Girls Made of Snow and Glass

by Melissa Bashardoust

  “Please be calm,” she called to the crowd. “The princess has a small wound, nothing that will not heal shortly. Continue your meal, as I’m sure my husband would wish you to do.” Her voice was steady, and the anxious rustling died down. Mina knew she had to return to the table; if she didn’t, they would all assume something was wrong.

  Before she ascended the dais again, she examined the mirror and found a small crack in the glass near the bottom. She could have fixed it, of course, but too many people had already seen the damage. “Should we dispose of it, my lady?” one of the men asked.

  Mina brushed her fingers against the cool glass. It wasn’t just glass, though; she was reaching out to herself, to the image that had taught her that she was a queen. Wouldn’t it be ungrateful to be rid of it so soon?

  “No,” she said. “Take it to my chambers—the queen’s chambers.” The men obeyed, carrying the mirror out.

  Gregory came to her side. “Nicely handled,” he said as they ascended the dais together.

  Mina didn’t answer. She only took her seat at the high table and looked out at her new subjects, finding herself in the reflections of their eyes.

  * * *

  After the feast, Mina went looking for her new husband. She hadn’t forgotten the promise she had made to herself, that she would tell him about her heart on their wedding night. She would explain to him what it meant, and he would reassure her that her father must have been mistaken, that their love for each other proved her heart was as real as his.

  She found Nicholas in his room, staring into the fireplace.

  “Has the princess recovered?” Mina asked.

  Nicholas turned to her, his whole body tense. “Yes, she’s asleep in her room. I’ll check on her again later tonight.”

  “Surely it isn’t that serious? It was a scrape. Didn’t your surgeon examine her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I want to be there if she needs me. I don’t want her to think that our marriage will change anything.”

  “I see.” He’d rather spend his wedding night with her, Mina thought, and she couldn’t help the burst of rage she felt—toward her husband, his daughter, even his dead wife.

  “You’re angry with me,” the king said, lifting an eyebrow in surprise.

  “I’m not angry, my lord,” Mina lied, “but I had hoped not to spend my wedding night alone.” She came closer to him and placed one hand on his chest, curling her fingers over the fabric of his shirt, wishing she could reach through flesh and fabric alike to claim his heart for her own. The king was staring at her hand, and he brought his own up to cover it, his skin warm from the wine and the excitement of the day. She slid her hand away from his, up to his jaw, his cheek, and he pressed her hand to his lips. Mina leaned in, feeling alive under his gaze. “Come back with me to my room, husband.”

  Cupping her face, he kissed her roughly. Mina brought her hands to his chest, but at her touch, he retreated, shaking his head at her. “I can’t ignore what happened tonight, Mina.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I thought I could marry you and still keep Lynet away from your father, but that was a mistake.” He shook his head again, looking away from her. “I’m afraid this marriage was a mistake.”

  His voice was resolute and unwavering as he spoke those words. And even as Mina felt dread slowly spreading through her, part of her knew that she should have expected this from the start. No one can love you, remember?

  “Nicholas, you can’t mean that,” she said in a near whisper. “You wanted this as much as I did.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I haven’t known a moment’s peace since I proposed to you. I kept wondering if I was endangering my daughter, if I was pursuing my own selfish desires without thinking of her. At least now I know I was right to feel that way.”

  “It’s a little too late to change your mind, isn’t it?” Mina spat, her hands shaking. She didn’t know whether to be devastated or furious, both emotions building inside her until she was sure she would tear herself in two.

  He stepped closer to her and took her face in his hands, simply looking at her, searching for something. “I’ve been unfair to you,” he said softly. “When we’re alone together, it’s easy for me to forget who you are, to pretend…”

  Mina pulled herself away from him. “To pretend that I’m Emilia. Is that what you mean?”

  “Mina, I’m sorry.”

  He reached for her again, but she stepped away from him. “If you closed your eyes and held me in your arms, it would be easy to think that I was her, to feel like you had a wife you could touch again. But I’m more than just something to touch, Nicholas. I want you to love me.”

  “I know. But I can’t give you what you want, any more than you can give me what I want. I see that now.”

  He started to turn away, but Mina stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Why?” she demanded, her voice trembling. “Because of my father? Or because of her? Emilia is dead, Nicholas.”

  She knew at once that she had made a mistake, and her hand fell from his arm. Even with the fire burning behind him, at that moment he looked like he was made of ice, rigid and unfeeling. “Nicholas—”

  “You’re right,” he said in a quiet voice. “Emilia is of the past, and now I must look to the future—to our future. I won’t take your crown from you. We will still be king and queen together, I promise. But we will be husband and wife in name only. And I don’t want your father to think of himself as Lynet’s family.”

  Mina didn’t speak. She didn’t trust herself not to scream or heap curses on both her new husband and his wretched daughter. And what would she tell her father? That her beauty wasn’t enough and she had nothing else to offer? That even as a queen, she didn’t have the power to win the love of a single man?

  But you don’t have that power, and you never will, Mina reminded herself. Even the adoring crowd at the feast only loved her because she was queen—and Nicholas already had a queen to love.

  “Is that all?” she said when she found her voice again.

  He softened then, letting out a sigh as he rubbed at his forehead. “No,” he said, “of course not. Make any request of me, and I’ll try to grant it.”

  Her first instinct was to deny both his offer and his pity, but then she considered more carefully—she was queen now, wasn’t she? She had wanted both Nicholas and the crown; why should she throw away both if she could only have one?

  “I want the South,” she said, a realization rather than a request. She was the first southern monarch since before Sybil’s curse—didn’t that grant her some sense of ownership, even responsibility? “When you receive petitions from anywhere in the South, I want you to pass them on to me. I decide what happens there and what projects are funded, with no interference. Will you grant me that?”

  He studied her a moment, taken aback by the fervor in her voice as she made her request. Finally, he nodded. “Very well. The South is yours. Anything else?”

  A place in your heart. “No,” she said. “Nothing else that you would be willing to give me.”

  “Mina—”

  “Good night, Nicholas.” She wanted to leave while she still had this partial victory.

  She remembered as she left the room that she had wanted to tell him about her heart. She never would now.

  * * *

  The queen’s chambers were much grander than those of a magician’s daughter. Her new mirror was already in place in her bedchamber, and Mina scowled at herself in the glass as she took off the gold circlet. She was beautiful, yes, but in the way a rug was beautiful. Something to look at, not someone to love.

  She slumped to the ground, weighed down by self-pity. Look at yourself, her reflection seemed to reprimand her, a queen with no king, a wife with no husband, sitting all alone on the floor of her large but empty room and feeling sorry for herself.

  Mina couldn’t even look herself in the eye. Her gaze fell on the cracks in th
e corner of the mirror, the source of all her troubles tonight. She thought of Lynet and fought down the impulse to blame her for the night’s disappointments. She told herself that even if Lynet hadn’t hurt herself, Nicholas would still have turned her away eventually—if not because of Gregory, then for some other reason. She told herself these things, but she didn’t know if she fully believed them—or if she wanted to believe them. It was much easier on her pride to blame Lynet. And didn’t she deserve that reprieve on her wedding night?

  She ran her fingers over the lines in the glass, reminded of the scars on Felix’s arms.

  Felix.

  She still had the empty mirror frame locked away in a chest. She’d kept it because it had been her mother’s, but also because it helped her remember that there was someone in this castle who loved her in his own way. There were times since she’d turned Felix away that she was tempted to call for him again, and she had always resisted—but now there was no need to resist, no reason to be true to a husband who was no husband at all.

  Mina made a decision: she wouldn’t spend her wedding night alone.

  It was late enough that she could slip through the castle halls unnoticed, and the chapel was deserted, as always, when she arrived there. Would he still come to her, if she called to him? Or would he resist her, resenting her now that she was married?

  She called for him anyway, reaching out to him just enough so he would feel that pull and know that she wanted him. Mina could make him come to her, make him love her again with a silent command, but she didn’t want that. She wanted Felix to choose to come to the chapel—to choose her.

  She shivered in the cold, waiting. She tried to tell herself that it was a long walk from the servants’ quarters to the chapel, that she had to be patient, but with every moment that passed, she was sure he wouldn’t come. She would either have to go back to her room, alone and twice rejected, or else wait here forever in the dark.

  Another minute passed, and another, and the empty chapel—once so welcoming—seemed to mock her for her foolish hope. Did she think herself so worthy of forgiveness that she could expect Felix to simply run to her again?

  And then, impossibly, the sound of footsteps. Mina held her breath, listening closely, as the footsteps made their hasty way toward the chapel, growing louder as they reached the door.

  Felix’s broad frame filled the doorway, and he was looking at her in surprise. “I didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “I thought I was mistaken, and that I would come here and find this place empty.” He stepped into the room, but he kept his distance from her, watching her warily. “I thought tonight was your wedding night.”

  Mina wanted to reach for him, longing to feel the familiar breadth of his shoulders, the scars lining his arms, but she couldn’t bear the thought that even he would push her aside. “Tonight is my wedding night, but … but my husband doesn’t want me.”

  Felix blinked at her, his face expressionless. “Then he must be a fool.”

  She smiled sadly. “I’ve missed you, Felix.”

  He tilted his head. “You turned me away.” There was no reproach in his voice; he was simply stating a fact.

  The light shone on his eyes, and she saw how blank and empty they were. The last time she had seen him, he had been almost human, but now, after being away from her, he had become the perfect huntsman and no more. Did he remember loving her at all?

  “I shouldn’t have called you again,” Mina murmured. “It’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Felix said, taking a step closer to her. “Why did you call me here tonight?”

  She wanted to do what she should have done the last time—turn him back to glass, destroy any evidence that he had lived, that he had stood here in this same room and loved her. “I don’t know,” she snapped. “You don’t even—”

  He took another step toward her. “I don’t what?”

  She shook her head, furious at herself for coming here tonight. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He was standing directly in front of her now, so that she had to look up at him. “What do you want from me, Mina?” he said, and for a moment, she saw in his eyes a flicker of hope—or perhaps it was just her own feeling that she saw reflected in him.

  “I just want you to love me again,” she said.

  Her voice cracked when she spoke, and she realized how desperately she meant what she said. If Felix didn’t love her anymore—if even her own creation had turned against her—then what did she have left? Her icy composure was gone now, and she silently pleaded with him as an equal, two clumsy glass hearts trying to fit together without breaking.

  “Mina,” Felix murmured, and his eyes seemed to glow, absorbing the light from her lamp. He took her face in his hands and leaned in to kiss her forehead, and then the bridge of her nose. His arms came around her, and Mina clung to him in relief. He wasn’t warm, not exactly, but the pressure of his arms around her was something similar to warmth, and that was enough for her tonight.

  “You kept me away from you for too long,” he murmured into her hair. “I had forgotten how it felt to love you.”

  “I’ll never wait this long again,” she promised.

  She knew his love was only an illusion, but that, too, was enough for tonight.

  * * *

  It was late when she returned to her room, but Mina didn’t plan to sleep, yet. She lit some candles and smiled to herself, still holding on to that joyous moment when Felix had taken her in his arms again. And then there was a knock at the door, and the moment was ruined.

  Nicholas? Her first thought was that her husband had come to see her, and she was suddenly aware of how badly she wanted it to be true, how much she still wanted him to love her. She knew she would break all her promises to Felix if it meant she could have her husband at her side.

  But when she opened the door, she didn’t see anyone at first. Then she heard a small cough, and Mina looked down to see Lynet standing in the doorway, a bandage on her forehead and her knuckles in her mouth. Her happiness from a moment ago proved itself to be a shallow, flimsy thing compared to the sinking disappointment she felt now.

  “Lynet? What are you doing here so late?”

  “I’m sorry I broke your mirror,” Lynet mumbled. She looked down at her feet.

  Even though Mina had been happy earlier to blame Lynet for the night’s humiliation, the girl seemed so upset that Mina wanted to reassure her.

  Keep your distance, Mina started to remind herself—but she didn’t need to anymore. Lynet had been shy with Mina ever since the engagement, and Mina had done nothing to discourage it, but that was before, when she wanted to please Nicholas. Now there was no reason to do anything for his sake.

  “Come inside, Lynet,” Mina said. “I want to show you something.”

  She led the girl through to her bedchamber, until they were standing together in front of the mirror. Mina went down to her knees and pointed at the web of cracks in the corner. “Do you see that?”

  Lynet nodded.

  “That’s where you hit your head. See? I would have to get all the way down here on my knees before I could even notice it. When I stand up”—she stood, to demonstrate her point—“I can’t even see it.” She stood a little to the side, so that she wouldn’t reflect on the cracked glass at all, and Lynet finally looked up at her and smiled.

  “But what about your head? Does it hurt where you hit it?” Mina asked.

  Lynet shook her head.

  “Does your father know you’re here?”

  She shook her head again. “He’s sleeping.”

  Mina felt strangely smug about this, as if she and Lynet were keeping a secret together. She looked down at the girl beside her, the girl who had shown Mina nothing but warmth and acceptance since the moment they had met. Lynet was too young to know the prejudices of her fellow northerners, too innocent to see in Mina the sharp glint of her glass heart—and so in her innocence, she made Mina innocent as well.

  Mina went
to sit on the edge of the bed. “Come sit here with me,” she said, patting the space beside her.

  “Yes, Stepmother.” Lynet climbed up next to her.

  Mina wrinkled her nose. “Oh, I don’t like that. ‘Stepmother’ makes me sound so old and formal. Call me Mina, like you used to.”

  Lynet didn’t say anything.

  “Lynet, I know … I know I’ve been preoccupied with the engagement and the wedding, and so I haven’t been able to spend much time with you, but now that it’s all over … well, we’re still friends, aren’t we?”

  “You’re my stepmother,” Lynet recited.

  “That’s true,” Mina said. “I’m your stepmother, and I can never replace your mother, but you can still…” You can still love me. “You can still be my friend. You have only one mother, but you can have many friends.”

  Lynet considered this, and then she inched closer to Mina, taking a strand of her hair in her little hand. “I wish my hair was like yours,” she said, the hair spilling from her hand.

  “But you have such wonderful curls,” Mina said. Like your mother. But she was sure Lynet had heard that often enough from Nicholas. “You just need to brush it more often.”

  Lynet shook her head. “The brush gets stuck, and then it hurts. I don’t like brushing my hair.”

  Mina studied Lynet’s hair for a moment, and then she said, “Turn around with your back to me.”

  Lynet frowned in suspicion, but she turned with her arms crossed. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to brush your hair.” At once, Lynet started to scramble away, so Mina pushed her back down and kept her hands on her shoulders. “Listen to me. I’m going to brush your hair with my fingers. I’ll be careful so it won’t hurt, but if it does hurt, we’ll stop. Agreed?”

  “No!”

  “Are you scared, little wolf cub?”

  She pouted, but she stopped struggling to get away. “No.”

  Mina tried not to laugh, knowing Lynet would be offended if she did. She started to comb through Lynet’s hair with her fingers, untangling and unknotting. She did hurt Lynet once or twice—the girl flinched whenever she approached a particularly nasty tangle—but Lynet didn’t protest or try to leave.