Page 55 of Snow White

As long as I live, I’ll remember this moment. It was the moment I took Snow’s heart and crushed it. I spoiled this perfect innocent creature who looked at the world with such purity it touched even me. For years, decades, I’ve wielded dark magic. It has been at the cost of innocent lives born with magic in their blood, but never have I felt truly evil until now.

I am shocked that the wretched blackness growing inside my heart doesn’t manifest on my skin. I thought myself evil before this, but now I know I was only a pretender. Today, her broken sobs have sealed my fate, and I will forever be stained and tortured by them.

She chokes back a sob, clutching me as if she can’t bear to let me go. “You... you said I-I was y-yours.”

I reach out to wipe her tears, unable to lie as she looks at me like this. “You are.”

She blinks back more tears, her icy eyes flickering with the pain I caused. “But you... you said this can’t l-last.”

I should have left her alone and never touched her with my soiled hands. I’ve turned her into another person broken by the world, crushing her innocence and purity beneath my heel.

“This is complicated, sweetheart,” I whisper, framing her face and trying to explain to her what I don’t even truly understand.

Why can’t we be together? Does it really matter? Can’t I just be happy with Snow and forget everything that came before? Maybe if I never use that dark power inside me again,shewill never find me. It sounds so easy in my head, but those are just fantasies. I know I am on borrowed time.

Snow sniffles, every sound a lash against my dark soul, hitting the heart I thought dead. “H-How?”

I want to reassure her. I want to take it all back and tell her I will never let her go. Butshe willfind me, she always does, and she’ll kill me this time. I don’t have a choice.

She’ll come for Snow.

My deadened heart stills in my chest. I need to protect Snow, even if it means breaking her.

“I have to become queen,” I croak.

“Over loving me?” she nearly wails.

I kiss her softly, wishing to stop her pain. “Over everything.”

She crumbles into my arms, and I shift to keep from falling. Have I broken her so thoroughly that she can no longer stand? I truly am a monster. I lift her into my arms and carry her to bed, cradling her against me as if my arms could keep her from breaking.

“You are still mine, but I can never be yours,” I admit, though I wish it weren’t true.

You wouldn’t want me anyway, not the real me.

No, she’d hate the real me. I’m nothing like her, not good, not pure, not anything.

“Why?” she whispers brokenly.

“I must be queen,” I say, brushing a stray piece of hair that escaped her wrap off of her face. As if that offers any explanation or changes anything. As if it could wipe this devastation from her. But I still can’t tell her why.

She pulls away from me, and the temperature of the room drastically decreases, my breath fogging the air. “You said that.”

“I can’t explain to you the full truth, my dear Snow,” I add, forcing a calmness into my voice even as I’m shattering inside.

I can’t explain what I don’t even understand.

She slips from my arms and pulls on her robe, her voice icy and lifeless. “You’re using me.”

Something about the way her voice has changed affects me more than the feeling of ice in the air. My breath fogs the air, and the shiver of cold makes me pull my robe tighter. I shake my head, grabbing her hand. “No. I care for you, but I can’t be with you.”

Not like you deserve.

Her gaze locks with mine, and again, horror leeches through me. Her eyes are no longer the clear ice I’m so used to. The ones that looked at me so tenderly with lust and laughter. They are now frozen over like chunks of murky glaciers and completely unreadable.

“So you used me,” she says, her voice utterly lifeless.

I panic, grab her face and kiss her, but only hard, cool ice meets my lips. I pull back and beg, “Please understand.”

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