Bloody Rose

Chapter 3

"Rose" she says, the name low and lilting on her tongue, as though it belongs to a language of beauty. "Your Majesty. Tell me how you came to be the queen I see before me."

Though her request is barbed with an edge of mordancy, Ravenna draws it out with slow relish, like she is tasting the tender sinews of talong-skewed birdflesh. She feels it almost as kindness, this freedom to talk in the inflections that she favors when she is alone with her darkling fancies. Not even Finn dares listen to her sealike murmurs for long. Men in armor, men in chains, and men in crowns‒they all are deaf to her eventually. In the presence of others, she is used to screaming out at them, and hearing how her rage thunders in the stone heavens above. But tonight, she throws no curses into the abyss.

Tonight, she dines with a fellow queen.

It was not long ago that Rose was a mere princess. They say her heart is cold as the night even the day her father drew his final breath, she was not so moved like her little sister; didn't shed any tears but lived her days as she usually does. Some even say she is the one who killed her father, but no one dares to say that aloud. This much Ravenna has learned from the flock of handmaidens who were sent to her chambers earlier this evening, haggard women with hearts worn threadbare by the reign of King Magnus. Not long ago‒and yet already, Ravenna sees fitful shadows of herself in the girl who sits opposite her in the arching gloom of the great hall.

This girl‒whose black crown with red jewels nestles in her hair as though blackest night has laid claim to the blood spilled; who holds herself with such resolve that her slender, silk-gowned frame looks as though it could outlast empires. Who sits beneath a circlet of suspended candles whose light is slightly dim and barely reaches her as though the shadows of night try to envelop her and protect her from the light.

She nearly burns from her desire to scream the castle down and bury Rose beneath the ruins. Too-mortal dream works like a quick poison in her veins. But there is the matter of conquest to attend to‒and‒

(Somewhere beyond her fury and her fear, she knows that she will not relinquish this cold as a night twin without safer mirrors for company.)

"I learned what it is to be a queen from my mother," Rose says when words find her in a soft tone yet there is cold hidden underneath.

Always, Ravenna hears her mother's cry for vengeance. She hears it howl around her in every storm and feels it weighing on her soul in every silence. She has never heard anyone beside her in this maelstrom before‒yet for a moment she recalled the cold hidden underneath Rose's soft tone, that marks there is more to the girl than her abnormal red eyes.

"I've heard she was a woman of great beauty," Ravenna hears herself saying from afar. She wills her face to remain as smooth as storm-washed stone; surely the years will grant her that much.

"She gave the kingdom more than beauty," the other queen tells her, in sombre earnestness. "My mother always wished for me to be strong," she says while a small smile bloomed on her lips but soon vanished and cold wind of the night filled the hall and put out the fire of dim candles "But well that is until Snow White was born." her voice filled with absolute coldness, her eyes glowed intense red in the now dark great hall whose windows are open, letting the cold of night fill it along with moonlight.

Ravenna remained unmoved but felt fear underneath as she had not expected to see this, but soon the windows closed themselves. The candles lit themselves up, as if nothing happened.

Beyond the walls of the castle, the sea beats at the rocks beneath them; black veins filled her eyes, as they glowed in the night. Rose rises to close the distance between them, she long forgets that her black veins are active as she neared her, and sinks before her again, reaching out to take her hand. "I'm sorry, I tend to forget to control myself." she apologized as she planted a kiss on Ravenna's hand, she rose to her feet and disappeared from sight.

Ravenna felt gentle reverence in her hands, and was taken aback at the same eyes and black eyes with only the red glowing irises along with moving dark veins beneath them and the display in the obvious power that lay behind the queen.

(She is unlike any foolish saviour from the ages, unlike anything that Ravenna has seen all the years that drag behind her like a loathy gown-train.)

But she saw the hunger and the gentless the young queen had towards her, and she now knows, then, that she will not fail in this: she will seduce her queen, she will nestle into her soft breast and from it earn the love she must betray. And then she will strike out against the beating heart of this new kingdom.

All this she will do when she wakes in the grey dawn light and finds herself a stranger to the earthly spheres once more. When she makes herself anew in deceitful graces, and that is untouchable beneath the shell of her immortal skin.

Before she leaves, she looks back to where Rose knelt and watches as she planted a kiss on her hand as though in prayer for company. Yes, this queen will be her mother's wish incarnate, strong and true‒and she will never know what it is to wither and weaken into a creature none would recognize as their daughter. She will never know what it is to be borne away from her mother's memory by the turning of the years. She will fall to fairest blood, and it will be a blessing.

And when she falls, Ravenna will rise like a cruel evening star. To Rose's kingdom, she will be the queen that it deserves.

She looked at her as she rose to her feet and disappeared in place, to which Ravenna froze.

Surely it won't be this easy to someone who just displays an act of some power.

But for whatever would become of her, if she believed it would be otherwise? She would turn to dust, to bones‒to all that remains for queenly tombs once a woman has been left to the mercies of the world.