rose as she did, heads dipping and knees bending as Anais walked past. Snow White and her dwarves, as they always did, bowed with impeccable courtesy. Anais felt Rui’s fingers tighten on her arm. He practically dragged her to her room, kicking the door shut behind her ladies as they bowed their way out. Taking hold of her gown, he ripped it open and pulled it from her body. He tore off his own clothes, pushed her down and took her there on the floor and twice more before they reached the bed.

The last time, as he hung above her, shuddering and sweat-soaked, Anais looked up into his mirror eyes. “Am I still the fairest of them all?”

“Yes. Oh gods, yes,” he moaned as he surged into her. He trembled a moment before dropping his face against her neck.

Anais recalled the way he had looked at the Snow Bitch that night and wondered if he lied.

From then on, jealousy and hatred of the Snow Bitch consumed Anais. In everything she did, Anais could feel Snow White’s winter gaze upon her. She spent hours thinking of ways to rid herself of the girl. Poison wouldn’t work because the dwarves tasted everything that was put before their mistress. An accident of some sort seemed the most logical choice. She discussed it with Rui one day as they stood in the mews. He was feeding his falcon with bloody titbits. The bird took the morsels from his bare hands daintily, despite the fierce power of its beak.

“I could cut her heart out for you.” He grinned and squeezed the bloody scraps between his fingers.

“Would you?” She looked up at him. “Could you?” she asked more softly.

He ran his fingers across her lips, smearing blood over them before he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed it off again.

“Yes,” he answered.

She sought reassurance in his eyes before she nodded agreement.

“A-hunting we will go,” murmured Rui as he lifted her skirts, his fingers skimming over her damp, eager flesh. “A-hunting we will go,” as his other hand loosened the ties on his breeches. “We’ll catch a fox and put it in a box,” as his phallus nudged at her opening, thick and hard and burning hot. “A-hunting we will go,” as he sheathed himself to the hilt.

He held himself still, his breath coming fast, his hands closing tightly upon Anais’s shoulders. He began to thrust fiercely against her, so hard that she was driven against the wall. She dug her nails into his arms, wrapped one leg around his lean hip and matched his rhythm. Rui bared his teeth at her, tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back. He dropped his mouth to her throat. She felt his teeth graze her flesh, gently at first then more fiercely. His hips pumped wildly. Anais strained to reach that place where thought tumbled into mindless delight, but she felt Rui’s release deep inside her, his breath gusting hot against her neck, and he slid out of her before she could fall over the precipice.

Breathing hard he straightened his clothing. He planted a swift hard kiss against Anais’s lips. “A-hunting we will go,” he said again. With a flash of white teeth, he turned away from her.

“Rui,” Anais said, frustrated desire lacing her voice. He turned back to her.

“What?” he said distractedly.

“What are you going to do? How are you going to do it?”

Another flash of white teeth. “Leave the details to me.”

“It will need to be done soon. Her betrothed comes to court at month’s end. She will be eighteen. And wed.”

An expression flashed across his face, gone before she had a chance to recognise just what it was. “Indeed,” he said thoughtfully. “That may be something we can work with.”

“What do you mean?”

He kissed her hard, stealing both breath and reason. “I told you. Leave it to me,” he murmured against her mouth.

Anais watched him walk away, dark, beautiful. Wicked. Something trailed cold fingers down her spine, raising gooseflesh on her arms. He was like a drug to her. A drug she knew would kill her in the end, but one she could not live without. More times than not there was no love in their coupling, just a savage desire to possess and to be possessed. But for the few times when there had been tenderness, and for the knowledge that she would always be the fairest of them all in his mirror eyes, she would do anything and everything to hold him.

The Princess

Snow White didn’t hate her stepmother. When Anais first came to court and Snow White saw how she brought the smile back to her father’s eyes she would have loved her if Anais had allowed it. The golden queen had seemed to be everything that a thin, pale child of nine could wish for in a mother. But Anais’s indifference and Snow White’s inherent shyness had precluded any bond forming between them. Then, as her father’s first flush of new love dissolved into something colder and more desperate and Anais’s indifference turned to something sharper and less benign, Snow White mantled her feelings in a cloak of ice and presented to both court and her stepmother a persona of glacial disinterest. That persona would suit her well as her father abandoned his ambition of a male heir and turned all his hopes upon Snow White once more.

It was then that the way men looked at her began to change. There was calculation in their gaze as well as lust. Snow White gave nothing away. Her expression could have been carved from snow, so blank and cold was it. In truth, although she well knew her worth as a future queen, she had no understanding of the games that men and women played. The hot looks and sweet words of the lords of her father’s court meant little to her.

Besides, her father had grander plans for his Snow White. A betrothal with a prince from the north. The papers were signed on her sixteenth birthday. They would wed when she was eighteen. There had also been an exchange of portraits. Like all northern men, he was dark, with a wide smiling mouth and laughing black eyes.

“He looks charming,” Anais had said in a bored voice.

Snow White had tucked the miniature away in a chest.

On the night of her birthday, her father had given her a gift. Seven dwarves from the mountains of the east. They had black hair and even blacker eyes. Their skin was the warm gold of sun-ripened barley. The tallest of them was almost of a height with her. He met her eyes and looked away, but not before she had seen the resentment burning there. The top of the youngest one’s head came up to her chin. His eyes were sad and gentle.

“They will protect you from all harm,” her father said. “They are bound to you and you alone.”

Another burning look from the tallest dwarf.

Snow White thanked her father and led her new attendants back to her apartments.

The eldest was called Ander. The tall one with the burning eyes was Gault. Kaffion and Meris were twin brothers, impossible to tell apart. The quiet, scholarly one was Shyla. Hiram liked to joke. The youngest was Kaliko. They became her shadows, her protectors. But try as she might, she could not overcome the fact that they were her possessions. Nor could she make them her friends, much as she longed to. For friends were something she sadly lacked. Something she needed.

Snow White had no doubt that her stepmother had lain with the king’s huntsman. There was hunger in Anais’s eyes whenever she looked at Rui Alvarez that even Snow White could recognise despite her lack of knowledge of the concourse between a man and a woman. She wondered that her father did not recognise it too, but it seemed that his indifference to his wife blinded him to any indiscretions. What made Snow White uncertain and sent her restless to her bed was the knowledge that Rui Alvarez directed that same hungry look at her sometimes when he thought Anais wasn’t watching.

But her stepmother had noticed. And Anais was afraid. Especially after Snow White and Kaliko had come across the queen and the huntsman in the servants’ passageway. Anais’s skirts were hiked about her hips. Rui thrust against her, his breathing ragged. Anais caught sight of her stepdaughter, and all colour fled from her face.

“Stop,” she had cried.

Rui turned his head and stared at them. His eyes were so blue. Snow White could see her image frozen in their lambent depths. Kaliko’s hand had tightened around hers. A slow wicked smile curled Rui’s full lips.

“Let her watch.”

And so, she had. Watched the hard powerful thrust of his body into Anais’s. At the end, just before he threw back his head and gasped out a strangled cry, he looked at her again.

Kaliko tugged on her hand, and she let him lead her away.

From then on she felt her stepmother’s dislike coalesce into something deeper and colder. Something implacable.

Then her father died.

Snow White grieved in private. She would reveal no hint of weakness to the court or to her stepmother. She knew Anais wished her harm. In a short while she would be eighteen. Old enough to wed and thus to rule in her own right. If she could survive until then. She needed to learn. Of power. Of men and women. To use her power as a woman over men.

She needed to learn from someone she could trust. Over the years since her father first gave Snow White her seven dwarves, she had grown close to the youngest one, Kaliko. She looked upon him as her dearest friend and there was ease in her dealings with the brothers Meris and Kaffion. With Shyla and Hiram. Even Ander, the eldest, had become less restrained in her company. Only Gault, with his dark, angry eyes and the resentment he wore like a cloak, a cloak he never discarded in her presence, could not be won over.

She decided to broach the subject at supper that night. As usual, one of the dwarves had tasted every dish set before her. Tonight it was Hiram’s turn. When the dessert of iced plums was placed before him, he took a spoonful and pulled a face. Then he took another spoonful. And another, shaking his head.

“There is something wrong with this dish.”

“Poison?” asked Snow White with a smile. They had played this game before. Hiram loved iced plums.

“Hmmm. I can’t quite put my finger on it.” He took another mouthful.

“If you can’t be certain that it is safe…” She let her voice trail off suggestively.

Hiram nodded. “I should taste a little more, Your Highness. Just to be sure.” By now, half the dish was gone.

“Indeed. I should wish to be entirely sure before I ate any of it.”

“Exactly so,” said Hiram with a grave nod as he scooped up another plum.

“In fact, I believe I have lost my taste for iced plums tonight.”

“Mmmm,” mumbled Hiram around a mouthful. He swallowed, chased the last plum around the plate and popped it into his mouth. He licked his lips.

Snow White laughed, and he grinned back at her.

“If it had been poisoned, you’d be dead now,” said Gault coldly.

Fear scraped its way down Snow White’s spine. Would her enemies resort to poison? Would Anais?

Hiram raised an eyebrow. “I’m more likely to die of shock if I ever see you smile, Gault, than I am from a dish of iced plums. Does he ever smile?” This was directed at Ander.

“Oh yes,” Ander replied softly. A muscle jerked in Gault’s jaw. Snow White had learned that the taciturn Gault and the grave self-restrained Ander were lovers when she accidentally caught them kissing one day. Embarrassed, she had tried to back away without them noticing, but Gault had raised his head and caught sight of her, angry colour flooding his face as he pushed Ander away. Without a word, Gault had strode from the room, leaving Ander to face her, his expression one of uncertainty.

Under Snow White’s gentle questioning, he had revealed that Gault had been his lover of many years, since they were little more than boys.

“We had no wish to anger you, Your Highness. If it displeases you…”

Snow White shook her head. “You love him,” she said, hearing the wistful note in her voice. Ander had closed his eyes, swallowing hard.

“More than my life,” he said fiercely.

Tears prickled at the back of her throat at the intensity of his words. Had anyone ever loved her except her father? Would anyone ever speak of her as Ander spoke of Gault, with the sun and the stars in his voice?

From that day, she and Ander had grown closer. If anything, she and Gault grew further apart, try as she might to make him see that she was not an enemy.

Now, after the servants had cleared away the supper dishes, she gathered her courage and spoke to her dwarves.

“From now on,” she said, “I have no wish for any of you to sample my dishes before I do. If anyone is to be poisoned, let it be me.”

“Is this because I ate all the iced plums?”

Snow White smiled at Hiram, shaking her head. “No. It’s because I want…I want you to do things for me because you want to, not because you have to. Whatever my father intended that you should be to me, well, I want more than that.”

“Your father bought us from the slave market at Veshy, Your Highness,” said Kaffion carefully. “I think it is clear what his intentions were.”

“We do not keep slaves here in the south,” Snow White said, her voice shaking slightly. Gault gave a hiss of derision as he wrenched his sleeve up to reveal an intricate tattoo woven about his wrist.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked harshly. “It’s a slave braid,
Your Highness
. It’s not just ink, but blood and pain that mark us as yours. We have no choice. We never had a choice.”

“But I don’t want…there must be a way to free you?” She looked hopefully at Ander.

Ander rolled back his sleeve and fingered the slave braid tattooed around his wrist. “The spells woven into this cannot, to my knowledge, be broken, Princess. We are yours to do with as you will. And we will lay down our lives for you.”