Chapter 3 A Royal’s Last Breath #3
That night, as rain tapped at the tower windows like insistent fingers, Queen Liora stood naked and oiled before her enchanted mirror and studied her reflection. “Mirror, soul of silver and glass,” she said, the words like a trance, “who in this land shall I never surpass?”
The glass rippled. As always, it showed her—the same flawless face, the same ageless skin.
Time had not yet dared to leave its mark.
“Good,” she breathed. But her thoughts did not stay on herself.
They slid sideways, unbidden, to another face: a younger version of her own.
The resemblance was growing sharper each year.
Shay—Snow White, as the servants had taken to calling her by Liora’s decree—was no longer a child.
At fourteen, she was all long limbs and coltish grace, her features just beginning to settle into the kind of beauty that turned heads in hallways.
Liora had noticed the way a young page had stumbled over his own feet when the girl passed, the flush on an older noble’s face when Snow White smiled up at him, innocent.
She had seen the way the sunlight caught on her daughter’s unbound hair as she ran across the courtyard, turning it into a black river.
The queen’s fingers tightened on the edge of the dressing table.
“Too soon,” she whispered to her reflection.
“Too close.” The mirror did not answer. It never argued.
It only showed her what she feared and what she wanted.
Liora tapped the table once with a painted nail, decision crystallizing.
The next morning, she summoned her daughter to her chambers.
Snow White arrived with her hair loose down her back, a small foolish hope blooming in her chest that perhaps her mother meant to spend the day with her, to talk of Wilhelm, to share memories.
It had been so long since they had simply been together.
Liora’s ladies-in-waiting melted away at a gesture, leaving queen and princess alone. “My little snow-thing,” Liora said. Her voice was smooth, almost warm. “Come here.”
Snow White came, her slippers whispering on the rugs. “You wanted to see me, Mother?”
Liora’s gaze swept over her—over the fall of that dark hair, the glow of youth in her cheeks. “You are growing,” she said.
Snow White smiled, uncertain. “That’s what girls do, I think.”
“Some grow into something dangerous,” Liora said softly. Before Snow White could puzzle that out, her mother’s hands were in her hair. “At least this can be corrected,” Liora went on. “Stand still.”
A chill skated down Snow White’s spine. “What are you doing?”
“Protecting you,” Liora said. “There are eyes everywhere. Ever since your father—” She paused, letting her mouth tremble delicately. “I will not see you taken from me by some assassin who caught you in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“What does my hair have to do with that?” Snow White asked, confusion tinged with fear.
“Pretty things attract attention.” She picked up a pair of shears from the table. The metal glinted. “Attention can be fatal.”
Snow White’s heart started to beat faster, and the bile rose in her throat. “Mother…”
“Hush,” Liora said. “Do you trust me?”
Snow White did. “Yes."
“Good girl.” Liora gathered a thick rope of hair at the back of her daughter’s head, twisted it once, then raised the shears.
The first cut was the worst. The sound of metal grinding through hair was louder than Snow White would have imagined.
She felt the sudden, shocking lightness as a great dark weight fell away down her back. She made a small, wounded sound.
“Don’t be vain,” Liora said sharply. “It’s only hair. It will grow again. Or not, as I choose.” More snips followed. Liora was not careful. She hacked the hair to chin-length in rough, uneven chunks, not bothering with symmetry. When she was done, she turned Snow White toward the mirror.
The girl barely recognized herself. Her once-silken river of hair was now a ragged frame around her face. She looked younger somehow, and yet harsher. Exposed. “There,” Liora said. “Less… conspicuous.”
Snow White swallowed, blinking hard. “Mother, I—”
“You’ve been spending too much time in the stables,” Liora said, cutting across her. “Your gowns are ruined by straw and mud. It’s wasteful.”
“I’m sorry,” Snow White said automatically.
Liora moved to the wardrobe and flung open the doors.
Silks and velvets gleamed inside, a rainbow of luxury.
“These are no longer appropriate,” she said.
“For now, you will wear this.” She turned, holding out an armful of coarse, grayish cloth.
A simple dress, the kind a kitchen maid might wear. No embroidery. No lace.
Snow White stared. “That’s… that’s not a princess’s dress.”
“It is a safe dress,” Liora said. “No one pays attention to a girl in rags. Assassins do not waste arrows on stable hands.”
“But—”
“You spend half your days down there anyway,” Liora went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You may as well look the part.”
Snow White’s throat tightened. “Are you—are you sending me away?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Liora said. “You will stay here, inside the castle walls. You will not leave them without my express permission. Not to the village, not to the forest, not even to the courtyard if I say no.”
Snow White’s chest caught. “But I’ve always—”
“Your father was too lenient,” Liora snapped, the first real flash of anger showing. “See where it got him.”
Tears burned at the corners of Snow White’s eyes. “Mother, please. The walls feel so—so small. I can’t—”
Liora gripped her shoulders, nails biting lightly into flesh.
“Listen to me,” she said, each word a slow drop of poison coated in sugar.
“There are people in this world who would hurt you just to hurt me. You are all I have left. Do you understand? If I must turn this castle into a prison to keep you breathing, I will.”
The words wrapped around Snow White’s heart like chains and a blanket both. She nodded slowly. “All right.”
“Good,” Liora said, smoothing her tone again. “Then we understand one another.”
Within a week, every mirror in the castle, save the enchanted one, was gone.
The great gilt frames in the hallways vanished, leaving ghost-pale rectangles on the stone where the sun had not touched for years.
The little oval glass in Snow White’s room was smashed by a silent servant who did not meet her eyes.
She begged him to leave the broken mirror, and he obliged the princess.
“Why?” Snow White asked, standing in the empty space where her mirror had hung.
Her mother’s answer was simple. “So you will not spend hours mooning over your own reflection like a tavern girl with a new ribbon,” Liora said. “Vanity is unbecoming.”
The castle changed around her as well. The bright banners were taken down, replaced with heavier, darker tapestries.
The windows were draped in thicker curtains, shutting out more light.
Music in the great hall grew rarer. Laughter in the corridors died away.
Only in Liora’s chamber did the candles still burn twice as bright, reflecting in the single forbidden mirror as the queen asked, again and again, who was fairest. The answer never changed.
Even so, sometimes, late at night when the corridor outside her daughter’s room was quiet, Liora would pause and peer in at the sleeping girl.
In the dim light, with her hacked hair mussed on the pillow and her mouth softened in sleep, Snow White looked heartbreakingly like the girl Liora herself had once been—before hunger and men and crowns.
“She will be beautiful,” Liora whispered once, to herself or the dark. “Too beautiful.” She shut the door softly and went back to her mirror.