Grunting laughter filled the den. “Magic is as magic does,” said Truffleshadow. “She tries to magic us and she’ll soon learn her mistake.”
“It’s Snow I’m worried about,” said Arrin. “I don’t think the queen much cares about the rest of us.”
“Mmm.”
“Hrrff.”
“Huh.”
Snow scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand. “I’ll be fine. She won’t come out all this way. She never went looking for me when I was a girl, why should she do it now?”
“She ordered me to cut out your heart and kept it in a box,” said Arrin. “I think her feelings have changed.”
Stomper laughed at that. Juniper nipped him. Arrin regretted himself immediately and put a hand on Snow’s shoulder.
“Snow—I’m sorry—”
Amazingly, she laughed again. “Thank you. I forget sometimes—oh, it’s all absurd! She wants to cut my heart out and put it in a box! How is this happening?”
Not so absurd, Arrin thought, remembering what she had wanted to do to the kitchen boy.
Snow got up again and pulled an enormous iron frying pan out of the fire. Arrin eyed it with alarm. It was hard to believe that Snow could even lift it, but a winter of cooking for the boars had left wiry bands of muscle across her arms.
“Let me get that—”
“Oh, don’t,” said Snow. “I can do so little. It took me months before I could carry one of these, and there are so few things I’m proud of.” She swung the pan to a scarred oak tabletop. Juniper put her hooves up on the table and scraped the potatoes into the deep bowls the boars used.
Arrin sat back down. You can do so little, he thought, and I can do even less, because you will not let me take you away from here. And perhaps I should not even try, because what can I do to keep you safe that your four-footed friends cannot?
The pigs grunted into their potatoes, and Arrin and Snow sat in silence in front of the fire.
“Where is the huntsman?”
The mirror yawned, showing a ribbed pink gullet like a cat. “In the woods.”
“Where in the woods?”
“Among trees.”
The queen ground her teeth. Thin muscles along her jaw pulsed. “Do not toy with me, mirror.”
The mirror’s surface shimmered. “There are many trees, O queen. Do not blame me if I cannot tell them all apart.”
“Is he ten miles away? Twenty? A hundred?”
“He is in the woods, O queen.”
The queen’s nails gouged into the edge of the dressing table. The tips of her fingers were bloody and marked with scabs. “What of Snow? Where is Snow?”
“Snow is in the woods.”
“They are together, then,” said the queen.
The mirror considered what answer would be the most infuriating to the queen, and said, “Yes.”
She stood up. Three steps one way, three steps back, clasping her bloody fingertips to her breast. “Together. Well. If he puts a brat in her belly, that will be the end of her use as an heir. The king would cast her off before he’d turn the kingdom over to a huntsman’s son.”
“And you’d be a grandmother,” said the mirror sweetly. “How delightful for you—”
The queen’s fist struck the mirror, hard enough to split her knuckles. The mirror laughed uproariously.
“Temper, O queen…” It grinned. “The king won’t like it.”
“The king! Where is he?”
“The king is in the woods.”
“These woods? Here?”
“The king is in the woods.”
“Mirror!” cried the queen, half an order, half a child’s wail. “Mirror, damn you, answer me! Where is the king? Is he coming here? Who is with him?”
The mirror rippled. “He comes with the remains of his men. He comes with a new bride beside him. He comes thinking how he will rid himself of you.”
The queen stood very still.
The king would come, and Snow would be gone. The servants would tell him what had happened.
She had always known that this day would come, but she had believed in herself, in her own witchblood’s power. She had believed that she would be prepared.
“Too soon,” she whispered. “It was too soon! It has not been so long.”
“It has been many years,” said the mirror, and showed the queen her own face, with the lines etched cruelly on it.
“I must find them,” said the queen, tearing at her hair. “I must find her! Who, mirror? Who?”
“Look at yourself,” said the demon, almost gently. “Look at your hair in clumps and your hands in ruins. Look at you in your bower that stinks of rotten meat. Not you, O queen. You are very far from fair.”