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His first night in the castle, bloody and battle-weary, the huntsman dreams of his wife’s hands.
She's here, in his bed, waking him with the strong, sturdy little hands he loves, gentle on his face, in his hair, drawing his cock from his breeches...
He raises his head, hungry for the taste of her, but instead of his wife he finds the princess. She looks just as she did that first day in the Dark Forest, shivering and wet, hair dark as night against her pale cheeks. Her smile is sad when she whispers, “No one can resurrect the dead, Huntsman.”
He wakes with his heart pounding and the memory of a kiss on his lips.
He never kissed the lasses he fucked after Sara died. Never wanted to. But the princess ... the sight of her, so pale, so unbelievably still, that had wrecked him. He'd barely realized he'd done it till he walked away with his cheeks wet and his throat aching with the need to scream down the sky. Nothing so pure of heart should die so young, not when her own life had been stolen.
He doesn't understand what magic brought her back. He doesn't care. She will be Queen of Tabor now, he thinks as he rolls over in his bed to glance out the window. The dark rectangle of sky it reveals gleams with moonlight, and he realizes he aches still. For her, yet an innocent child and with all the weight of a woman's task ahead.
But more than his heart aches for her. His body does, as well, heedless of battle scars or, more important, common sense. And he should know better. Hell, he should be better.
He grunts and rolls over, but he won’t sleep any more tonight.
*
He rarely sees her in the days to follow. The castle brims with activity and a happy fervor he's sure has been missing these ten years gone. He sits with Muir and Beith in the central courtyard as courtiers and townspeople come and go and the sun comes out of hiding. The trees are in bloom by the time the sun sets on the third day, and the air is thick with the smell of the gardens waking.
What had Muir said, that day as the white hart bowed to her? "She is life itself." And she is, as if the heart of the kingdom woke with her to beat again. Possibility has ripped through the castle like a flash fire. Suddenly everyone remembers laughter, the bawdy camaraderie of friends, the perfect fragrance of a new flower. She has given them not only a princess, but an end to terror. She has given them hope.
It's only when he pictures her in the cottage he once shared with Sara, smiling at him from amid tangled bedclothes, that he wonders if hope is as dangerously addictive as ale.
*
On the fifth day, she is crowned queen.
He supposes he should have known it when he saw her facing the troll, a muddied, quivering twig of a girl. She was terrified but still she stood her ground, and all to save his sorry hide. It's the definition of courage, knowing a task is likely doomed and clearly dangerous, and undertaking it anyway.
And what had he done? He’d held a blade to her throat, he'd torn away her skirts, and he'd agreed to protect her only for the promise of gold. Sometimes he wonders how she can bear to look at him.
And yet, when he walks into the great hall as she stands before the court, gowned in red and as regal as her father had ever been, she smiles at him. Him.
Hope, he decides, is a close cousin to folly.
*
A fortnight later, the huntsman looks up from his breakfast in surprise when Anne appears beside him. "The Queen has asked for you, Huntsman." Anne has become the Queen’s right hand since the day she was crowned, although he suspects she may also serve as the mother the girl hasn’t had in far too long. “She has?”
“She said to come as soon as you’re finished.” Anne smiles, and he wonders how she and the others ever believed scarring their cheeks could make them less beautiful. To Ravenna, perhaps, but what isn’t ugly to a poisoned soul?
He swallows the piece of bread in his mouth and mops up the gold yolk of his eggs with the crust. “All right then.” He glances up at Anne when she doesn’t walk away, and scowls at the teasing glint in her eyes. “Is there something else?”
“She’s not asked you to the dungeon, you know, nor the stockade,” Anne says before dragging her fingers through his hair. “You might wash your face and find a comb.”
He growls, and listens to her laugh as she walks away, the full skirt of her gown whispering against the stone as incessantly as some of the women do, giggling whenever he walks by. He knows what they think, what they say. He only hopes the queen doesn’t. She made him Captain of the Hunt the day after she was crowned, an honor he had not expected and could not refuse, not that he wanted to. But it's simply a gesture, nothing more, and she doesn’t deserve common talk about what it means.
The queen is something more than a girl and yet still less than a woman, and the balance is as precarious and delicate as a good sword. Despite the sight of her in mail, despite the ferocity of that ghostly barefoot girl rousing men to battle, there is something as unlikely and priceless as a baby's first cry or the return of spring. Or, he thinks as he straightens his clothes and rakes his fingers through his hair, a rose blooming in the snow.
He is a better man because she inspires him to be, just as Sara did before her. But as much as he loved his wife--and he did, with every breath, every heartbeat--Sara did not wake from death to lead an army. She did not carry a powerful witch’s undoing in her blood.
He can call himself worthy again, thanks to the young queen. But he is awed by her, too, and he’s man enough to admit it.
*
“I … killed her.” She’d stood tall but trembling, an impossible maiden knight, blood on her breastplate and dagger in her hand. “I did it. Just as you taught me.”
Ravenna was not just dead, she lay crumpled like a dirty rag, and the room seemed to ring without the dark weight of her presence in it. And this girl, this child who had danced with a dwarf and cried for another, who had enchanted a white hart and roused herself from death, she had done it. The way he had taught her.
She tipped her face up to his, tears like silver ribbons on her cheeks. Her mouth was a bruised rose, and in that moment he wanted to kiss it again, to kiss her and feel the lush warmth of her lips, the way her blood thundered and her heart raced, the living, breathing girl before him who was just as awe-inspiring as the princess who charmed beasts and dwarves alike.
“She’s dead?”
They'd turned at the sound of the voice, stepping apart as if a rope between them had snapped. It was William, unsteady on his feet and dripping blood from a gash on his cheek, incredulous and yet beaming pride.
The princess had simply nodded, and in another moment, the clatter of soldiers pounded across the stone floor. It was over.
She was the smallest person in a room full of two score knights, but to a man, they bowed to her.
*
The huntsman pauses at the door to her father’s library, where she routinely spends her mornings. He hasn’t seen her in days, not that he expects to. She is queen now, after all, and he is … just a man. A man to whom she has shown much undeserved kindness, to be honest.
Not like William, her friend and her equal, a man who risked his own life to find her and protect her the moment he heard she lived. He wonders if she sees the expectation in the faces of the duke, the other courtiers, even the townspeople. They believe William will be her consort when the time comes. It’s plain. The huntsman is not fool enough to disagree.
The heavy door swings open as he raises his hand to knock, and he steps back, startled. The queen smiles at him, surprised. “There you are. I was about to come looking.”
Her gown today is the green of new grass, trimmed with white ribbon, and her hair is caught up on either side with polished wooden combs carved in the shape of magpies. Two for joy. He wonders if she knows the rhyme.
“You have need of me, Your Majesty?”
She certainly scowls with the hauteur of a queen. “It’s not necessary to be so formal with me, Huntsman. You saved my life.”
He shakes his head, caught between laughter and despair. “Majesty, you saved yourself. You saved us all, and the land with it. If I hold you in great esteem, it is no more than your due.”
Gaze hard and steady, she sighs. “Some days, I do not wish to be queen. Some days, I simply wish to ride out along the coast with a friend.”
He blinks. Of course she shall ride if she likes, but it has nothing to do with him. “Shall I send word to the stableman?”
“I’ve already sent word.” She shakes out her skirts and starts down the corridor without him.
He stares at her, and frowns when she stops to turn around. “The day is wasting, Huntsman," she says, "and it’s glorious one. Are you coming?”
“You mean to ride … with me?”
When she smiles, he sees Sara in her--weary of him for being so simple-minded, and yet ever fond.
“Are you not my friend, Huntsman?”
Is he? Can he be? He takes only a moment before he tilts his head with a sketched bow and strides down the hall to meet her. “It would be an honor, your--milady.”
“My name is Snow White,” she says and takes his hand, leading him toward the great hall. When she tightens her fingers around it, he glances at her. She has the sharp look of the magpie herself just then, bright and full of mischief. “And as you are my friend, you would do well to remember it.”