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“Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different, though. You could say the view is larger.”
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
*
The last things she remembers about being alive are the burning pain of an arrow in her chest and the desperate, stupid hope that finally, finally she might be with Daniel again.
*
The first thing she becomes aware of afterwards is that she's made it to the summer palace. For a moment she thinks she's survived, that a healer must have saved her and she is just waking up, or that there was simply too much magic in her body to allow her to die. But she is standing, not lying in a bed. Not waking up. She is wearing the clothes she had died in, and when she looks at her hands she can see right through them. She understands, then, what must have happened.
She's heard stories, before, of souls who cannot or will not move on after death. She realizes with some degree of surprise that this must mean she had still been in possession of a soul at the time of her death. Her mother hadn't taken it along with her heart.
She remembers with stunning clarity the first time she came to this place. She had still been in mourning for Daniel, secretly. She used to close her fist around his ring so tightly that it ached, that sometimes her hand would resist opening again. Regina was a skilled pretender, and Snow had been young and stupid and loved her too much to see how unhappy she was.
Leopold, she thinks, merely hadn't cared.
“You'll love it here, I just know you will,” little Snow promises her, taking her by the hand and beaming.
“I'm sure I will,” Regina tells her in a hollow voice, feeling very far away, like she might never leave that stable.
“The summer palace is my favorite place,” Snow continues. “Father built it for... for my mother.” Snow's voice grows quiet and she holds Regina's hand with a fierce grip.
How strange, Regina thinks, that Snow should miss her mother so terribly, even now after several years have passed. She thinks of how much easier her life would have been if she had lost her own mother as a young girl. She feels a bit sick at the unfairness.
“It's all right, dear,” she tells Snow, because it's what she must say. “You shall have me, now.”
Some time must have passed since her death, days or weeks, because this room is her own, but it is filled with someone else's belongings. She recognizes them. She wonders, then, where she's been while Snow has been busy claiming the throne. She wonders if she'd been given a funeral, though she knows it's more likely they'd had a celebration instead. There is no one left in the realm who had cared for her except her father.
She tries not to let it sting—it's not exactly a revelation—but neither is the fact that power, no matter how much and no matter how great, had never filled the emptiness inside her.
Now, emptiness is all that she is, she thinks as she tries to place her hand on the wall by the window, but her fingers pass right through the stone. It's nighttime, she notices finally, just moments before she hears footsteps approaching the door.
She turns from the window, and there's scarcely half a second for her to wonder if she'll be visible to living beings, before Snow White's eyes meet her own.
The new queen's shriek is so loud and long that Regina finds herself doubling over in laughter.
“Oh,” Regina says, gasping—not for breath, she doesn't need to breathe, but this human-shaped soul she's been left with goes through the motions anyway. “Oh, my dear Snow White, thank you for that. I needed it.”
Snow is shaking and stepping backwards when a guard who had once been one of Regina's comes charging into the room. “Your majesty! Have you been injured?”
Snow glares at him with such impatience and malice that Regina is truly surprised. “Are you such a fool that you cannot see what's right in front of you?” She points at Regina with a still unsteady hand.
He turns his eyes to where Regina stands, but his gaze travels right through her. “I am sorry, your majesty. I cannot see a thing.”
“Well,” Regina says to Snow, smiling wickedly. “This may prove to be more fun than I had dared hope.”
Snow sends the guard away, claiming she had been startled by a shadow, and the way he is so clearly frightened of her would have been the first thing to honestly interest Regina in a long while, if not for the discovery that she could apparently be seen and heard only by the woman who killed her. The Snow White Regina knew was adored by everyone—so sweet and well-mannered and lovely, they all thought. Infuriatingly, no one but Regina (and perhaps her mother) could see that Snow was a spoiled, meddlesome, selfish thing.
But she is different now. There is something harsh in her eyes, in the way she holds herself. Something about her has been damaged, rearranged and put back together to make a different person entirely. What happened to you? Regina wants to ask, but asking would seem too much like caring, and she cannot, will not care about Snow White.
“What are you doing here?” Snow demands.
“Very little, thus far,” Regina replies airily.
“I shot you with an arrow that couldn't miss. You died. I watched it.”
“Mm, yes, it was very straightforward, as assassinations go. At the very least I applaud you for doing the dirty work yourself. Some people are so squeamish when it comes to actually doing the killing, aren't they?”
“Stop it!” Snow shouts at her.
Regina blinks. “Snow, dear, you must learn not to be so sensitive. You are the queen now, after all.”
Snow glares at her. There is a severity in her expression that Regina has never seen before, and she has to admit that Snow, dressed in black, looks much more like her wicked stepmother than an innocent princess. “You are an apparition,” Snow says. “You can't hurt me.”
“No, but I can be very disruptive, which is almost as fun.” Regina has already begun listing in her mind the ways in which she plans to make Snow's life difficult. It brings her a surge of pleasure, that she might still find some kind of purpose in this unexpected afterlife.
“I will have you banished,” Snow threatens.
“I'd like to see you try,” Regina says, laughing. “Oh, you are funnier than I remember. But we must catch up, it appears I've missed a great deal since my death. I assume you're holding court with your charming prince? I do regret if I've missed the wedding.”
Snow's face darkens immediately. “There is no prince.”
Regina wonders for a moment if he's been killed, but that's not quite what it sounds like. “You poor girl, was true love not what you thought it would be? Was he unkind to you? Was he unfaithful?”
It takes Snow a moment to answer. “I don't know. I took a potion, to forget him.”
And suddenly, everything begins to make a great deal more sense. “You're a stupid girl.”
“I am a grown woman now, Regina. I may do as I please.”
“You did as you pleased, always,” Regina snaps at her. “You have acted selfishly and stupidly your entire life.”
“You don't know anything about my life!” Snow stands up straight, unafraid. “I was in pain. I ended it. I forgot it.”
“I was in pain!” Regina shouts. It comes out like a roar, and Snow shrinks back, startled. “I lost Daniel! You think I didn't want to end that pain? But I loved him. I would never forget him.”
Snow shakes her head, confused. “He left you. Why would you love someone who abandoned you?”
Regina takes a step toward Snow, looks unblinking into the unfamiliar darkness of her eyes. “He didn't leave me. My mother killed him. Because you betrayed me. Because you told my secret.”
“No... no. He left you. You told me he ran away.” Snow shakes her head again, as if she will not or cannot understand the truth.
“My mother tore his heart out in front of me,” Regina says, closing her eyes against the memory that still comes back to her, vivid and terrible, whenever she is at her lowest.
“Your mother,” Snow says. “Your mother tore out his heart. And you killed my father. You tried tirelessly to take my life, in exchange for a murder I had no part in.”
“If not for you there would have been no murder! We would have run. He would have been safe.”
“You don't believe she would have found you?” Snow challenges.
Regina doesn't answer.
“Well,” Snow says. “She can't find you now. And you can't hurt me anymore. You should leave this place, Regina. There's nothing for you here.”
Before, Regina might have expected remorse from her stepdaughter. But Snow had removed love unnaturally from her heart, and she had taken a human life. There was darkness in her now, swallowing everything that had once been good. Regina intends to torment her still—even in death, the agony of her losses have not left her, the anger inside her has not quieted.
But she will leave Snow for the night. In the morning, they will both start again. “Very well, your majesty,” Regina says disdainfully. “But don't believe even for a moment that you will ever be safe from me.”
In life, she would disappear in a cloud of black smoke, showy and startling. It's different, now, but instinctively she knows what to do. She feels the shape of her body dissolve, feels herself begin to move through the air, almost like flying. But before she's made it more than thirty feet away from Snow White, it's as if she hits a wall. As if there is a barrier, a cage, holding her in. She strains against it, flies up and down and presses against the invisible wall in every direction, but she can't get away. She can't leave Snow behind. She remembers what Snow said to her—an arrow that could not miss—and she understands. Regina's life was taken with a magical arrow, and now she and her killer are bound.
There's a moment of panic, at another situation she did not choose and another hell from which she cannot escape, and she presses and presses and still she cannot break free. Every part of her is screaming, but there's no one to hear her.
Her body takes shape again and she paces the dark corridor outside of Snow's rooms, and it occurs to her, for the first time, to mourn her life. She had thought before, in the times she had been most desperate, that dying might be a relief. That it would all finally be over. Now it seems that it may never be, and the sharp ache inside of her at this realization would make it hard to breathe, if she needed to. Her power is gone, her freedom is gone, and she is every bit as helpless as when she had first become queen.
Leopold seemed to forget he had brought her there to be his wife, seemed to forget she was a living human being who carried on existing whether he was looking or not, which suited Regina fine. Until night time, when he would come into her rooms and pin her body underneath his, would thrust into her roughly as she clutched at the sheets, helpless.
She knew what was expected of her, the duties of a wife and a queen. But she could not bear his child, would not allow him to lay claim to her in that way. There was magic, of course, to protect her body against such a thing—but she was young and unskilled and accomplished little more than poisoning herself.
What took place after that had been indistinct in her mind. She could remember pain, and fever, and sound, endless murmurs and shouts. Shapes moving around her. But now when she looks back she can see it how it happened.
Her mother comes, and sneers at her as she cries out in pain from the bed. “You stupid girl. I should let you die for your foolishness.” She offers no comfort to Regina, does not even touch her. “It's difficult to decide which would be worse. To let you die, and allow all my hard work to go to waste? Or to save you, and know that I must spend the rest of my life cleaning up your messes. You are a disappointment at every turn, Regina. I made you into a queen, and this is how you behave?”
Snow bursts into the room then, red-faced, sobbing so hard that she can barely breathe. “Regina!” she wails, rushing to the bed. “Regina, no!”
Regina can see the restraint it takes for Cora not to shout, not to say anything rude to the princess. “Snow, dear,” she says, almost shaking with rage as she forces herself to be polite. “You mustn't be here, now. Regina is very ill.”
Snow ignores her, kneeling by the bed. “Regina, please don't die,” she begs, body quaking. “Father promised you wouldn't die, he promised you wouldn't leave me like my mother! He promised you would be with me always!”
Regina is unable to answer, but in this moment filled with nothing but pain, she forgets to hate Snow. Just for a few seconds. She reaches for her, fingers grasping feebly for the one person in the room who truly loves her.
Snow takes her hand, kisses it and holds it against her face, and pleads with Cora. “Please, you must do something to help her. There must be some way to stop this.”
Cora produces a small glass vial—because of course, it won't do to have the princess upset with her. “Take this, my darling,” she says to Regina, and the softness of her voice is as cruel a lie as any she has ever told. The potion burns like a fire in Regina's throat, like it is not liquid at all. Even as she swallows it down the burning does not diminish, and she can't keep from crying out once again.
Cora's mouth turns up in a nearly unnoticeable smirk. She is pleased, at Regina's agony. She had made it hurt on purpose.
But Regina feels cool fingers on her forehead—Snow's, brushing her hair out of her face, sweeping tears from her cheeks. “You mustn't die, Regina. It will be all right. Your mother will make you better.”
“Regina needs her rest now, Snow,” Cora tells her. “You may leave her to me, and return to your lessons.”
Snow shakes her head, stubborn and resolute. “I will stay with her until the worst has passed.”
Cora leaves them with a sour look on her face, and Snow, free from the eyes of anyone who would tell her that her actions are improper, climbs into bed with Regina. “It's going to be all right now,” she whispers. “You're going to get better.”
Regina wants to send her away, wants this child who ruined everything to be out of her sight. But she is tired, and the sharp stabs of pain in her body have not subsided, and the love of this girl is the only comfort in the world available to her. She stays quiet, and does not reject it.
*
There is a frown on Snow's face as she sleeps, but even so, she is irritatingly pretty. The prettiest girl Regina has ever known, she concedes—except for herself, of course. She reaches down to shake Snow awake, but remembers a split second too late that her hands will pass right through Snow's shoulder. “Snow,” she says sharply, and then again, louder, “Snow. Wake up!”
Snow White stirs, opens her eyes, and scowls at Regina. “I told you to leave,” she says as she sits up.
“I tried. It didn't go quite as I had planned,” Regina answers.
“I don't understand.”
“You rarely do,” Regina sighs. “Where did you get that bow and arrow?”
She knows the answer before Snow says it, knows that in all the world there could only be one person despicable enough to give Snow such a weapon.
“Rumpelstiltskin.”
*
Snow is up half the night, fuming and fretting and ranting about Rumpelstiltskin with language that certainly isn't proper for a princess or a queen. Regina goes as far from Snow as she can, but finds herself with an eerie awareness of the moment that Snow surrenders herself to a fitful sleep.
Regina doesn't sleep—can't, now—but she lets herself float, shapeless, and finds that it's a bit like dreaming. The passage of time doesn't speed up, exactly, but it does matter less. Everything matters less. It's not the peace she had yearned for, but it is something.
They set out to pay Rumpelstiltskin a visit in the morning, Snow on horseback and Regina floating along beside her. Regina longs for her lost magic, which would render this time-consuming travel unnecessary. She tries to fly ahead, knowing what will happen, and she hits the wall of her moving prison before she really begins to pick up speed. Snow ignores her (they haven't spoken to each other since they left the palace) and Regina lets herself lag behind then, to see what happens when it's Snow that surges ahead.
It's a tugging, at first, right in the center of her chest. It pulls her along, like an animal being led by its master, and it's this thought that makes anger flare up hotly inside her almost before she can name it. There's nothing to dig her heels into but she resists as best she can, trying her hardest not to move a single step forward, and that's when it begins to hurt.
Snow's horse clops merrily along, dragging Regina behind it, and she strains and struggles as she tries in vain to stay in one spot. It's like an invisible cord wrapped around the heart she doesn't have, tying her to Snow, and with every second of disobedience it pulls harder and squeezes tighter.
“Stop!” she shouts, finally.
The horse stops, and Snow sighs. “I didn't choose this, Regina,” she says without looking behind her. “I didn't choose this for you.”
It's not much. But it's more of an apology than Regina expected to get.
They've gone a few miles before Snow speaks again. “When I was a girl... you were kind to me. You hated me, but you were kind to me.”
Regina can feel Snow's eyes on her, but she stares straight ahead. “You loved me. And my mother wouldn't dare jeopardize her status by harming someone the princess loved. It became necessary to stay in your good graces.”
“She hurt you anyway,” Snow says, and Regina wonders if Snow might finally be able look back on their life together and see it with clarity.
“Your father never stood up for you,” Snow says, when Regina doesn't answer her.
Her response is automatic: “My father loves me.”
Snow seems to take offense at that. “My father loved me. My father never would have let anyone hurt me. And you took him from me!”
Regina turns her head to look at Snow, finally. At her hands, white-knuckled as they grip the reigns. “I had decided not to kill you, you know.”
Snow glares at her and then looks away quickly. “And I'm sure you intended for us to coexist peacefully?”
“No,” Regina admits. “I meant to trap you in a tormented sleep. Permanently.”
Snow laughs, coldly and without humor. “I don't see how that would be any better than death.”
“It would have been worse.” Regina risks a glance at Snow and sees something painful flicker across her face.
“You hate me so much that you found a fate worse than death?”
But there's no point in lying anymore, is there? “Perhaps it was that I didn't want you to die,” Regina tells her.
“You sent a huntsman to cut out my heart,” Snow points out.
“I thought that's what I wanted. I changed my mind.”
“Why?” Snow asks, but it's not a question that Regina is ready to answer.
“It hardly matters now, does it? You killed me, instead. You won. As you always do.”
*
Rumpelstiltskin turns out to be very little help.
“Is she with you now?” he asks Snow, clasping his hands together and grinning widely. “Is she angry?”
“Of course she is with me now, didn't you hear what I just said?” Snow snaps at him, and looks over her shoulder at Regina, who merely rolls her eyes.
“I wondered how long it would take,” he says. “I could tell she was not with you at your coronation.”
“I must be rid of her immediately” Snow declares.
“Oh, dear Snow, you wound me,” Regina says, and Snow's face twists and crumples like an angry child's.
Rumpelstiltskin claps his hands and giggles. “What is she saying?”
“Enough!” Snow shouts. “Tell me how to break the connection between us.”
He is smiling, still, and it makes Regina want to strike something. “I'm afraid I cannot help you,” he says. “Your situation is permanent.”
Regina wants to kill him, wants to end his miserable existence so spectacularly that he would never have existed. But even alive, she had not possessed such magic, especially not potent enough to destroy the Dark One.
“No!” Snow lunges foolishly at Rumpelstiltskin, but he blinks and is gone, only to reappear behind her.
“All magic comes at a price, dearie,” he says, reciting the one absolute truth of their realm.
“You didn't tell me this price.”
He beams at her. “You didn't ask.”
“You're lying to me,” Snow insists. “There must be some way to unbind us.”
Rumpelstiltskin looks past Snow, right at the spot where Regina stands, as if he can almost, almost see her. “The only way to unbind your souls would be to bring your dear stepmother back to life. And I can't do that. No one can.” He turns away from them, apparently done with the conversation. “You may see yourself out.”
“You will pay for this!” Snow shouts at him as he retreats. “Someday, you will pay for what you've done to me.” She lets out a huff, and wheels around to face Regina, looking dangerously close to stomping her foot. “Vile creature,” she says.
Regina thinks it may be the first time they've ever agreed on anything.
*
Snow White's charming prince is waiting at the palace when they return. The way Snow frowns and narrows her eyes would be comical to Regina, if she weren't still growing accustomed to the new darkness in Snow's voice as she tells him this is the last time she will overlook his disobedience. “I told you to stay away. The next time you disobey my commands, I will have you executed.”
“Snow, you must try to remember me,” he pleads with her. “Rumpelstiltskin warned that if you started down this path, I could never get you back, but I can't believe that. I love you. I will always love you.”
The tears shining in his eyes make Regina sick. “I can see how you might have loved him. He's certainly pathetic enough for you.”
“I don't love you,” Snow tells him. “I don't know you. That's not an accident, or a curse. I chose it. And I am ordering you to leave.”
“He said you would become as evil as the queen whose life you took. But your stepmother would have had me killed by now, wouldn't she?”
Regina supposes he's right. Perhaps Snow isn't as changed as she seems. “I do wish he wouldn't call me evil,” Regina says. “I don't think it's too much to ask that he would have some respect for the dead.”
“I am nothing like her,” Snow says, a sharp edge in her tone. “How dare you even suggest it.”
“I know you're not like her. Somewhere inside, you are still my Snow. I know I can find you, if you'd only let me try.”
The openness of his face, his absolute sincerity, seems to make Snow waver, for just a moment. “I...” she starts, sounding confused, but then she stands straighter, shoulders back. “No. I forgot you for a reason. Perhaps the best thing for you to do would be to forget me as well.”
“Snow, don't you understand? I love you. No matter how painful it is to be apart, I would never want to forget the time we had together, the way I feel about you. I would rather live with this pain every day for the rest of my life than to erase my memory of you.”
Pathetic, yes. But he does truly love her.
“Why?” Snow asks. “Why would you still love me when I didn't feel the same way? When I was willing to forget you?” It's not to push him, Regina realizes. Snow really doesn't understand.
James seems startled by the question. “Love doesn't need to be returned in order to be real. It doesn't matter that you don't love me. It doesn't matter than you killed the Queen. You could kill me, and I would still love you.”
“He's a fool,” Regina says dismissively, and without thinking, Snow turns around to look at her. It's not to admonish her, as she expected- Snow looks at Regina the way she did as a child, as if she expected Regina to have all the answers. “I would suggest you take his life to test his theory, but then, that doesn't necessarily mean you'd be rid of him. And I have no desire to spend the rest of my existence watching him follow you around, begging you to love him.”
“What is it?” James asks.
Snow turns around to face him. “Nothing.” She looks back at Regina again, for just a moment, and it's the first time since coming back that Regina can recognize the girl she knew. But it's only a flash, and then her new mask is back again. “You should go, James. I can't give you what you want. I can't be who I was.”
“I'll come back,” he says, stubborn and desperate and in love. “I'll come back as many times as it takes. You will remember me.”
Regina can't help thinking, as nauseating as she finds this man, that Daniel wouldn't have given up on her, either.
*
“He's been in hiding,” Snow explains to Regina later, in her bedroom. She hadn't asked, and she doesn't care, though that had never stopped her young stepdaughter chattering to her before. Funny how quickly they've fallen back on familiar patterns. “He's in a great deal of trouble with his father. Red has been helping him. And he's made an ally of Princess Abigail, as well.”
“Hmm,” Regina says with obvious disinterest.
“He comes to see me anyway, despite the danger of being caught,” Snow continues, ignoring Regina's apathy. She stops for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Did I love him?” Snow asks her. Still dressed but with her hair down, she looks quite young, Regina finds. Like a little girl dressed up in her mother's clothes. Or her stepmother's.
“You barely knew him,” Regina answers, though she suspects it doesn't quite matter. She had known Daniel only a week before she realized she loved him, and Daniel, for his part, always insisted he loved her at first sight.
“I must have loved him,” Snow says. “The part of me that's gone... the part I forgot. It feels so large that I must have loved him. It's like there's a hole inside of me so wide and so deep that I don't even feel like a person anymore.”
And so she finally knows what it's like. Regina always thought this moment would feel different.
“What if my life were to end?” Snow asks. “Would that unbind us?”
Regina blinks at her, startled. “You would be willing to die, just to get away from me? You weren't so willing before. You proved very difficult to catch.”
“I love no one. I have no one. I have no father, no mother, no prince. My friends are afraid of what I've become. There is only you. And we are broken.” It's regret, simple and desolate, and Regina knows what it's like, to look back on your life and know you are not who you could have been.
“You rule the kingdom,” Regina reminds her. “You have power.”
“It's not much of a life, when that's all there is.”
It's just as bad—worse, even—to have Snow finally understand. “We don't know what would happen. We could be trapped together for eternity.”
“Well I won't drag you along behind me for the rest of my life. There must be some way to bring you back, no matter what Rumpelstiltskin insists. He does not possess all the magic in the realm.”
There's a night from Regina's childhood that she shudders to remember—strangers in their kitchen, a woman crying, and the black smoke and unnatural light that comes with dark magic. An old book, lying open on the table. Her father had never laid a hand on her in anger, but that night he grabbed her arm, too tightly, and dragged her back to her bedroom. “Don't look, Regina,” he ordered, sounding as terrified as she felt.
“My mother... my mother had a book,” Regina says, remembering how she had squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears, trying to block out the sounds from the kitchen that grew ever louder. “I kept it hidden here. In this room.”
“I cleared the palace of your things,” Snow says. “I didn't find-”
“No,” Regina interrupts her. “I hid it inside the wall.” As a witch, it had been easy. She could reach inside a stone wall just as easily as she could a human chest. As a ghost, she knows, she can reach but not retrieve. She crosses the room to the exact spot where she'd hidden her mother's tome, buries her arm in the wall helplessly. It's there, right under her fingertips, but she can't touch it. She yanks her empty hand out of the wall, livid. “Damn you,” she says to Snow, to herself, to her mother.
Snow sighs. “So we have nothing.”
“I can teach you,” Regina says, the idea coming to her unexpectedly and without fanfare. “I can teach you to do magic, and you can retrieve the book. Cast the spell.”
“Regina.” She shakes her head. “I don't have any magic.”
“Magic is not merely about natural ability,” Regina tells her as she floats across the room to stand in front of Snow, sizing her up. “It requires a great deal of discipline and practice. It must be learned, not just inherited. I admit you're not the ideal pupil, but perhaps I can be an influential teacher.”
“And what happens? If we succeed, if you live again.” Snow reaches a hand out, swishes her fingers experimentally through Regina's arm. “We go back to the way it was? You take the crown back and put a bounty on my head?”
“I told you I didn't want you dead,” Regina reminds her.
“Just asleep, forever.”
“I'm sure we can come to an agreement. Either way, it's better than this, isn't it?”
Snow nods. “Fine. I will bring you back.”
Regina smiles dangerously, remembering the feeling of flames traveling through her arms and out of her hands. “We'll start with fire.”
*
Snow is a difficult student. As a girl she had been obedient and inquisitive, and her tutors were quite fond of her. But in truth, young princesses aren't expected to learn much, and most of their lessons are devoted to mastering the proper way to conduct oneself after an early marriage to an appropriate prince. Magic is a great deal more involved, and Snow does not take to it easily.
“You must concentrate,” Regina insists for the twentieth time.
“I am,” Snow answers through gritted teeth, arm held out stiffly in the direction of a shrub in the garden which she intends to set ablaze. They had started indoors, days ago, but after one too many singed curtains Regina thought it best that they take it outside. Not that she gave much thought to the state of the draperies in a palace which no longer belonged to her, but it seemed to be only a matter of time before one of Snow's clumsy, undersized fireballs would land on something particularly flammable and trap her in a blazing room, and Regina's plan would be over before it had really begun.
The gardens at the summer palace are large, and Snow had insisted to her guards that no one be allowed past the tall hedges at the entrance, because of course it wouldn't do to have someone stumble upon the queen talking to herself and setting fire to innocent plants.
“Why must I learn fire anyway?” she snaps as she whirls around to face Regina, who gazes at her dispassionately. “Shouldn't we skip this pointless exercise and move on to the magic I'll actually need?”
“Because,” Regina explains, not for the first time. “Fire is easy. It's a stepping stone. And if your reign proves to be anything like mine, you will need it.”
Snow huffs and turns around again, flinging her arm out carelessly and sending a large but sputtering fireball at her target.
The corners of Regina's mouth turn up just slightly. “That's good. Use your emotions.” She nods at the bucket of water by Snow's feet. Now put it out, and do it again.”
*
It takes longer than Regina would like, and Snow will never be a master, without a single scrap of natural magic save for the true love she'd removed. Even if she had years of practice, she would never wield as much power as Regina. But she does improve. Her fire doesn't burn out too quickly, her ice doesn't melt, she can move things without shattering them, and shatter things when she means to. Regina supposes that if this is the best she's going to get, it might be just enough to work.
It's given her something to focus on, at least. It's comforting, in a way, to be working towards a goal again. She and Snow bicker constantly but it's not as bad as it could be, to want the same thing for once. She is almost, almost proud to watch the smile spread across Snow's face as she passes her hand through the solid wood of a table, though she would never go so far as to offer the sentiment to Snow.
“Look,” Snow says softly, meeting Regina's eyes. “I've done it.”
There were moments, fleeting and now half-forgotten, when Regina had imagined something like this. Or not quite like this. She and Snow would be close, they would be together. Regina would teach her things. Not as a mother—but a sister, perhaps. A friend.
But then Snow had destroyed that future in a matter of seconds.
“Yes,” Regina tells her, careful not to sound too pleased. “I believe it may finally be time.”
*
Snow tries it a few more times, in her bedroom near the book. She presses her hand against the stone and it goes easily, and she looks at Regina expectantly, beaming with pride.
Regina nods at her. “All right. Go ahead.”
Snow reaches into the wall again, at the spot Regina had shown her, and her eyes light up, thrilled. “I've got it!
“Stay focused,” Regina says, and Snow turns her head, eyes flickering with annoyance.
Instead of speaking, she lets out a wordless gasp. Regina knows what's about to happen. Snow pulls, but her arm stays in place. “I'm stuck,” she says finally. The cry of pain comes only a moment later, as the stone begins to crush her hand. “Regina,” she begs, and Regina finds herself at Snow's side, hand reaching out to hover by Snow's arm, as if there is any comfort she can offer. “Make it stop!”
“I can't,” Regina says, her voice steady, the way she would speak to a spooked animal. “You can. You must be calm, Snow.”
Snow shakes her head and trembles all over. “I can't.”
Regina's hand rests at Snow's elbow. Would be touching her, if she could touch anything—it would be the first time in years. She remembers the strange feeling of young Snow's arms thrown around her, the child's carefree affection, and how Regina could not accept it, could not forgive. “You can,” she tells her calmly. “Do you still have the book?”
Snow nods, her face growing pale.
“You're going to be fine, Snow,” Regina tells her, and realizes that she sounds almost kind, almost like someone she hasn't been for many years now. “Breathe. Pull your hand from the wall, just the same as before.”
Snow shuts her eyes and tries to breathe and slowly, finally, slides her hand out of the stone. She drops the book as soon as she's free, letting out a pitiful little sob and cradling her hand against her stomach. “That was your fault,” she says, glaring at Regina. “You distracted me.”
Regina just barely resists telling her she deserved it. “You must learn to work with distractions. This kind of mistake will only make you stronger,” she says, but she's reminded a bit too much of her mother, telling her that pain will help her learn. She amends, quietly, “I'm sorry.”
Snow doesn't react to the apology as she retrieves the book from the floor and opens it. “Shall we find the spell?”
It's a book full of the darkest magic, darker even than the spells either Regina or Rumpelstiltskin prefer on their worst days. Even as a Queen, a powerful witch, it had made Regina uneasy, but it seemed safer hidden than destroyed. She is grateful for that foresight now. Snow turns the pages, looking horrified, until Regina tells her to stop.
“There,” she says.
Snow skims over the page quickly. “No,” she says. “Not this.”
“Don't tell me you're afraid to try, after all this.” It will be one more betrayal, one more broken promise from Snow, and by now it's no longer a surprise. But Snow shakes her head. “You would not come back as yourself. You would be changed, it says. Something dark, and unnatural.”
And so Regina must release her very last secret. “Oh, Snow White. I am already dark and unnatural. My mother took my heart, not long after she took Daniel's. That is the hole inside me—this spell can do no further harm.”
*
The first attempt fails—then the second, and third, and Regina tries not to be frustrated, tries not to grow discouraged. It's a complicated spell, more than anything she's asked of Snow yet, and she knows it was foolish to think she could have something she wanted so easily.
She's trying to work out what might be going wrong, if it's Snow's inexperience or something else entirely, when they're interrupted by an insistent pigeon with a note tied to its leg.
Snow draws in a quick breath. “It's from James,” she says before even opening it.
Regina gazes disdainfully at the bird. “There are more civilized ways to communicate.”
Snow ignores her as she unties the small scroll of paper and spreads it flat. “He wants me to meet him. In the forest.”
“How romantic,” Regina says as the pigeon takes its leave. “The place where you met.”
“No, it's not that. He says that my life is in danger.”
Regina scoffs. “Of all the ridiculous ways to lure you out to see him...”
“What if he's right?”
“If he's right, you use the magic I've taught you to protect yourself. You don't need him to save you.”
“Of course I don't,” she snaps. “I never did. But if he has information, I would be foolish to ignore it. We will meet him tonight, as he asks.”
“Very well,” Regina says, and she's almost grown accustomed to the impotent anger of knowing she must go where Snow decides they will go. “But if he sheds a single tear, the conversation is over.”
They share a smile, then. After all this time, there are still firsts to be discovered.
*
Snow is neither as beloved as her father nor as fearsome as her stepmother, and it's done her no favors, James explains. Her people are unhappy. “A small group of those bold enough to harm their queen have made a plan to assassinate you. I want to help you, but you must trust me. You must come with me tonight.”
“How do you know all this?” Snow asks.
“Red's Granny heard rumblings in the town just days ago. We began to piece things together. We believe we've learned enough to keep you safe, but there's no time to explain it all now. Red has agreed to help me hide you until we're able to eliminate the threat, and so has Princess Abigail.”
Snow is afraid, Regina knows, but she doesn't show it. “Red has made it quite clear that she doesn't approve of who I've become.”
“That doesn't mean she wants you dead. She still cares for you, Snow,” he says, taking one careful step closer. She doesn't back away.
“And Abigail? She and I have never met. Why would she help me?”
“She believes your empty throne would start a war between our fathers for control of your kingdom. She loves a knight, and has no desire to send him off to a battle from which he may never return.” James smiles, then. “And she is my friend.”
Regina offers nothing, standing silently by.
“Come with me tonight, Snow,” James says. “Let me help you.”
It's a long moment before Snow answers him. “Fine,” is her eventual concession. “I must return to my palace first, to gather my things.”
He shakes his head. “There isn't time.”
Snow turns around, appearing only to be looking back the way she came, but really she is looking at Regina. “The book,” she says.
“What book?” says James.
“It's all right,” Regina tells her, resigned. “Better to keep you alive long enough to try the spell again and succeed, when this is over.”
“It's nothing,” Snow says, to James, though she doesn't yet turn around. “I will go with you tonight.”
Regina hears it, then, before she sees it, the whiz of an arrow as it sails through her massless body and heads straight for Snow's heart. It seems impossibly slow, how time passes those next few seconds as James leaps to push Snow out of the way, as the arrow rips through the arm of his shirt and the skin underneath, before lodging itself in a tree behind them.
Snow is ready for the second arrow, which she splinters in mid-air. It falls to the ground, useless, as the would-be assassin, realizing he is in over his head, disappears back into the night. Regina knows that she and Snow were not followed, and so it was James, foolish James, who led the attacker here.
He is slumped on the ground against a tree, blood spilling between his fingers as he presses them against his wound.
“James!” Snow says as she runs to him, and then, kneeling down beside him: “Charming.”
There's a tenderness in Snow's voice that Regina has not heard since before she died, and so she begins to understand, as she looks down at her quickly disappearing hands, what must be happening. She had been bound to her murderer, but the woman who killed her and the woman who loved this prince were not the same. Snow is crying as she leans forward to kiss James, and Regina knows, as she fades, that her murderer no longer exists.
It's very dark at first, and cold. And quiet. But it doesn't hurt, and Regina is grateful for that. She's not sure how long it lasts, but after a while even that begins to fade.
She knows better this time, as the darkness begins to swallow her, than to hope Daniel waits for her on the other side.
*
It's the summer palace again, where she comes back a second time. Though something is different, something she can't quite work out as she blinks until Snow comes into focus in front of her. She shouldn't be here. She doesn't understand.
“What...” she says, trying not to sway on her feet as she begins to feel dizzy. “What happened?”
“It worked,” Snow says, smiling at her, and when she reaches for Regina's hand, grabbing onto solid flesh, Regina finally realizes. This time, she's alive.
“You did the spell.”
“Seventh attempt,” Snow confirms proudly.
“But I...” Regina begins, confused. “We were unbound. You were free of me.”
Snow merely shrugs. “I owed it to you, to try. I wasn't sure I could perform dark magic anymore, but perhaps... it wasn't so dark, in the end. To reverse my own wrongdoing.”
Regina places her hand against her chest. There is a hole inside her still, a darkness that Snow can't repair, but she had done the best she could, more than Regina could ever expect of her. She wants to thank her, but something stops the words from coming. This doesn't solve everything, not even a murder reversed can balance the scales between them. But then, she thinks, Snow will understand that. This much has changed, at least.
“What now?” Regina asks her. Will they fight for the throne? Will Regina be the one to run, this time?
But Snow seems to have other ideas as she picks up Cora's book from where it lies open on the table beside them. “Your mother,” she says. “She has your heart?”
Regina nods. In a box, in a faraway land, Regina's heart beats among dozens of others. “Yes. She has it.”
“Well,” Snow says, shutting the book slowly, grinning as if she has a secret to share. “Don't you suppose we should go get it?”