The Fairest of Them All (26 page)

Behind me, my hair made a rustling sound as it swept over the floor. A terrible premonition pulsed up through it, from the stone itself.

Torches cast shadows, stretched my body into something monstrous and long on the floors and walls.

“Your Highness!” a guard said, as I approached the king’s
chambers.

“I am here to see my husband,” I said.

“I believe he is sleeping,” the guard replied, visibly uncomfortable. I studied him for a moment and then realized, in one sharp flash, that something was wrong.

I walked straight to the door then, before he could stop me.

“Wait!” he said, as I pushed into the king’s chambers and made my way to his room. I could hear the guard storming after
me. In front of me, I heard muted sounds from the king’s bedroom. A cry, a laugh.

I threw open the door.

He looked up.

He was spread out over his massive, fur-covered bed. On top of him the red-haired woman from dinner moved, her sweat-covered body glistening in the firelight, her neck stretched back, face turned to the ceiling. Even more shocking was the second woman—stretched out next to
Josef, fully undressed, her hands
sliding over his chest and her face buried in his neck. When she lifted her head and looked straight at me, I gasped out loud. It was Yolande.

“Rapunzel!” he said, scrambling now to sit up, pushing the red-haired woman off of him. Yolande jumped up and began searching frantically for her clothes.

I stood there, not believing the scene in front of me. The room
smelled like musk, sweat, sex.

Josef rushed up to me, a horrified look on his face, and the two women moved behind him.

“Forgive me, my queen,” he said, reaching for me.

“Don’t touch me!” I spat.

I forced myself to look at Yolande, who was awkwardly trying to slip her thin body into her complicated, multilayered dress.

“I want her banned from this palace,” I said, without even thinking. The
words were flames leaving my mouth. “I want both of them gone immediately.”

“Rapunzel—” he began.

“Both of them!” I said.

Already there were several guards at the door.

I turned to them. “As your queen, I command you to take these women from the castle.”

They looked from me to him, unsure how they should proceed. I turned back to the king and he seemed to recoil from my gaze, my anger like
a fist in front of him.

Yolande was suddenly at my feet, on her knees. “Please, my queen, do not send me away!” And then, to him: “I implore you!”

She could have said anything at all to me then. I didn’t care. All the pain and worry I’d felt since coming to the palace seven long years before, feeling all their judgments and disapproval
every day, every month, every year—all of it gathered together
into one tight knot.

Another moment more and I would have used magic to cast her out of that room. With rage like that, I could have done anything, I was sure of it. But then Josef nodded to the guards. “Take them from the palace,” he said. “Obey your queen.”

They had tears streaming down their faces, the two women, both barely dressed, and never in my life had I felt hatred the way I did then.

“Please, my queen,” Yolande said again.

“Take them!” I said, and suddenly I was the wild creature from the mirror, my shadow self. I could feel the reddening of my body, the dirt in my mouth and twigs in my hair. I was so close at that moment to destroying all of them. I could have pointed at each one of them and turned them to flame. “Take them away!”

He stood next to me as the guards took
the two women from the room, crying and pleading for mercy. I remained unmoved. I had
killed
for this man, this king.

A moment later they were gone.

“Rapunzel,” he said, turning to me, once we were alone. “I love only you. I—”

“Don’t speak to me,” I hissed.

Shock and fear entered his face. He’d never seen me like this. No one had ever been angry at him like this. He was a spoiled king who
could have anything he wanted.

But he couldn’t have me. Not now. Not anymore.

“Good night, my king,” I snapped.

I stepped away from him and moved toward the door.

“Rapunzel,” he said. “It is you that I love. You who are my queen.”

I’m surprised I did not turn him to stone when I looked at him. He meant it, I realized. But it didn’t matter.

And then I turned and left the room, walking as
calmly as I could back to my own chambers.

“M
irror, mirror, on the wall,” I whispered, in the faint light of the fire, after I’d calmed down and let my rage melt into sorrow. “Who is the fairest of them all?”

I wiped tears from my face, and peered in to see. In the glass, I saw Yolande and her thin, tall body, the pale freckles sprinkled over her shoulders. Kissing his
neck. I blinked and saw my own tear-stained face, my eyes huge and full of pain, fury.

“Rapunzel is the fairest,” the voice said.

I focused all my desire, my pain and rage, my humiliation, down into a point of light, but now there was nowhere to go. What else was there, beyond this?

“Then why did he bring them to his bed and not me?” I asked, staring at my own face. “Why, if I’m the fairest
in the land? When he knows how much I want to give him a child?”

But the mirror had no answer for me.

Just my own wild face, staring back.

A
fter that, Josef pursued me as ardently as he ever had, trying to dance with me at the evening feasts,
coming each night to my rooms the way he’d done before, but I refused him each time. It didn’t matter how handsome he was, how authentic his love. I’d waited for him, been locked in a tower for him. I’d never lain with anyone but him in all the years I was without him. I’d killed for him. I’d loved his daughter when my own son lay in the earth.

Now my body turned cold when he was near. He was
not a bad man, I knew this. He loved me, though that love might not have been as deep as I would have liked. He was a man who loved pleasure and joy and did not mean ill toward anyone. But he was not a faithful man. He was spoiled, as Mathena had said. Used to having whatever he wanted. It was what he’d been bred for.

At times I thought I should be more understanding and forgive him for what
he’d done.

But I could not. My heart was cold, my disappointment bitter.

I
t did not take long for everyone else to see the great divide
between Josef and me. It seemed to hurt Snow White more than anyone. She worshipped her father, as any girl would. She overlooked his sins, focused on mine.

One night at dinner, I was seated at the high table next to Josef. We were entertaining
a visiting retinue from one of the great estates in the countryside, led by one of the king’s most favored knights.

Snow White was laughing, flirting with the young male members. At fifteen, she was the image of her mother, and had suitors in every corner asking for her hand. The king turned to me and asked me to dance.

I refused.

I’d never refused the king so publicly, and an awkward silence
came over the table. Snow White stopped laughing, and stared at me with disgust.

“I will dance with you, Father,” she said loudly, standing and walking toward him. “If your own queen will not.”

“I would be delighted,” he said, quickly recovering. He stood and held his arm out to her.

I
watched them, unable to move. My hair hung down to the floor, where it whirled around
at my feet like a golden lake, stretching out on every side of me, and I could feel, then, the thoughts of those around me as they watched the king and the princess move into each other’s arms and start to dance. Their horror that the queen from the forest, unworthy, with a reputation for being a witch, could reject the king.

More than that, I could feel their love for the princess Snow
White.
Their wish that she were queen rather than me. I was assaulted by their memories of and love for Teresa, their disbelief that this young princess could mimic her mother so precisely. Most of the retinue had last been at court for Josef and Teresa’s wedding, and now they felt as if they were being thrust back through time to that long-ago day. Lord Aubert glanced over at me, his lip curling, his
thoughts rushing out at me as if he’d thrown a handful of rocks: that the king had been foolish to marry me rather than just take his pleasure of me, that there would be blood shed because of it.

All I could do was sit and watch them dance. The king was as handsome as ever in his robes, his face lit up with laughter, his joy irrepressible, even now, and she was the vision of grace, twirling out
onto the floor and then back into his arms, tilting her head back and smiling up at the young men she’d been talking to just moments before.

Her eyes caught mine, two hooks. Only I would have seen how much hatred there was in them. Hatred, despite all those other moments, all that love. I winced and looked away.

My heart was full of grief, and loss.

L
ater, Snow White
cornered me in the hallway leading back to my chambers. Her eyes flared with anger. “You embarrassed my father! How could you treat him that way, when he married you? When he brought you in from the forest?”