Reflect- Snow White Retold

by Demelza Carlton

  Zurine considered this a moment. "Maybe. At least he got me my prince, in the end."

  Lancelot sighed. Too selfish to see sense. "Princess, I should warn you about Lord Melwas. He – "

  "I am here to mourn my father. After the funeral, I have a wedding and a coronation to prepare for. Lord Melwas can wait until after that."

  "But, Princess, this cannot wait."

  She screwed up her face, in the obstinate stare she'd used for as long as Lancelot could remember. She'd probably shown a similar expression before throwing tantrums for her wet nurse. "Then tell it to Prince Xylander. He will be your new king."

  A stranger on Artorius' throne. Lancelot knew his king had hoped Zurine might come to her senses one day, and take up her duties as ruler, but the girl's father had been too optimistic. Perhaps in a decade, she might grow up and into the queen her predecessor had been. For Guinevere had known her duties, better than Zurine.

  He suppressed a sigh, and headed off to find one of his men to take a message to the prince, telling him to watch out for Melwas, who was suspected of killing the King. Let this new prince sort things out here, for it was no longer Lancelot's responsibility. Lancelot had sworn to see Guinevere safe, and he would do his duty.

  Thirty-Nine

  Guinevere washed and dressed in haste, so she had plenty of time to regard her own wan reflection in the mirror before asking it to show her Lancelot instead.

  "I will take her outside the city, into the forest, and see that she does not return." His grim words and matching expression made her wish she hadn't spied upon him, but it was too late.

  He'd saved her from a public execution, only to take her into the forest to kill her in secret, instead.

  Guinevere had to face the truth. Her father wanted to kill her, her brother was too caught up in his new bride to care about her, and the man who'd saved her life intended to kill her at the first opportunity, for his loyalty lay to a crown she would no longer wear.

  Her first thought was to run, but she knew her running days were done. She had nowhere left to run to, and even if she did…Lancelot would find her. A man bound by honour would not rest until he'd done his duty.

  It was time to surrender to the inevitable. Guinevere was no fairytale princess, to be saved by some hero for a life lived happily ever after, filled with love. That was the fate of Zurine, and her ilk. Guinevere herself had been painted too clearly as the evil, usurping queen, who had time to enjoy her throne and crown for but a moment. Until the new queen replaced her at the end, and this was the end.

  Lancelot returned, talking of the need to hurry. He made no comment on her gown, the same white wool she'd worn when she entered court that first time. She hadn't bothered with a veil, though she could hide her hair beneath her cloak if Lancelot said she should. He did not.

  A dutiful daughter, then a dutiful queen…soon to be a dead one.

  Perhaps that was the duty of all queens, to die young. Like her mother, or Zurine's mother Viviana. She would see them both soon, surely, and be able to ask them.

  With her wrists tied together and attached to Lancelot's saddle by a stout length of rope that hung between her horse and his, Guinevere was left in no doubt that she was the knight's prisoner. The people of the capital knew it, too, as they parted to let them through, though Lancelot's frequent shouts that he was taking her to a place where she could do no harm and that she was under his protection drove the message home like a nail in the coffin that should have been hers.

  Now, she would forever sleep in a shallow grave in the forest, while the wriggling creatures that lived in the soil came to devour her corpse…

  "Are you cold, my queen?"

  His solicitous tone startled Guinevere out of her morbid thoughts. They were on the road outside the city, with the walls looming up behind her like a monster preparing to strike.

  The shivers that wracked her were not cold. They were fear, the biggest monster of all, that had dogged her steps for longer than she could remember.

  Why did she fear the end so? It was inevitable, after all. Why fear what she could not fight or stop?

  "Here, take my cloak."

  The thick layer of wool that settled on her shoulders startled her. It was still warm from his body, and his hands were warmer still as they grazed her skin to fasten the cloak at her throat.

  "Why?" she croaked, her throat too rough for her voice to come out right. "Why are you doing this?"

  Instead of riding ahead, he kept pace with her. "Because it is my duty. I swore an oath, and I am no oathbreaker."

  "What kind of oath? To take me into the forest and kill me?" That's what Zurine wanted, for she believed Guinevere had sent Xylander to kill her. Her fool of a brother, getting things wrong, only to save the girl at the last moment. A fate he could have avoided if he'd only listened.

  "No, you have nothing to fear from me, my queen. My oath…'twas one I swore to the King."

  "Artorius, or Xylander?" For a moment, she entertained a spark of hope. If it was Xylander…

  "King Artorius, may God rest his noble soul."

  Hope died.

  "So we ride all night, or until I fall off my horse and you drag me behind you to my death? Is this how this ends?" she asked bitterly.

  "No, we ride until we reach my preferred camp. We will stay there for the night, and ride on in the morning."

  And that was all the answer she was going to get, it seemed, as he nudged his horse ahead of her.

  Guinevere lost track of time as they rode on in silence.

  Finally, when she could no longer hear or see the city behind her through the trees, Lancelot led her off the road, onto a bridle path through the forest. The path soon opened up into a clearing, with a firepit in the middle of it.

  Lancelot set down his lantern beside the unlit fire and started to unsaddle his horse. Then he sat down to light the fire.

  Still on her horse, unable to get down with her wrists tied, Guinevere lost patience. "Are you going to leave me up here all night?"

  "Of course not, Your Majesty. I did not realise you would need assistance to dismount." He hurried over.

  If she'd been the vindictive sort, she might have kicked him. "Normally, I can dismount just fine, but I do not normally suffer the indignity of rope around my wrists."

  "Ah, of course. I forgot. Allow me to assist."

  She expected him to pull out a knife to cut her bonds, but he untied them instead, coiling the rope up on the ground beside his saddlebags.

  "No sense wasting a good length of rope," he said cheerfully, offering her his hand.

  She ignored it and slid from her horse. "Of course not. Not when I'm sure you intend to tie me up again so I don't run off while you sleep."

  "Where are you planning on running to, my queen?" he asked, heading back to the fire with a log to toss on the flames. "To the capital, where the people wish to burn you as a traitor? Or back to your homeland, which you were so desperate to leave you came to throw yourself on my king's mercy?"

  She had no answer, so she stayed silent.

  "If you had wanted to run, you would have found a way to do so long ago. You might have departed the morn after your wedding night, before anyone discovered the King's illness. Or you might have tried to bribe or enchant your guard, while you were trapped in your chamber. Or you might have taken your eating knife and cut your bonds, or simply slipped out of them, for I tied them loosely enough, under cover of my cloak, and ridden away, to wherever you pleased."

  Guinevere reached down in surprise to her eating knife, sheathed at her girdle. She had not thought of any of those things. What did that say about her? A braver woman would have fought to survive, but somewhere along the way, all the fight had gone out of her.

  She should have burned, and been done with it.

  Lancelot continued, "It seems to me that you are done running. What you really want is to stop, and feel safe."

  Damn him, the knight was right. Yes, she longed to feel saf
e again, like she had as a little girl in her mother's arms. Before the birds had flown. To never have to worry about someone wanting to kill her. "But we seldom get what we want," Guinevere said. She sat on a log beside the fire and stared into the flames.

  Should have burned.

  "Ah, but it is your lucky day, my queen. It is my sworn duty to protect you, and keep you safe. King Artorius had but one regret in his life, that he had not been able to protect Queen Viviana. He made me swear an oath that you would not meet the same fate. Where we are going, Melwas and his mob cannot go. I have in mind a convent, where you may live a quiet life to the end of your days. To reach the convent, we must cross my land, and my people are loyal to me, not Melwas."

  "So I trade one prison for another, and you are my jailer." And her crime? To be in the wrong place at the wrong time, to offend the wrong men while the right men saved other damsels. Never her. At least he would let her live. That was something.

  Lancelot coughed. "Actually, I had hoped you might accept the hospitality of my house, before going to the convent. I would offer you the freedom of the grounds, though I would caution you against swimming in the lake. It is quite deep, and cold even in the heat of summer. We have a boat, and I'd be happy to take you fishing."

  "Fishing." Of all the things that awaited her at the end of this journey, she had not thought it would include fish. This was all too much. "Sir Lancelot, I – "

  "Don't like fishing?" he interrupted. "It is quite relaxing. Not like hunting at all, though you may do that too, if that is your wish. My house stands in the late king's favourite hunting grounds, and he has not come to thin the numbers much of late…"

  She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Or what to say any more.

  Lancelot gestured toward some blankets he'd spread out by the fire. "Forgive me. You nearly died today, and here I am babbling about deer and fish. I'm sure you need rest. I should have brought the King's pavilion, along with a bed suitable for a queen, but in my haste, I neglected such necessities. You have my word that tomorrow night, you will sleep in the royal bedchamber of my castle, on a feather bed finer than Artorius keeps in the capital."

  "Thank you, Sir Lancelot." She rose and stumbled toward the makeshift bed. She was so numb she did not feel the cold night air, nor the hardness of the ground, as she drifted off into sleep.

  Forty

  Xylander sat in the princess's bedchamber, fighting both sleep and boredom, as he waited for her to arrive. Some guard he'd make, if he couldn't stay awake. After a while, he decided to steal a little sleep while he waited. She would surely wake him on her return. He stretched out on her bed, and lost himself to dreams.

  Much later, he woke to a small, warm hand, trailing up his thigh.

  Zurine had spoken of seducing him on their ride here, but he had not expected her to do so before their wedding night. Curious to see what she would do, he lay still, trying to keep his breathing even as if he still slept.

  She slid his tunic up to his waist, before he felt the mattress sink beneath her weight. Her knee slid between his, pushing his legs apart, before her hand crept higher.

  He should put a stop to this, Xylander told himself. They'd marry in a matter of days, so there was hardly any time to wait.

  Then again, with their wedding night only days away, no one would know if they'd decided to do a little lovemaking before the wedding.

  A hand landed over Xylander's mouth. Bigger, heavier than Zurine's.

  "You can scream all you like when I'm inside you, slut, but it'll be too late by then. You'll be mine, not some prince's property. And you will be my wife."

  That was definitely a man's voice. Which meant it was a man in bed with him, caressing his leg.

  Xylander reached for his dagger, slashing it across the hand on his thigh.

  A high scream rose from the man.

  Xylander threw himself out of bed and seized his sword. He whirled with the blade, just as the man fell forward. The blade met flesh. The man grunted softly, then collapsed.

  Xylander hurried to rekindle the fire, thrusting a torch into the flames so that he might see who his attacker was.

  The man lay facedown on the flagstones, blood spreading in a pool beneath him. Xylander used a foot to flip him over.

  He recognised Lord Melwas, but the man's dead eyes did not recognise him. Xylander glanced at the man's hands, but neither had any blood on them. The cut along the man's throat was clearly what had killed him, but blood blossomed on the man's tunic, as if Xylander had struck him a gut wound, too.

  No. He hadn't stabbed the man in the belly. Sure, it had been dark, but…

  Xylander glanced at the bed. A dark pool of blood marked the sheets, and in the middle of it sat…what appeared to be a small sausage.

  Realisation dawned, followed by horror. Xylander wrapped his hand in the sheet, seized the man's severed appendage, and threw it into the fire.

  He headed for the table, and poured himself a large cup of wine. He downed it in two gulps, shaking his head at the sheer insanity of it all. Then he took a deep breath. "Guards!" he bellowed.

  He didn't recognise the two men who came running into the room, but he wasn't sure even his brother Lubos would believe him if he told the tale of what had happened.

  "That's Lord Regent Melwas!" one of the guards gasped.

  "What happened to him?" the other asked.

  "I believe he came here, intending to attack Princess Zurine. However, he found me instead, and I do not deal lightly with assassins," Xylander said. He threw another log on the fire to cover the man's flaming cock before they saw it.

  One of the guards coughed. "Who are you, sir?" He didn't look like he wanted to issue the challenge, but with the grim determination of a man who knew his duty, he'd done it anyway.

  Good man. Xylander would need to know his name for sure.

  "I'm Prince Xylander, betrothed to Princess Zurine." Oh, he hated this bit, but for Zurine…he would do it. "Once we're married and crowned, I will be your new king."

  The two guards looked at one another, before going down on one knee. "Your Majesty."

  A pause, before the one who'd challenged him ventured, "What would you like us to do with the body, sire?"

  Xylander gave it a look of deep disgust. "Take it away before the princess sees it. There has been enough blood and death. I'd heard this was a peaceful, prosperous kingdom. But from what I've seen lately…"

  The brave man managed a smile. "King Artorius was a great king, sire, before he fell ill. A good king and queen can build us back up to where we were, right, sire?"

  Xylander managed a regal smile, the likes of which his brother Lubos might have been proud. "Of course."

  Forty-One

  "Are you fond of hunting, Your Majesty?"

  Guinevere looked up from her food to find Lancelot's eyes on her. What had he asked? Something about hunting.

  She shook her head. "Hunting was my brother's passion, not mine. I had a whole castle to see to, with little time for trips into the forest around our home. Besides, the only weapon I know how to wield is a knife, and there is very little honour in slaying something small and feeble enough to fall beneath the blade of my eating knife." She brandished her knife, plunged it into a piece of turnip, and popped it into her mouth.

  Lancelot laid his own eating knife on the table. "I have seen men slain in battle with a blade no bigger than this. Skilled assassins can kill with blades far smaller and sharper. Why, if you had been of a mind to, you could have used your eating knife to slay any one of your guards, while they lay in an enchanted sleep of your making, so that you might escape from your chamber in Castrum Castle."

  She could not suppress a shudder. "If you suspected such things, you should have taken it from me."

  "A man who falls asleep at his post deserves to die. Such is the way of war."

  "I fear I have not the heart for war." Nor the stomach for it, either. Guinevere pushed her plate away, sickened at the thought of kil
ling a man simply because he slept.

  "You need not fear anything here, Your Majesty. We are so far from any of our borders that by the time an enemy came near, he would have to lay waste to half the country. By the time he arrived here, I would see you safe within the walls of Castrum."

  Where the people of Castrum probably still wanted to burn her alive. Guinevere managed a watery smile as she rose. "Thank you, I fear I am unwell." She closed her eyes as she fought the terror of that night, stumbling blindly away.

  A warm hand engulfed hers. "Please, Your Majesty. Forgive me. I meant to reassure you, truly. I am a knight, not a courtier, and I have little experience with fine ladies."

  Guinevere opened her eyes. He looked so earnest.

  "I am not a courtier, either," she said softly. "Luckily, I wasn't queen long enough for anyone to find out."

  Lancelot swiped a hand across his face. "I fear I have only made things worse. To remind you of your recent loss…I meant to distract you, perhaps amuse you, by taking you hunting, but if you have no stomach for blood, I cannot imagine even falconry – "

  She stiffened. "You have hunting falcons?"

  "The finest in the kingdom, Your Majesty. King Artorius brought his best birds here, and they bred true."

  She hadn't flown a falcon since the day her mother died. Her voice came out breathless with longing. "Show me."

  Forty-Two

  He'd been about to suggest that it was time she entered the convent, for Lancelot had all but given up on seeing any sign of the vivacity Guinevere had shown before Artorius' illness. For two weeks he'd watched her, as she sat at his table, fading as surely as she'd done while imprisoned in Castrum Castle. Almost as if a part of her had died with her husband.

  Was it because she was a woman, that she mourned so deeply for a man she'd barely known? Lancelot had known Artorius all his life, and missed him as keenly as any dutiful son would his beloved father, but he had not let his sorrow stop him from doing what was necessary. More than anything, he felt driven to action, to do the things Artorius would have encouraged him to do, for death's shadow lay upon them all.