Bloody Rose

Chapter 4

Virgin queens are not as careless with their hearts as their fathers always are. When Ravenna sends word to Finn, she tells him to wait‒to stay in the ashes of whatever former empire he so wishes, and leave his sister to her work.

Though her tower overlooks the sea, she belongs more to the air than to the water, and her days are quiet. Often, she sees Rose riding along the chill sween of the beach. Sometimes the queen wears ragged gowns, rumored to be all that is left from the days when she played at being a wilding daughter to a king who was busy courting death in his crusades to pay much mind to her. At others, she wears the armour she began to favor when he led his fell assailants to the outskirts of her land.

Sometimes she carries a raven with her, and raises it to the horizon with her gloved hand; sometimes she rides alone with such urgency that she leaves red thundering storms in her wake.

Sometimes, it is enough to make Ravenna feel, for the first time in her life, as though she were too high above.

Her hands are sullied now with livid spots, from the day she drew her magic tight around her and flew down from her window in a murderous blizzard of beaks and talons, claws and wings‒wings enough to blacken the sky. They carried her down to Rose as she rode out to the shore; she stayed hidden behind large rocks as she watched her. Today in men's clothes, it was a cold night, full moon hanging in the sky.

She saw large and majestic black wings spread out from Rose's back, watched as she took flight into the night sky at a speed that she barely saw her. She followed her keeping a distance and the saw it all, Rose landed on a small village and hunted both men and women alike, drained them of their blood until nothing remained but mummified corpses, she saw her relish in the blood she drank, watched as she burned the village homes with fire that she manipulated through her hand and left leaving nothing but ash of the former small village.

Ravenna did not expect this, but was curious and she could see much more.

At court, they rejoiced to know that even the crows were willing to pay such a tribute to their new queen.

They take an obscene delight in her, her people‒even though they have now idea what she is. And never more so than when they use her for their games of divination. They say she would lead them to salvation from the instant she lifted her sword against her father's enemies; they say she will be the one to heal this ravished land, for in her veins flows life itself. If not death, Ravenna thought. The people are blinded by beauty and their queen's act of kindness and benevolence when in truth all she sees when she looks at them is food.

When her little sister Snow White greeted her, Rose's face went cold and only gave a nod as she watched the people leave her and went to Snow White.

Ravenna sees it, people favor Snow White more than the queen.

And she could hear the people and the handmaids boldly tell snow that she would make a greater queen than her sister. Ravenna looked around and saw that yet again Rose disappeared, by now she knows of her not being human but does not know what she is nor what she is capable of.

Ravenna knows too well how queens fall from grace when men grow tired of their facies, yet that does not apply to Rose; she knows that life is something to be seized in blood and breath. She knows there is no eternity but that which she makes for herself, that in which she walks alone.

And yet she feels she is not alone. feels Rose all about her heart like she feels nothing else except her longing for this fairest blood to let her know what there is beyond the darkness of the world.

But there is something else, while Rose is the cold darkness that puts out the light and swallows it as if it were its delicious meal. Snow White is light that outshines all and In all the kingdoms that lie behind her, Ravenna has known no golden idolaters whose saints could outshine her, no eremite wood-dwellers whose dank exiles were lit by any force to rival her own beauty. Fairest of them all, crowned and robbed in silver, she may as well be dawn itself‒and still she cannot hold the shadows back. If it were possible for anything in life to be so fair‒

It cannot be, It cannot be, She tells herself each night , in a swelling whisper that begins to fill her chambers like a rising wave.

It is her only mantra, until the day her mirror comes to her from over land and sea.

So she shifts her thoughts back to the mystery that Rose, befitting her name is. Someone that is so bathed in red every night.