The Last Huntsman: A Snow White Retelling

by Page Morgan

  “You were supposed to take care of her. You said you could protect her!”

  “The circumstances changed.” I glanced at Lael. “The emperor had my sister.”

  It took less than a second for Ben to figure out what Ever and I had grappled in silence with for days.

  “So you traded my daughter for your sister?” His wild eyes landed on Lael. They calmed a little when they saw how young she was, and the bruises her dress couldn’t hide. Ben turned away from her. “Then why have you come back here?”

  “Because you’re the only person I know who despises Frederic as much as I do,” I answered. “You wanted to go after your wife when Frederic’s warriors took her, didn’t you?”

  Ben’s chin hiked up from where he’d buried it into his chest. He stared at me, his chest heaving as he figured out that Ever had told me everything.

  “But you didn’t,” I added.

  He jumped from the side of the bed. “I couldn’t!”

  Ben’s face contorted with a pent up sob, most likely repressed for sixteen years. “I loved her.” His eyes bored into mine. “If it had just been me, I would have gladly died trying to get her back. But the baby…” Ben dropped his gaze to the floor, his anger subsiding.

  It hadn’t just been him. He’d had Ever to think about. Ever to protect.

  “You loved Ever too much to leave her,” I finished for him.

  Ben lowered himself back onto the bed. It was a moment before he spoke again.

  “Before Evgenya accepted my hand in marriage, she brought me a book. It was her family history, her lineage. Each page was filled to the margins with names and dates and lines drawn to connect name to name. Birth dates, death dates, marriage dates. I couldn’t understand why she was showing me them. I didn’t care about her lineage. Mine wasn’t impressive, and I began to worry Evgenya wanted to show me that hers was. That she was making her excuse for why she couldn’t marry me.”

  It was more than all the words Ben Volk had probably ever said to me combined. I wouldn’t have dared stop him.

  “But then she started pointing out all the names on all the pages that had been marked in an odd way. Some names had a fat X through them, in others, the X was smaller and to the side of the name. Still, others were circled and crossed through, or erased from the parchment. Page after page, Evgenya showed me these names. Do you know what they were?”

  Ben didn’t expect a response. He continued on with his story.

  “They were the names of all the women in her family who had been captured for their mirror magic. Captured and used for their abilities. Captured and executed for witchcraft. It all depended on who had done the taking. Frederic’s predecessors were among them.”

  He stood up from the bed once more. “She showed me her magic, told me I could walk away. But I couldn’t. I already loved her, with or without the magic. And the next year, when we had a baby girl, Evgenya cried for two full days before she took out that book and finally penned in Ever’s name.”

  Lael bowed her head where she stood against the door, her hands clasped behind her back.

  “Yes, I wanted to go after my wife when the warriors took her,” Ben said. “I plotted and planned and nearly went dozens of times. But every time I was about to leave, I’d remember the way Evgenya wept when she wrote in Ever’s name. And I knew that above anything else, even my own vengeance, I had to keep her name from being marked off.”

  The bedroom went silent. So silent, an argument downstairs reached our ears with astounding clarity. Ben stooped to take out a satchel underneath his bed. He threw it on the quilt and it landed with a metallic clink.

  “What is that?” I asked, still haunted by the image of Ever’s mother writing in a name she knew she, or someone else, would most likely one day draw an X through.

  “I told you. I plotted. I planned.” Ben opened the bag wide enough to show me a plethora of weaponry. My jaw loosened at the sight of a crossbow, a leather roll holding a knife of every size, a small collection of glass bottles with clear liquids inside, and two spiked balls connected by a long chain.

  I reached across the bed and yanked the top of the satchel closed. “You planned well.” I picked it up and handed it to Ben. “It’s finally time to put it all to use.”

  29

  Ever

  An oblong, full-length mirror stood across the bedchamber, near a draped alcove. I stared at it as I sat in a velvet pocket chair, my knees drawn up against my chest. I could practically feel the pulse of the mirror, the wood frame carved into delicate scrollwork. I licked my lips, and with a surge of determination, got to my feet.

  The Morvansk fortress was freezing. Even with a flame leaping in the great stone hearth beside me, I shivered as the cold shot up my legs. The tucks and folds and flounces of the emerald and silver silk dress they’d given me to wear offered little warmth. It was Princess Mara’s dress. This was her chamber, her chair, her fire. Her mirror.

  I approached it quickly, glancing over my shoulder, to the antechamber doors. The chamber was empty for the first time in two days. Handmaids had attended me as if I was to be their new mistress. They’d scrubbed me clean in a scalding bath, powdered my skin with lavender talc, tidied my nails, scrubbed off the calluses on my palms and heels, and did what they could with my hair. I hated every second of it.

  My only solace had been Tobin’s blade. I’d hidden it in the chest at the foot of Mara’s bed, under her many pillows at night, and like now, tied into the silk underskirts of my dress. It would be waiting for me when the moment was right. I feared that moment more than anything, but I couldn’t shy away from it. This was my fight now. I had to do this. I had to.

  Not just for Tobin or for me, but for my mother, for Bram, and Trina’s little brother. For Tobin’s mother and brother, and even his sister, who’d survived Frederic in ways I couldn’t bring myself to think about.

  The mirror looked like an ink stain with soft glimmers of firelight. I ignored the temptation to see Tobin or my father. It would do me no good to see either of them now. What I needed most was a plan.

  “Mirror, show me a way out of this fortress,” I whispered. The echoing heartbeat of the mirror thudded in time with my own as the inky surface churned. Color threaded into the glass and swirled, and when the image came bright and clear, I dug my teeth into my inner cheek. It showed the fortress gate, with its drawbridge lowered.

  “Yes, I know that is the way out, but…” I sighed, exasperated. “Show me the corridors to travel in order to get there.”

  As soon as I killed Frederic—and I would kill him—I needed an escape, if at all possible. The likelihood of that seemed almost hopeless, but I wasn’t ready to give up.

  As the mirror swept away the fortress gate and came together again with the image of a corridor, I focused. The portraits on the walls, the tapestries, the windows, I tried to memorize them all as the mirror floated its way through the corridors, all the way to the gate.

  If I made it that far, I would be on my own from there. No mirror would be able to help me as I made my way back to Klaven.

  The door to Mara’s chamber sounded with a knock.

  “Clear,” I whispered, turning and hurrying back to the pocket chair. One of the oak doors opened a mere inch.

  “Mistress,” the voice of a warrior called in. Not Karev, at least.

  “Yes?”

  The warrior, wearing all armor but his helm, entered. “The emperor will see you.” He stood aside, a gesture for me to exit.

  In the three days it had taken Frederic’s army to return to Yort, and the two days since, I hadn’t seen or heard from the emperor once. For a man who’d ordered his daughter killed so he could justifiably invade a neighboring empire to find me, he didn’t seem anxious to use my powers at all.

  I closed my hands into fists as I followed the warrior down two frigid hallways. I’d seen one of them in the mirror’s surface moments before. The stone wall was dressed in tapestries that depicted battles and family
crests, paintings of the emperor and those who’d ruled before him.

  My eyes caught on a smaller portrait, done with pastel-hued oils. Princess Mara looked out from the canvas. Her expression held no life; the canvas might as well have been blank. I wondered how the young princess had endured this place. Had she known, even then when her likeness had been taken, that her father hadn’t cared if she lived or died?

  The warrior took a twisting set of steps, each turn lit by a sputtering torch. I could only imagine what Frederic’s warriors must have been told about me. The emperor had ended his invasion as soon as he’d gotten his hands on me; there had been no justice meted out for Princess Mara’s death. Did his warriors wonder why? Then again, they probably knew better than to question their emperor’s actions.

  We came to a stop at a dark door, made of wide oak planks and hinged together with studded strips of black steel. Two warriors stood sentry. The door opened, and a thin man in Morvansk scarlet appeared before us.

  Once I was inside, the attendant rushed past me. “This way.”

  As I walked, my thigh felt the presence of Tobin’s blade. It was there. I just had to use it.

  Frederic was standing at the hearth when I emerged from a pair of heavy, brocade drapes.

  “Your majesty,” the attendant bowed deeply, and then disappeared through the slit in the drapes.

  The emperor continued to stare into the fire, his hands clasped behind his back. He appeared more royal than he had at the alehouse. His tall black boots reached to his knees, and a black overcoat fell down to them, obscuring his trousers. A cream-colored ruffle fringed his collar and his wrists. He wore no crown to show his status. He didn’t need it. His status was in the air all around him. Suddenly, the knife buried in my petticoats felt like a goose feather.

  “I do not wish to call you Everett,” he said without turning to see me. “How shall I address you?”

  He was putting on a show of formality and grace. Well, he wouldn’t get one from me.

  “You can call me Mirror. That’s all I am to you,” I answered, vowing never to reveal the name Volk—though I knew Karev very well might have already told the emperor of my connection to the tavern back in Rooks Hollow, and to the huntsman. If that were the case, my father would be found and murdered. Or maybe he had already disappeared from Rooks Hollow. Would he run? Come looking for me? I hated that I didn’t know him well enough to know the answer.

  Frederic turned. The firelight on his cheek gave his grin a devilish look. “Your imagination is lacking, Mirror. I certainly hope your abilities do not.”

  He went to the wall beside the hearth, where heavy black curtains hung. It wasn’t a window; the edges of a gold frame could be seen. Directly beneath, there were a few steps leading to a circular golden platform, which the emperor now took. The platform would not have accommodated more than one person. I frowned as he reached for a tasseled rope. He pulled it and the curtains parted, revealing a mirror that made the silver filigree one in my old barn loft look as dainty as Trina Petrev’s compact.

  This gold frame had been carved in ornate scrollwork, twisting with leaves and thorns and fruit. Curled, razor-sharp points of a hawk’s talons tipped each corner of the square mirror. But there was something wrong with the mirror’s glass. The black surface didn’t reflect a single glint of light.

  “You see the problem, perhaps,” he said.

  I frowned, feeling the problem more than seeing it. And then I realized what it was: Frederic’s reflection was missing.

  The mirror reflected nothing.

  “I commissioned this mirror sixteen years ago when your mother came to me.”

  I broke my stare from the ghastly mirror. “She didn’t come to you. You took her.”

  He was unmoved by my reproach. I peered again into the black void of a mirror, wondering what had happened to it. A creeping shudder unraveled along my spine, branched out into my ribs, and reached all the way down to my knees.

  “Prove yourself, Mirror.” The emperor stood with his feet hip-width apart, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

  My head felt light as I stared at him. “Prove myself?”

  “Bid the mirror to show you something. Prove you possess what it is I desire.”

  Nausea swirled in the pit of my stomach. There was something else wrong with the mirror: It didn’t have a pulse, not like the one in my loft, or the one in Mara’s bedchamber had. Instead of feeling the echo of a second heartbeat inside my chest, there was only my own heart—and it was slowing. Just like the time I’d held Trina Petrev’s compact.

  “No,” I said, my vision splitting. Instead of one emperor, his body divided down the center, forming two. “I have nothing to prove to you.”

  Frederic’s throat clicked. “Your mother was just as headstrong.” He flexed his jaw muscles. “The soldiers I sent to bring her to the fortress said they’d found her with a man and a child. Do you know what she said when I commanded her to show me her baby in the mirror?”

  I knew the answer before he said it.

  “No.” He gazed into the mirror a moment. “No. No, no, no. There wasn’t another word she uttered.”

  “Then how did you know to look for me in Klaven?” I asked.

  Frederic scoffed. “When her husband never attempted to take her back, I knew they were both protecting you from falling into my hands. I also knew the only place closed off to me was Klaven. I asked her once if that was where her spineless husband had taken you.”

  I bit down on the sides of my tongue to keep from defending my father. Another coil of nausea kinked in my stomach, too. It wasn’t just being here with the emperor that was making me feel ill. The time I held Trina’s compact, I’d felt the same dizzy and weak sensation.

  “You should have seen the fear in her eyes,” Frederic went on. “It was all the answer I needed.”

  I touched my forehead; felt a rash of sweat there. Frederic observed me and cocked his head. “How much do you know about this magic of yours?”

  I lifted my chin. I knew I should answer, that this man was dangerous and held all the winning cards, but I couldn’t. My mouth wouldn’t allow it.

  He reached for the side of the mirror, and through my fogged vision, saw him peel away a part of the frame. I frowned as my eyes cleared a moment later, and I realized he wasn’t holding part of the frame, but a length of golden chain, and at the very end of it, a thick shackle.

  The air in my lungs turned to soup. I gaped at the shackle, my entire body revolting as I backed away.

  “Your instinct tells you to flee from this, I see,” the emperor said, lips twisting in amusement. “Well then, do as I command—prove your worth, Mirror—and I will not have you dragged up here and forced into these shackles.”

  There was more than one? My eyes instantly found the second golden chain hanging from the opposite edge of the mirror. The metal blended almost seamlessly into the frame. Had my mother been chained to that mirror? My gut twisted some more, violently.

  “Do hurry. The effects of the mirror are worse when you come into contact with the gold, but you can still feel them now,” the emperor said as a soft chiming noise began in my ears. The gold. Trina’s compact had been gold, too. That was what was making me feel sick?

  “Show me something.” He lifted his chin, considering. “My huntsman. Yes. Bid the mirror to show you my huntsman.”

  Tobin. My heart stuttered. I didn’t want to see him, and at the same time, I was greedy to lay eyes on him. And then…the emperor might let me leave his chamber. He might cover the mirror that seemed to be pulling at me.

  “Mirror,” I whispered, a tug deep in the back of my throat. “Show me the emperor’s huntsman.”

  It felt as if each word yanked hard on a string that had been run down my throat and knotted around my insides. As the dead black surface changed over into ripples of moving light, Frederic let out a bark of victory. A cold sweat erupted on the back of my neck. It quickly engulfed my chest and underarms, and
the invisible string gave another hard pull. This feeling…it was so odd. I didn’t understand it.

  The gilded mirror showed a wide, languid river fringed with reeds and lily pads. Tobin stood in the water up to his waist, his shirt in his hands. He twisted the linen into a tight coil, squeezing water from it. Tobin’s pale skin was made even whiter by the shining reflection of sunlight off the water. The shoulder with his tattoo, the M divided by a healing scar, faced us.

  “It seems as if he got into a little scrape.” The emperor chuckled as my head continued to spin, as the nausea weakened my knees and my heart slowed to a sleepy pace.

  Frederic didn’t seem to know of my link to Tobin yet. That was a good thing, I knew, but I felt too queasy to care very much. “Excellent work, Mirror. That is all.”

  I heard the emperor, but my lips wouldn’t move to clear the image. I was paralyzed with the same unexplainable helplessness that had hit me when I’d looked into Trina Petrev’s compact. My legs gave out, and I dropped to the rug. But my eyes were fastened to the mirror, beyond their will.

  Frederic stepped to the very edge of the dais to look down at me. “Clear it. We still have some acquainting to do before you begin your…confinement.”

  With a small reserve of strength left in me, I forced my lips apart. “Clear.”

  The mirror washed out all color and light, and sealed back over into an onyx sheet. The swells of sickness receded a little, but before I could detach my eyes from the mirror, something in the black glass moved.

  A pulse of gray and white surged forward. A face. Hazy and undefined, it had mere shadows for eyes, a light sketching of a nose and lips. Long curls of what looked like silvery mist swirled around the face—hair. It was a woman. I gasped as a pair of hands, their fingers spread wide and pleading, slapped against the inside of the glass. It made no sound, but the emperor, his back still turned to the mirror, frowned at me.