Mirror, Mirror: Prologue–Chapter 3

Now, as she stared at the monstrosity looming high on the hilltop, she felt her breath catch in her throat.

“We should hurry,” Anne said as she slashed at the brambles to make her own path, which would lead them right to the village outside the castle without being seen.

The aviary was brimming with the songs of birds.

When King Georg and Queen Katherine had sat upon the throne, they had looked benevolently upon their province.

She’d lived without love in that castle for so long, with little laughter or company to bolster her spirits.

Queen Ingrid’s popularity had never been strong, but in the last few years, the kingdom had gone from indifference to downright terror.

A declaration had been nailed to a wrought iron post.

Being drawn out for a rare celebration—if that’s what it really was—had to be unnerving.

The small wood homes with thatched straw roofs that lined the road were closed up tight.

The monastery’s bell tolled solemnly to mark the time as noon, but there was no one around to hear it.

She watched villagers anxiously jockey for position, trying to get a better look.

Her mother had kind eyes the color of chestnuts and ebony hair, which, today, was pulled back in a loose chignon.

Her mother had to get ready for the castle’s annual masquerade ball.

The two-story wrought iron dome looked like a giant birdcage. It was her mother’s pride and joy and the first thing she had commissioned when she became queen.

Her aunt had become all but a recluse, letting very few into her inner circle.

Snow couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen her aunt’s hair (she couldn’t even remember the color) because Ingrid always covered her head with a tight-fitting headdress accentuated by her crown.

She could only imagine how the facade looked outside the castle gates.

A vain woman, Queen Ingrid couldn’t do without her personal tailor, Margaret; the ever-present guards; or a small group of cooks; but she certainly didn’t hire anyone to care for Snow.

For just a few moments a day, it meant she had someone to converse with.

“She is always watching, girl. Always! Enough griping. Whatever the queen doesn’t want today, you put with the rest of the waste we leave behind.”

She had accepted her mundane, solitary life and made the best of it...but she couldn’t help wishing there was someone to share her days with.

“I wish for love,” Snow announced, the statement simple and profound at the same time.

As though further proof was needed, a cardinal landed on Snow’s shoulder and tweeted happily.

“Your kingdom is known for its diamonds and good farming, and ours is known for raising sheep. We’ve always had a robust trade between the two kingdoms that we both benefited from,” Henri explained.

Its frame—made of ebony and intricately gilded—was magnificent enough, but it was the snakelike gold rope wrapped around the frame that had first drawn her eye when she’d found the mirror hidden in her master’s shop.

The rope lay smooth on the lower half of the mirror, but became more erratic and vine-like near the mirror’s top, where it seemed to breathe out of two serpents’ mouths like tongues.

The first time she had seen the bodiless man in the mirror, she had thought him loathsome.

There was also a smug satisfaction that came from knowing the mirror still bowed to her every whim.

Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, the presence of a boy—much like the boy who had once captivated her sister’s heart—always made her worry.

Her hair had always been unusually thin, unlike her sister’s or Snow’s. She hated how wiry it was and how it wouldn’t curl like theirs.

“To succeed, you must keep him from the lass.”

No matter how hard she had tried to keep the girl hidden away and keep her from the finer things a princess should be afforded, the girl’s beauty and nature shone through. No rags, no dirt could hide Snow’s luminescence.

Georg, the fool that he was, had kept the same old, unassuming design as his father had before him.

But her favorite part of the opulent chair was the peacock feathers that fanned out behind her head, wreathing her in a sea of greens and black.

He looked taken aback. “But Your Majesty! She’s the princess!”