Snow Read Free Page B

mass of pleasure before rearing up and thrusting himself deep inside her. There was no tenderness this time. Anais stared up into his beautiful face as he pounded into her. He had shown he was capable of tenderness. She loved him, for all that she sometimes feared him too.
    “Open your eyes,” she whispered.
    His mirror eyes flew open, and Anais stared into their blue depths. His breath came shorter, his lips drawing back from his teeth.
    “Yes?” he gasped as he shuddered his release into her.
    “Yes,” Anais replied, answering his question. They would do It…
    Yes.
    She was the fairest of them all, and for now that would have to be enough.

    The king died the next night. An apoplexy, they said. Anais never asked Rui how he had accomplished the deed. Snow White and Anais stood side by side as his gold-embellished casket was sealed into his tomb. They did not speak to each other. Only the High Priest would enter the king’s tomb to perform the blood rites that would send his spirit onto the Pillars. The rest of them must wait outside until the ceremony was completed. It was a bleak, cold day. A bitter rain was falling. Over the wind and the sharp hiss of the rain rang the bells of Gessedian Cathedral. Snow White’s fair hair hung to her waist and her pale grey eyes were colder than the rain. To Anais’s eyes she looked as brittle as glass. She could almost imagine that if she leaned forward and touched her that Snow White would shatter into a myriad of icy shards. Rui stood behind them. Anais couldn’t see his face. He kept his head lowered so that his long black hair hung down around his eyes. But the faintest of smiles curved the sculpted lines of his mouth.
    When the ceremony was completed, Snow White and her seven dwarves all bowed to Anais before they left. One by one the courtiers drifted away with murmured words of respect and condolence. As queen, it was Anais’s duty to spend the night in prayer before her husband’s tomb. The bells finally stopped tolling at midnight. Anais drew in a deep breath. In the sudden, all-pervading silence, it sounded ragged and far too loud. She suppressed a shiver, huddling deeper into her woolen cloak. The candles ringing the catafalque cast grotesque shadows over the carved stone walls.
    “I thought those damn things would never cease.”
    Anais whirled about. Rui lounged against the entrance to the tomb, his colour high and his eyes glittering feverishly in the fitful candle light. He straightened up, executing a bow. “My Queen,” he murmured, moving towards her.
    Anais took a step back, then another until the catafalque pressed against her back. Rui leaned over her, one arm on either side of her body. She could smell wine on his breath as he lowered his mouth to hers.
    “Are you cold?” he whispered. “I’ve come to make you warm.” One hand dropped to the placket of his breeches whilst the other pulled at her skirts. He took her against her dead husband’s tomb before he led her back to the palace.
    And so Anais was, to all intents and purposes, queen. At least until the Snow Bitch came of age. It was a far merrier court than when the king had been alive. A glittering casket of a court with the brightest jewel, the fairest of them all, Anais, with her dark huntsman by her side. If any of the courtiers looked askance at the baseborn upstart who ruled the queen’s heart as well as her body, they were too well bred to express their displeasure. Especially when the queen’s stepdaughter expressed nothing but respect and obedience towards her stepmother. Or her lover.
    On the night of her eighteenth birthday, the Snow Bitch even let the queen’s huntsman lead her into a dance. Anais sat upon her throne watching them, swallowing jealousy along with the wine in her goblet. Along the far wall, Snow White’s seven dwarves watched too, their eyes as black and cold as a winter’s night.
    Snow White danced with fluid grace, as supple as silk in Rui’s arms. Yet her