Chapter 10 Prey #2
Then he saw her. Snow White lay curled at the base of a tree, cloak fallen open.
Her knees were half drawn up, one bare calf streaked with dirt and a faint line of blood where a bramble had caught her.
Her nightdress—if it could still be called that—was torn in several places, gaping enough at the neckline that the swell of one breast was visible, the cloak doing little to conceal it.
Her hair, spread around her head in a dark sway against the bark.
In sleep, the tension she’d carried in the castle was gone.
Her lips, chapped from the wind and cold, were deep red and parted.
Hunter almost startled at her sight. For a moment, standing at the edge of the clearing, he saw not Snow White but Liora as she had been years ago—lying half-covered on sheets in a darkened room, hair spread on pillows, chest rising and falling with post-coital breaths.
His body responded to the memory with humiliating eagerness.
He dismounted slowly, every motion deliberate.
His knees felt stiff; his hand shook slightly as he looped his horse’s reins over a branch.
He stood and looked at her. He told himself he was gauging how deeply she slept, whether the poison still dragged at her.
He told himself he was deciding where best to strike: a quick cut to the throat, perhaps, or a thrust to the heart.
But his gaze did not linger on vulnerable arteries or vital organs.
It lingered on the pale curve of her thigh where the cloak had ridden up.
On the shadow between her breasts where the torn dress gaped.
On the smooth line of her throat, the flutter of her pulse visible just beneath the skin.
He swallowed hard. You grew up with her, part of him hissed. She’s your king’s daughter. Your—
But she was a woman now. Had Liora ever arranged for her marriage, Snow White would likely be caring for a young infant by the age of eighteen.
She so looked like Liora. The same black hair.
The same full, red mouth. The same complexion that seemed to glow even in poor light.
Liora, younger and softer, without the hard edges power had carved into her.
His hand slid to the knife at his belt. “Get it over with,” he whispered to himself.
“Before you start thinking.” He drew the blade.
The metal gleamed in the faint moonlight, a thin line of silver promise.
Promise of a throne and a kingdom, promise of Liora’s body and her sex, and a promise of her love?
He stepped into the clearing. The grass muffled his steps, but Grimm’s head came up at once, ears pricked.
The stallion snorted, eyes rolling slightly.
Hunter muttered a low reassurance, keeping his tone even, the way he did with skittish horses and green recruits.
“Easy,” he said. “Easy, boy. I’m not here for you.
” Grimm stamped once, then, reassured by his familiar voice and presence, lowered his head again.
Snow White did not stir. Hunter came to stand over her.
Up close, the resemblance to Liora was even more uncanny.
Only the innocence in her expression, the faint smile on her lips even in her sleep, differentiated them.
He could see now, in a way he never had when she’d been a ragged girl in the stables, why Liora’s eyes had hardened every time they’d walked side by side. Snow White was truly a masterpiece.
He tightened his grip on the knife. He raised it.
Snow White’s eyes snapped open. For a moment they were unfocused, fogged with the remnants of poison and sleep.
Then they cleared—and fixed on the blade above her.
She jerked, instinctively raising an arm.
The movement knocked his wrist slightly sideways.
The knife skimmed the trunk of the tree instead of descending into her flesh.
Steel rang faintly as it glanced off bark.
“What—?” she gasped, scrambling up against the tree. Her cloak tangled around her legs; she half fell, catching herself on one hand, her other arm coming up defensively. She looked up at the shadow looming over her. “H–Hunter?” she stammered.
His name on her lips hit him like a fist. He’d expected fear, perhaps curses. He had not expected the raw, bewildered hurt in her voice.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, breath coming fast. “Why are you—? Why are you here?”
He could have lied. He could have said he was tracking bandits, that he’d stumbled upon her by accident, that he’d come to help.
But something about the way she stared at the knife in his hand made the lies shrivel on his tongue.
“The queen sent me,” he said, the words heavy as lead. “She wants you dead.”
Snow White’s face went still. There it was—the last shard of doubt, the last childlike belief that maybe this had all been some terrible misunderstanding, shattered. “My mother,” she said slowly, “sent you. To kill me.”
“Yes,” he said.
She pushed herself fully upright, leaning back against the tree. Her knees were still weak, but she held her chin high. “And you came,” she remarked. “You always come when she calls.”
“I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice. You, of all people, should know that.”
His grip tightened on the knife. “Turn around,” he said roughly. “I can’t… I can’t do it looking at your face.”
She laughed then, a small, broken sound. “You think that’s better?” she asked. “To have my back turned when you kill me? You can’t look me in the eye?”
They stared at each other. The forest held its breath. Snow White spat in his direction, narrowly missing his face. Hunter, virility rising inside, grabbed the defiant target and spun her facing away from him, hand curled on her own back.
The warmth of her body soaked through his clothes before he even raised the knife.
She smelled of sweat and dirt and pine, a far cry from Liora’s juniper and mint—but under it all, something familiar: the faint, clean scent of Snow White herself, something he couldn’t have named but recognized all the same.
He lifted the blade, pressing its edge gently—almost tenderly—against the delicate skin of her throat. His other hand settled on her shoulder, trying to steady both of them.
“Breathe,” he muttered. “It will be quick.”
She laughed again, bitter and soft. “That’s what she said about the corset.”
The words slipped under his armor like a knife.
He thought of the bruises he’d glimpsed on her side.
He imagined Liora’s hands on laces, her calm voice asking about dessert while her daughter gasped for air.
He thought of Liora’s hands on him, just hours ago, stroking and promising and withholding.
Her naked body before him, her naked promises of the throne.
His body responded to that last memory with cruel timing.
Hunger flared in his blood. The position—they, here, pressed together, blade at her throat—was wrong in every way, and yet his flesh did not care.
He could feel her pulse under the knife.
He could feel the rise and fall of her back against his chest. He could see the soft weight of her breast shifting under the torn dress as she breathed.
He took a deep breath, trying to clear his head. He inhaled her. The smell of her sweat. The faint, sharp tang from between her legs, where fear and flight and the confusing flush of womanly desire had mixed.
His hand on her shoulder slid, almost of its own accord, down along her upper arm. The skin there was smooth, warm. Goosebumps rose under his palm.
Snow White took a deep breath—nerves and something else. “What are you doing?” she whispered, not quite a question, not quite a protest.
He swallowed hard. Liora’s voice floated through his mind: You will find her. You will kill her. You will come back to me, and then… Then she had pressed herself against him, naked and gleaming, and left him throbbing and desperate.