Chapter 5
They return to Snow White’s castle laden with presents and gratitude from Belle and her father a few months later. Maurice had insisted that they stay a little longer, make sure that they are both okay, and Lesso had agreed, despite Dovey’s inhibitions.
“Are you sure, Lesso?” Dovey had asked her, at night, after the girl and her father had fallen asleep. “What if Adam comes looking for us?”
“If he’s smart,” Lesso replied, “He’ll look for her inside of the kingdom. But is he?” She raised an eyebrow at Dovey, and continued, “I’ve told Maurice he needs to keep going to the castle to demand the freedom of his daughter, and he has. The safest place is the most dangerous one when you’re dealing with a man who’s mastermind is Charming.” She sneered.
“Charming can’t be that dim-witted,” Dovey argued.
“I wish he wasn’t, little dove. That would make this a tiny bit more interesting,” Lesso yawned. “Go back to sleep.”
And Lesso was right. Adam hadn’t looked for them in their own village, and it wasn’t like he could send out missing persons posters for a person he had kidnapped. To be fair, he did have a lot to do, rebuilding his castle and dealing with his people realizing he is a literal monster, a tiny fact that Lesso let loose soon after they were safe.
Most of their months spent at Belle’s place were calm, quiet, and Lesso captured a bird one day to demand it let Snow White know they were okay too. So Snow White had sent back a note letting them know she knew, and to have fun. So that’s what they did.
They didn’t send a note back to let Snow White know they were returning. It is meant to be a surprise, and that’s why, when they walk into the parlor unannounced, Lesso is on her guard immediately when the the sounds of twinkling laughter meets them. It is light, carefree, and Lesso freezes for a moment before she recognizes it. She raises an eyebrow and exchanges a look with Dovey before sweeping into the room, carefully pocketing the mirror.
Sitting on a chair, laughing, is Snow White, and the person whispering in her ears is a young man, his eyes bright and his smile innocent.
“Stepmother!” Snow White’s eyes light up when she sees Lesso walk in, a smile crossing her face. “Thou art back!” She bounds off her chair, and makes her way to Lesso’s side, the man behind her straightening.
Lesso allows herself to be drawn into an embrace with the queen, dressed in a plain royal blue silk shirt and dark trousers. In the few months since they last saw one another, Snow White got more toned, a smile curving her face more easily. Lesso has a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with the man all but wringing his hands in anxiety next to the couch. Her eyes narrow at him over Snow White’s shoulder anyway.
“Snowflake. You’re squishing my intestines.” Lesso grunts, and Snow White pulls apart for long enough that Lesso sees the pink hue on her cheeks. “Apparently, I missed a lot in six months. You wanna introduce me?” She asks, gesturing at the young man.
“Oh!” Snow White looks back, and bites her lip, a deeper hue of pink coloring her features. “This is Mercutio.”
The young man bows, his eyes lowered respectfully. “I have heard so much about thee, your majesty. It is an honor to meet thee.”
Lesso steps away from Snow White’s embrace, and appraises the young man. “Hm,” she taps her chin with her nail, before letting a wicked grin spread. “Where have I heard the name before? Oh, right.” She pauses, appraising the young man with an air of approval. “Dick-joke Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet?”
Snow White, used to Lesso’s brashness, merely blushes. Mercutio, on the other hand, gapes. Lesso waits, amused, for his response. “That- that is a way to describe my name that I have yet to hear,” Mercutio gets out eventually. “I have heard many tales about thee, ma’am, but none that paint thee as accurately as even a glimpse of thee.”
Oh right. Lesso’s been gone for so long she nearly forgot that she’s still the dowager queen of Snow White’s kingdom.
“Hm,” Lesso says, stepping away from Snow White to stalk her way to the couch. She knows that she is resembling the likeness of a tiger circling its prey, but to his credit Mercutio does not back down nor look away. He just watches her back, wary but calm, letting Lesso’s eyes take all that they want from him. “Tall,” she says, circling behind him. “Strong, I see,” she sees the muscles that bulge even through the young man’s shirt. “Smarts to be determined.”
During her appraisal, Snow White remains silent, letting her look and appraise. Mercutio, on the other hand, watches her evenly, and says nothing at all.
Finally, Lesso comes back to stand next to Snow White, having finished her circle.
“Has Snow White told you about me?” Lesso asks, her tone innocent.
“She has, ma’am.”
“And did she mention my studies in ancient torture studies?” Lesso inquires, her tone only growing more innocent. “My personal favorite is the Eastern kingdom’s Lingchi, or Death by a Thousand Cuts. It’s when a person is killed, cut by cut, in a prolonged process that stretches out for days.”
Mercutio glances over at Snow White, but when he meets her gaze again his eyes are calm. “No. She has mentioned thine poisoning skills, though. I admire thy gifts greatly, ma’am.”
“Hm.” Lesso taps a silver nail against her skin. She lets Mercutio squirm in her gaze for a little longer, before she retrieves Dovey from her pocket and holds her up so she can scrutinize Mercutio herself. “What do we think, princess?”
“Is this Lady Mirror?” Mercutio asks when Dovey too only examines him in silence. “‘Tis an honor to be in thy presence. The queen has mentioned how thee have taught her nearly all of her lessons in childhood.”
“Yes. And don’t mind Lesso, she’s all bark and no bite.” Dovey likes the man, Lesso can tell. And Lesso does too, even if she won’t admit it. She likes the way Snow White smiles at him, likes the day he doesn’t step too close or push himself on her. He doesn’t feel wrong, like a wrong-size shoe. He feels like he could be nice.
“I would never. I can only admire the queen dowager, for she has all of mine own queen’s love. For that alone, if nothing else, she has mine.”
Lesso snorts. “Bullshitter.”
Mercutio takes it in stride, even as Dovey reprimands Lesso half-heartedly. “I shall prove my devotion to mine words, ma’am, and thee will see that I mean every syllable.”
“Hm,” Lesso hums. “We’ll see.”
Snow White knows her well enough to see the affection hidden in the threat, but Mercutio still pales, and Lesso cackles. Oh, this is going to be fun. But before she can say anything, Snow White’s turned back to Mercutio.
“I thank thee for thy company, Mercutio,” the queen says, properly and formally, the only thing giving away her affection the sparkle in her eyes. “Now, however, I require some time alone with the dowager queen and Lady Mirror.”
“Of course.” Mercutio bows low. “I thank thee for thy time, majesty. I shall be in the library whenever thee should need me.”
“Bye, dick-joke Mercutio!” Lesso yells to his retreating form, and grins wide when she sees him stiffen for a moment before turning back and replying to her farewell with a farewell of his own.
“He seems nice.” Dovey says behind her, absently, as though her mind is elsewhere. Her smile, too, doesn’t touch her eyes.
“Eh,” Lesso shrugs, when Snow White turns to her with an expectant gleam in her eyes. She can almost feel the look Dovey gives her, though, so she says, grudgingly, “You could do worse, I suppose.”
Snow White just smiles, and leads them to one of her rooms. Tea is already set up there, and once they settle down, Snow White takes a sip from her cup daintily and says, “What ails thy mind, Lady Mirror?”
Dovey looks down, and Lesso wonders what she’s looking at. It’s not like Dovey has a body. Or, does she? Lesso still doesn’t really understand the dimensions of the mirror-thing Dovey has going on.
“Me and your stepmother have been talking while we were out, Snow, and we think it’s time to tell you the truth.” Dovey says finally, darting a glance at Lesso. Lesso just takes a loud bite from her cookie.
Snow White folds her hands in her lap. “Is this about thy past?”
“Yes.”
“Then allow me to take the weight off thy mind, Lady Mirror. I am well aware of the fact that stepmother and thee art not from this realm. I know not of which realm thee art from, but I understand that perhaps thee will return to thy own realm one day. Is that correct?”
Dovey blinks, and Lesso drops her cookie. “Uh. That’s right.”
Snow White presses one shoulder to her cheek, and then drops it. “I have known this for a long time, Lady Mirror.”
Lesso whistles. “The fucking birds.” She chuckles. Snow White blushes, but Dovey looks confused, and Lesso explains without prompting, “Snowflake here has a whole legion of bird friends who keep her updated on all the juicy gossip around the castle.”
“Thy words art always so crude, stepmother.” Snow White shakes her head fondly, a pink tinge still on her cheeks. “But yes, for lack of better wording. Mine own birds do act as my eyes and ears around the castle.” Something must suddenly register, though, because Snow White is suddenly leaning forward and saying, with an almost desperate glint in her eyes, “Is this thee telling me that thou art leaving me?”
The Storian is cruel, Lesso thinks as she watches Dovey nod hesitantly, and tears spring instantly to Snow White’s eyes. The girl, or young woman now, didn’t cry when her father died, when her betrothed poisoned her father, not even when she broke her arm or hurt herself in practice. But the Storian thrust them into her life, and one day, it will take them out of it, and what is more cruel than borrowed time?
“I am alright, Lady Mirror,” Snow White says, waving off Dovey’s concerned questions. “‘Tis just a shock, that is all.”
Lesso watches this all, cooly, but when Snow White brings her red-rimmed eyes to hers, she decides that she can be a cool, badass villain some other day. She spreads her arms, and Snow White doesn’t hesitate before throwing herself into them.
“I- I just,” Snow White’s sobs are silent, quiet the way the queen is, “I have yet to prepare myself for thy departure so soon.”
“Soon?” Lesso snorts, but one hand goes to stroke Snow White’s hair while the other rests on Snow White’s trembling back anyway. “I spend every day with Dovey. You try spending an entire day with her. Trust me, it’s like an eternity.”
“Hey!” Dovey protests, her eyes wet too. “That’s just mean.”
“When art thee leaving, do thee know?” Snow White’s voice is muffled in Lesso’s shirt.
“No. We might not be gone for another decade, snowflake, okay? Who knows.”
“I apologize,” Snow White says, her tears still making the front of Lesso’s shirt wet. “I am making thy shirt wet.”
Lesso chuckles. “It’s alright.”
“Will- Will thee be able to come and visit me once thee leave?”
Dovey answers for Lesso, her tone so tender it hurts. “We don’t know, but… I doubt it, baby.”
“O-oh.” The stutter tells Lesso more than Snow White’s words do. Neither Lesso nor Dovey seem to know how to comfort her. How do you comfort someone when you tell them that people important to them are going to leave them, one day? How do you tell someone how to get over something that tears straight through your heart?
“I’m sorry, little princess,” Lesso says, murmuring the childhood nickname into Snow White’s hair as she holds Snow White’s shaking body, feeling the way the girl’s body is racked with sobs. “I’m sorry.”
Dovey says nothing, and when Lesso looks up, there are tears running silently down her face as well. Lesso bites her lip and looks away. She won’t let herself cry.
“Will-” Snow White’s voice, halting and uncertain, breaks before she can finish her question. Lesso holds her tightly, and waits until Snow White’s composed herself enough to ask, “Will I be able to say goodbye?”
Lesso’s cold, dark heart breaks just a little knowing that she won’t even be able to give this much to Snow White. “We don’t know, snowflake. None of us have done this before.”
“So I could return one day to find both of thee g-gone?”
There is no way to soften the blow, but how Lesso wishes she could. “Yes.”
“Oh.”
It is almost as though this word gives something back to Snow White, returning her back to her coolness and composition. She gathers herself, and pulls herself away from Lesso’s arms. She wipes her eyes daintily, and takes a deep breath to stabilize herself. It breaks Lesso’s heart into pieces as she watches her pull herself together.
“Well, then,” Snow White says, biting her lip hard to staunch the tears already welling up at her eyes again. “I shall waste no more time on tears, then. If we have limited time together, stepmother, Lady Mirror, I shall not waste them being forlorn.” She looks from Lesso to Dovey, and only then seems to notice the tears streaming down Dovey’s face.
“Oh!” Snow White exclaims, rushing over to kneel by the seat they have set Dovey on. “Do not cry, Lady Mirror. Please.”
“I-” Dovey smiles despite her tears, seeing Snow White kneel by her side. “I should be the one comforting you, Snow. D-don’t worry about me. I just-”
Lesso’s struck again by just how much she wants Dovey to not be a mirror, so that Lesso can gather her in her arms as well and staunch Dovey’s tears. But she can’t, and the feeling of helplessness at not being able to touch is so foreign to her she blanches.
“Stepmother?” Snow White’s senses are still as sharp as ever, and Lesso manages a watery smile at her.
“If it makes you feel better, snowflake,” Lesso says, knowing that Dovey needs time to get a hold of her waterworks. “Dovey’ll have legs once she gets back to our world.”
“Really?” The gleam of delight in Snow White’s eyes reminds Lesso that her daughter is still so Good at her core, even if she had Lesso as a parental figure. “Oh! Stepmother, tell me about Lady Mirror’s body, will thee?”
Lesso cracks a grin at Dovey’s hiccup. “Dovey’s body? Well, for starters, she’s short.”
“H-hey!” Dovey says, with another hiccup.
“Deep breaths, princess. Dovey’s also got a thing for golden gowns with, I don’t know, a square neckline?”
“Scoop,” Dovey corrects, her tears slowing.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. And Dovey also has a headful of golden curls,” Lesso continues, “Which, under the sun, combined with her skin, makes her look like she’s made of sunlight.”
“How magical,” Snow White breathes, and the sheer curiosity in her eyes make the young woman suddenly seem nine again, looking up at Lesso with something like admiration in her eyes. “And what color were Lady Mirror’s eyes?”
“Brown,” Lesso replies, sinking into memory herself. “Brown like chocolate dipped in honey.”
“Did thee wear any jewelry, Lady Mirror?” Snow White asks, seeing Dovey’s tears stop.
Lesso scoffs, and answers for her. “Oh please. She always wore the most outrageous necklaces, which she probably–” Lesso cuts herself off. Snow White didn’t know what Lesso thought of the jewels that Dovey hung between her ample bosom. She’d almost said out loud her theory that Dovey does it on purpose just to mess with her, and wow, Snow White doesn’t need to know that. Neither does Dovey, actually.
“Which I probably what, Lesso?” Dovey asks, too innocently.
Lesso stands abruptly. “Welp, you look fine again, princess. And I think we should let snowflake have some time to herself to process this, right? So, we’ll be on our way. And snowflake, dick-joke Mercutio is still waiting for you in the library.”
Snow White just raises an eyebrow. “Thy deflection techniques, stepmother, art much more coarse than they used to be.”
“Ha, ha,” Lesso replies, sarcastically.
“But never fear, stepmother, we shall not put thee through whatever ‘tis thee want to avoid,” Snow White says, placatingly. “Do not leave, though. Not yet. Please? Sit with me for a little longer.”
And the way Snow White looks at her in that moment reminds Lesso of the young girl who used to just grit her teeth and take the blows Lesso inflicted on her in their training sessions, so Lesso sighs a martyr’s sigh and sits back down.
“So. You want to tell us about your new boy?” Lesso asks, raising an eyebrow.
Snow White blushes a deep red. “Lesso!” Dovey chastises.
“Don’t tell me you don’t want to know, princess.”
Dovey falls silent.
“Well, little princess? Want to tell us about what you’ve been up to since we’ve been gone?”
Dovey looks up at the sky, and Lesso catches herself watching in time to turn away before Dovey comments lightly, “You know, I always imagined your nemesis to be more… Masculine.”
Lesso’s mind jumps to Charming and she frowns. “Charming’s a man. I doubt you can get more masculine than that.”
She catches the look Dovey gives her, but it is guarded, and when Lesso looks over, Dovey’s back to looking at the sky. Clouds are gathering above their heads, ominous and dark. “I suppose.”
“What,” Lesso questions, stretching out her legs and reveling in the burn. “Did you imagine my nemesis would be more along the lines of Rafal?” She cracks a sardonic smile at the way Dovey’s eyes dart to hers and then immediately move away. “I’m not going to combust at the sound of his name, princess.”
“No,” Dovey replies, a light hint of blush touching her cheeks. It’s become easier for Lesso to tell when Dovey is blushing, even though she is still a mirror. There are hints that Lesso looks for, the way Dovey won’t meet her eyes, the way the reflective surface seems to be just a little more vibrant in colors. “The Schoolma– Rafal’s nemesis was always his brother. I never thought of him as your nemesis.”
“Then who did you think it would be?”
Dovey makes a motion that could be a shrug if she had shoulders. “I’ve never encountered a pair of nemeses like Sophie and Agatha.”
Lesso furrows her brow. In the excitement of the quest, they had never really spoken about Agatha and Sophie in much depth since they returned the Readers to Gavaldon. Then they had been swept away tending to Snow White, and then to Ariel and Belle. Shockingly, Lesso realizes, in the dozen years they had spent in this world, they had never once spoken of the Readers besides in passing. It all felt, at this point, like a dream of a past world, something dimly remembered but not quite crystal. “Is this your way of telling me you’re homesick?”
“What?” Dovey’s eyes snap to hers. “Honestly, Lesso, can’t I just be ruminating about the nature of nemeses in general?”
“I don’t know,” Lesso shrugs. “For a fairy godmother, princess, you’re very rarely hypothetical.”
It’s true. For all the spats they’ve had over the years about the nature of things, Dovey rarely gets philosophical with Lesso first. She played along when Lesso brought it up and never shied away from sharing her beliefs, but very rarely did she bring it up. Dovey is, despite her romantic inclinations, at heart, practical.
“I don’t know.” Dovey replies, and then chuckles self-deprecatingly. “Maybe I’m just getting old.”
“Says the mirror.” Lesso retorts. “Have I mentioned how unfair it is you get to stay the same way?” A thought strikes her, and she sits up a bit straighter. “Dovey, do you even have a heart?”
“Excuse me?” Dovey blinks at her. “A heart? Of course I do. I mean, how else could I be…” She trails off. “You can’t feel my heartbeat, can you?”
“No.” Lesso replies, and experimentally traces her finger around Dovey’s features. She feels the contours of Dovey’s nose and eyes, ignoring the way Dovey protests weakly, but she doesn’t feel a pulse. “Do you even have to breathe?”
Dovey considers this for a moment. “Wait,” she holds her breath, and Lesso watches, fascinated by the way that her expression goes completely blank. Yet after barely a minute, Dovey’s control breaks, and she sucks in a large breath, gasping.
“Your lung capacity is shocking, princess.” Lesso comments drily.
“Hey,” Dovey says, still a little out of breath. “You try being a mirror. I haven’t exercised since we got here!”
“So you need to breathe, huh?”
Dovey draws her brows together, and appears to be thinking hard. “Yes. But if I don’t have a heartbeat and I don’t age… Can I die?” The look of absolute terror that crosses her face would be comical if Lesso didn’t suddenly reach the same conclusion.
If Dovey can’t die but Lesso ages, then sooner rather than later Dovey is going to have to deal with the ramifications of Lesso’s death, and then, in the even more distant future, Snow White’s. Immortality sounds great on paper, but if there is one motive Lesso has never understood it is that. She’s had enough pain in one lifetime; she can’t imagine wanting it forever.
“Well, fuck,” Lesso whistles. “This sounds like a whole pile of shit, doesn’t it?”
“I-” Dovey stops herself. “Do you know how the original Magic Mirror disappeared?”
“I always assumed that the mirror either was smashed or was hidden away by some other monarch,” Lesso shrugs. “I never looked into it.”
“Neither did I.” She glances over, and Dovey is looking down, her eyes hooded. Sidekicks are often overlooked, and desperately Lesso wants to remember, because what if smashing Dovey doesn’t actually kill her, and instead only makes it so that she lives on, broken and in pieces?
She can’t believe, honestly, that she’s never thought about this before. Since arriving, she’d contemplated Dovey’s death much less than she had at School, and she attributes her newfound demureness to the fact that Dovey is from home, no matter how fussy she gets or how irksome her diatribes on True Love get.
“Don’t start panicking on me,” Lesso warns when the silence draws on. It’s perhaps an unfair request, but she’s never professed to be fair. She doesn’t look at Dovey when she says this, preferring to look instead at the clouds that signaled a storm brewing.
Dovey’s voice, a little wry and mostly tired, replies, “I’m not going to combust at the mention of death, Lesso.”
The first drop of rain falls, a plump crystal of water that splatters on Lesso’s head. She wipes at it distractedly, glaring at the clouds as more drops begin to appear. “If you’re going to be here for the rest of time,” Lesso says, picking up Dovey to shield her with her hands, standing to walk back to dry lands, “We might want to start looking for a way to end this quest as soon as possible.”
“I doubt it’ll work like that.” Dovey’s voice is muffled from where Lesso has stuffed her inside her cloak as Lesso picks up the pace. “Have you ever considered what might happen when we get back?”
Inside, Lesso shakes her hair out, letting the curls run wild. She would never have done that back at school, and yet now it is nearly second nature for her to let herself roam free, metaphorically and literally. It should frighten her. It did, the first few years, and she remembers with a wince the way Snow White had caught her on the guard tower. But now, she’s had more than a decade to get used to the idea that the only glint of darkness in her life is a man-child who married a fish. She’s learning to get out of her own way.
“Yeah,” she strips off her cloak, letting the wet fabric fall to the ground. “Bilious will have killed most of the students off.”
“He isn’t that bad,” Dovey chides. She worked with him for a little while before Lesso took over, and Lesso supposes her opinion might hold some merit.
Not enough. “He is. He would poison the kids himself just to teach them a lesson.” She scowls.
“Didn’t you do the same, with the Doom Room?”
“There’s a difference,” Lesso pushes open the door to her chambers, and sets Dovey down on her nightstand to wring her hair out. “I never caused lasting damage. Bilious doesn't know when to stop.”
Dovey is silent. They’re both silent, as the weight of what the Storian has taken from them sinks in. Lesso’s not stupid. She knows as well as Dovey that Bilious Manley cares for nothing but himself, and while that might have been useful for him in his quest, it is most certainly not the way to be a teacher. She also knows, as she’s sure Dovey is thinking right now, that Anemone isn’t the best teacher to be collaborating with either. The beauty teacher is borderline tyrannical, one of the reasons why Lesso admires her just a little more than the normal Ever teachers, but also one of the reasons why she won’t be getting along with Bilious.
“Do you think they’ve managed to merge the schools yet?” Dovey asks, her tone so low Lesso isn’t sure if she’s looking for an answer or assurance.
Lesso looks at herself in the mirror. In the past year, she’s found two more strands of gray hairs, and the crow’s feet are deeper now around her eyes. She likes it, even highlights them with her eyeliner when she feels up to it. But there’s no denying the passage of time. Even her hair, limp now from the rain, seems to shout about time lost.
“No.”
Dovey’s looking at her when she turns around, and in her eyes Lesso reads a reluctant agreement. They’re not stupid. Asking Uglification and Beautification to work together without much preparation or warning? That was never meant to be the recipe for success. “The Storian–”
“Sent us here,” Lesso interrupts flatly, “Even though it knew we were at a turning point in the schools’ histories. You really think it’s going to do anything at all?”
“I hope.” Dovey replies, softly. “That’s all we can do, isn’t it? Hope.”
“Hope kills, princess.”
Dovey closes her eyes briefly. The expression is familiar, so familiar to Lesso it hurts. They’ve worked together for years before this quest, and now they’ve lived, literally in each other’s pockets, together for more than a dozen years. Every expression on Dovey’s face is as familiar to her as if they were her own, and it pricks at the heart she had traded away long ago to see the look on Dovey’s face. When Dovey opens her eyes, it is as though she’s aged a century in a second. “I know.”
What else can she say? What else can she do? The sense of a burden left unattended, a responsibility abandoned, gnaws at Lesso every day, always lurking in the back of her mind. She can’t imagine what it must be like for Dovey. Out of the two of them, Dovey’s the one who got the short end of the stick, but Dovey’s never complained. She’s accepted her fate, and yet even then hope won’t let her out of its grasp.
Hope is a luxury. Lesso’s long since given up on it. But she looks over, and even though Dovey’s eyes are ancient already, she can’t explain the way she wants Dovey to never have to lose that luxury.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Lesso tells Dovey, unsure where the tenderness in her voice is coming from but too frayed at the edges to be able to harden it. “Do you want to call for a book?”
“I won’t be able to read it until you get out and turn the pages for me, anyway.” Dovey shakes her head, and even though nothing about the way she says the words spell defeat, Lesso senses it, radiating off of her. Or maybe it’s just Lesso, projecting.
“I’ll read it to you,” Lesso blurts out, and has to turn away because she’s certain the tips of ears have betrayed her and gone red.
Dovey’s voice asks, as she turns to go to the shower, “Do you remember the original story of Cinderella?”
She throws a smirk over her shoulder. “Want me to pamper your ego, princess?”
Dovey’s eyes roll, but she doesn’t seem embarrassed or even uncertain as she replies, “It’s familiar.”
And Lesso can’t do anything but agree. She never could do anything but agree, when it came to Dovey, anyway.
For the first time, Lesso’s sword clatters to the ground, and she is forced on her knees in front of Snow White. She grits her teeth. But she’s always prided herself on her ability to acknowledge power, and right now, she bends her neck and says, managing to keep her mortification out of her voice by the skin of her teeth, “I yield.”
When she looks up, though, she doesn’t see the excitement, joy, even bragging that she expected to see from the young queen. Instead, Snow White looks at her with unreadable eyes, and moves her sword away from where it pointed at Lesso’s bared throat.
“Shall we go again, stepmother?” Snow White’s sword gleams in the bright sunlight, and the young queen brings it to her eyes before she slings it back inside its sheath.
Lesso narrows her eyes. “That’s it?”
“I beg thy pardon?” Snow White still stands, no visible expression of anything on her face, and she is an unreadable tower. There are still signs that give her away, signs that Lesso reads as fluently as she does English. The way she stands just a little too tall, the way she stands in an attempt to make herself bigger.
“You’ve just defeated me for the first time in thirteen years,” Lesso says slowly, watching the way Snow White stands, as frozen as her namesake. “And that’s it?”
“What would thou have me do, then?” Snow White replies, her tone level even as her words prime her for a fight. “Shall I boast? Crow my victory to thee?”
Lesso raises an eyebrow, and waits. Snow White says nothing, seemingly content to wait as well, and the silence sinks around them as though teeth sinking into a cake. Lesso searches the young woman’s eyes, and even though Snow White has crafted a mask that is undeniably one of the most stoic ones Lesso has ever encountered, she finds cracks that she somehow, doesn’t understand.
It frustrates her. There is nothing about Snow White that she shouldn’t understand.
She relents, finally, and tries her best to soften her tone when she steps just a little closer, unable to tower over the girl anymore, and asks, “What is it, snowflake?”
“What is what, stepmother?” The young woman replies, her tone still infuriatingly light. “Shall we have another round?”
Lesso lets it go. She’s no stranger to having to pry information out of people, but she doubts she’s going to get Snow White’s secrets out of her the way she does from her students, and she’s not so sure taking her torture devices out on the queen of the realm would be a good idea.
“What’s wrong with her?” She mumbles to Dovey as she watches Snow White leave the courtyard, each step measured and sure, after another five rounds in which Lesso blocked and parried strike after strike that nearly sang of anger.
Dovey looks after Snow White’s retreating form as well. “I don’t know. Could it be the boy?”
“Dick-joke Mercutio?” Lesso asks, incredulous. “He wouldn’t dare.”
Dovey, though, isn’t as sure as she is, “They aren’t monarch and subject when they are together, Lesso. You know that.”
“No, I meant he wouldn’t dare. Have you seen the way Snow White deals with crime?” Dovey shudders, and Lesso guesses that she remembers the time they were both present for an execution that Dovey thought was too cruel. Lesso, on the other hand, just watched interestedly as the fire slowly climbed up the skin of the murderer. “She’s no soft princess, princess. She’s a queen, forged of iron in fire.”
“Love isn’t like that,” Dovey replies, softly. “It doesn’t matter who you are. It’s scary to offer yourself up, make yourself vulnerable enough to let someone know how to hurt you.”
Lesso scoffs. “How do you know this is love?”
Dovey just gives her a look that tells her she’s not being smart. Despite the way Snow White and Mercutio interact, the way she even laughs more often in his presence, Lesso hadn’t ever thought of them as something as big as Love.
“She’s twenty, for Storian’s sake,” Lesso says, exasperatedly. “What does she know about love?”
“You weren’t even twenty when you loved Rafal,” Dovey says, quietly, looking directly at her, as though daring her to deny it. And even though his name no longer makes her want to claw at herself and remove the recesses of his touch from her skin, it still makes her cringe. Dovey pushes on, though. “Was that not real?”
“Don’t.” Her voice is terse, hard, and she hopes Dovey doesn’t catch it before she is able to soften the glass that suddenly scratches at her throat. “I’d hope Mercutio is nothing like Rafal.”
“Snow’s nothing like you then, either. She has us,” Dovey corrects, more gentle this time, as though she can feel the way Lesso’s nerves are always rubbed raw whenever Rafal’s name is brought up. It is like an old sore, healing, but still sensitive to touch. “What does age have to do with what you feel?”
She concedes the point. The memories of the first love she ever felt might be faded now, tainted by the pain and hurt that came after, but she remembers as clearly as day the way she would go to bed with a smile on her face and wake with Rafal’s name on her lips in the morning. That, the love she felt for him before, that isn’t his to take away from her. It became twisted into hate and now, apathy, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was real.
The thought crunches down on the shards of the irreparable heart that beats inside her chest, and Dovey reminds her that there are still others in this world capable and deserving of True Love. She turns away from the thought, and Dovey.
“So is this,” she gestures at the empty courtyard, “because of him?”
“I don’t know,” Dovey repeats, her own brow furrowing. “I don’t think… Mercutio respects her. He treats her well. I don’t understand what he could’ve done that would rattle her this way. Maybe we should ask him.”
“No,” Lesso stands, and picks Dovey up. “She’ll tell us when she wants to,” she bring Dovey up to her eye level and tells her. “There’s no forcing secrets out before they’re ready. When she’s ready, she’ll come to us with what she wants us to know.”
“But–”
“True me on this one, princess.”
Dovey falls silent, and even though she doesn’t look placated, she doesn’t say anything to protest until Lesso’s finished dripping eye drops into her eyes.
“Do you think…” Dovey’s voice falters.
“What?”
“Do you think Snow White will come to us?” Dovey doesn’t spell out what she’s thinking, but Lesso understands. She knows Dovey’s uncertainties and insecurities, the way that Dovey will stare sometimes at Snow White for a little too long because she’s never held Snow White in her hands and sometimes, Lesso knows she wonders if just being there, a mirror, is enough.
“She will,” in that, at least, Lesso is confident.
And she’s right, even if it takes a few more weeks for her to be proven correct when a timid knock sounds on her door right as she is getting ready for bed. She raises an eyebrow at Dovey, who makes a motion like a shrug, and decides that if Edmund thinks it is a fun joke to come bother her right as she’s about to go to bed, he should think again.
“Wha–” She stops herself short. Snow White is standing in front of her door, her face still impassive, but she wears her silk nightgown and an air of uncertainty around her. Lesso shuts up, and moves to the side, letting Snow White come into her room.
Snow White doesn’t question her, and steps inside.
“I hope I am not disturbing thee, stepmother,” Snow White says, turning to meet Lesso’s eyes, her hands clasped neatly in front of her.
Lesso rolls her eyes, and crosses by Snow White to sit down on the bed. Dovey watches her with a sense of wariness in her eyes, and Lesso just rolls her eyes at the mirror as well before patting the space on her bed between her and Dovey and commanding, “Sit.”
Snow White sits. “Lady Mirror,” she says, her voice still impressively blank.
Dovey gives a weak smile, and with sudden clarity Lesso can read the way Dovey is uncertain how she’s going to be treated in this conversation. Lesso sighs, a hero’s sigh, and reaches over to hold Dovey in her hands, carefully making sure Dovey sees everything she can see.
“Well?” Lesso pulls her duvet up and covers herself, burrowing in the fabric, and raises an eyebrow at Snow White, who still sits, tense and straight-backed, next to her. She imagines they must look comical to an outsider, a woman burrowed in fabric and a mirror sitting lonely outside the warmth, but she really can’t care less. “I’m guessing you’re not here for a nightcap.”
That makes Snow White’s mouth, flattened into an unforgiving line before, twitch just a little, and she relaxes enough to settle against Lesso’s headboard as though it isn’t covered in spikes. “I am not, stepmother, no.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Dovey asks, her tone gentle.
Snow White swallows hard, and Lesso watches the way she rallies herself. In a way, at this moment, Snow White reminds her of herself. “Yes,” the young queen replies, staring straight ahead and looking at nothing in particular.
“Okay,” Dovey says, still kind in a way that Lesso could never be in this scenario. “What’s happened?”
“Mercutio-” Snow White takes a deep breath, while Lesso begins to plan the thousand ways she’s going to murder the boy and avoid Dovey’s ‘I told you so’ looks she’s sure she’s going to get. “Mercutio has proposed.”
Oh. That changes her plans.
“Oh,” Dovey repeats, as though she read Lesso’s mind, and Lesso hears the surprise in her voice as well. It is little comfort to know she isn’t the only one blindsided by this information, but Lesso ignores the gnawing feeling that she’s missed such an important event in Snow White’s life.
“Yes.” Snow White replies, still staring straight ahead.
“And how does that make you feel?” Dovey asks, already recovering from her surprise. “I thought I would be giving congratulations, sweetheart, but you don’t sound as happy as I thought you would.”
“I thought I would be, too,” Snow White replies, clearing her throat delicately. “But- I seem to have-” She breaks off, frustrated at whatever feeling she has that she can’t voice. Dovey lets her think it through, and Lesso watches her carefully. There is already the faint hint of a blush high on Snow White’s cheeks. “He is perfect, Lady Mirror,” she manages, finally. “And I love him.”
Lesso draws in a sharp breath at the way Snow White is so certain about her love, but Dovey is unfazed and probes, gently, “But?”
“But,” when Snow White turns to meet their eyes, Lesso suddenly can read everything her staunch daughter was hiding from them with such intense clarity it takes her breath away. “But I am afraid.”
“It’s normal to be afraid,” Dovey replies immediately. “It’s never easy to love someone, sweetie.”
Snow White starts shaking her head before Dovey’s even finished. “That is not why I am afraid, Lady Mirror. I am not afraid to love him. I-” And here she hesitates, her eyes darting to Lesso.
“You’re afraid marriage will make him change.” Lesso finishes for her, bluntly. “You’re afraid you’ll change, after marriage.”
Blushing a bright red, the young queen nods, and turns her eyes away from them again. “I have always known thee did not love father, stepmother,” Lesso hears Dovey’s intake of breath at the bold statement, but Lesso just shrugs. She had never been that good of an actor. “Yet,” she takes a deep breath. “Thee did not leave him. I do not-”
Lesso decides that reminding her she’s not from this world and didn’t really get a choice of spouse wouldn’t be that helpful in this case. Instead, she imparts a half truth. “I couldn’t exactly leave your father, snowflake.”
“Precisely,” suddenly, her tone is ardent, and when she turns to Lesso she sees the true fear lurking behind the curtains. “He will be mine, stepmother, but I will be his.”
She wonders, sometimes, if the way that she has told Snow White that she is independent, that she doesn’t need to rely on anyone, would ever result in this day. She snorts to herself, the idea that she’s somehow become clairvoyant hilarious. She opens her mouth to respond, but Dovey beats her to the chase.
“He is not yours, sweetie. And you are not his,” Dovey corrects, gently, as Lesso watches, growing more and more awestruck at every word coming out of her mouth. “Love doesn’t make you someone else’s. You will always be your own, just like he will always be his own.”
“But-” Snow White snuggles down lower in the duvet, and when she speaks again, her voice is muffled from the covers. “What if I cannot leave him, one day?”
Lesso scoffs. “Do you want to leave him?”
Snow White shakes her head. “But…” She trails off, her eyes seeking out Dovey.
“If he loves you,” Dovey tells her, gentle. “He will love you because you are you, and you will never have to choose between him or yourself. Love is about trust, sweetheart, trusting that you can rely on him and he won’t leave. Marriage is about trusting that you won’t want to leave even when you do begin to rely on him.”
“Blind trust?” Snow White scoffs, a weak imitation of Lesso’s considering she’s burrowed in Lesso’s duvet and hiding her face in the fabric, leaving only her eyes out in the open. “That sounds dangerous, Lady Mirror.”
“It is.” Dovey’s smiling, Lesso can tell from the way she speaks. “That’s why it’s called falling in love. It is a freefall, dangerous and risky, and there’s no safety net except your lover at the bottom.”
“What if he is not my safety net?”
This time, Lesso answers. “Then you hit rock bottom.” She shivers.
“How can I let myself fall when I know I could hit the bottom?” Snow White’s voice is thin.
“Because you trust he won’t let you. And even if he doesn’t catch you,” Dovey replies, “You trust that you can heal, that you are strong enough to survive.”
Snow White is quiet for so long after that Lesso thinks she might have fallen asleep, before she finally lets the duvet fall away from her face and says, softly, “I think I understand.”
Lesso grins wide. “Hey, and I don’t know if you realize, but you’re the queen. I think he should be the one worrying about not being able to leave you.”
Snow White’s chuckle is lighter than it was before. “I know ‘tis silly to worry.”
“It’s not. You’re scared about losing your independence after it took you so long to get it. That’s not silly.” Lesso shrugs. “But the fact that you are worrying about it tells me that you’re going to be fine. And if you’re really worried, you could always just have him beheaded.”
“Lesso!” Dovey chides.
It makes Snow White giggle though, and for a second Lesso spares a thought to wonder what it says about both her and Snow White that beheading is the way she chooses to successfully lighten the mood, but the thought flees as Snow White cuddles in closer and leans against Lesso’s shoulder.
“I love thee,” Snow White tells her and Dovey, quietly.
Lesso swallows against the bump that suddenly appears in her throat and the urge to tell Snow White to love someone else, but Dovey answers for her. “We love you too.”
Lesso swallows hard, again, and clears her throat. She presses a kiss to Snow White’s head. What happens in the quest, stays in the quest, and she lets that thought comfort her and drift off into sleep.
Dovey watches her as she brushes her hair, and Lesso wonders what she sees. If she sees the streaks of gray that Lesso so welcomed before. Distantly, Lesso wonders if she should be worried about the way her body is already yielding to time, the way she rises from runs that she would have done without a second thought and feels her muscles sore and her bones crack. But she turns, and when she meets Dovey’s eyes, she sees only wonder.
“What?”
Dovey’s eyes snap back up to meet hers. “What what?”
“You’re looking at me like I grew a third limb,” Lesso raises an eyebrow, and raises a hand to push the loose red curl out of her eyes.
Dovey blinks, and then, to Lesso’s surprise, a blush touches her cheeks. “You’re older.”
“Your powers of observation are astounding,” Lesso replies, dryly.
“No,” Dovey bites her lip, and looks away, “I never really thought about what you would look like when you were older.”
“That’s because I intended on dying at the ripe and tender age of forty five.”
“Lesso,” Dovey pins her down with a glare. “Don’t make jokes about that.”
Lesso huffs, but acquiesce. She holds her arms out, and spins in a circle just to make her point, and asks, her head bent in a bow, “Well? How do I fare in your eyes, then, your majesty?”
She looks up in time to see something flash across Dovey’s eyes so quickly it is nearly imperceptible, a hunger that Lesso attributes to the way she can move freely and bow while Dovey hasn’t been able to move around on her own for two decades. Dovey’s eyes pass down over her again, and Lesso has to suppress a shiver at the way she can nearly feel Dovey’s eyes on her. When she meets Lesso’s eyes again, she whispers, as though afraid to be too loud, “Breathtaking.”
Lesso’s raised eyebrows don’t manage to get the blood rushing to her cheeks to slow, and her brain struggles for a comeback. It fails, and she replies, lamely, cringing at her own response, “Thanks, princess.”
She wonders if this is how all of the people she makes squirm in discomfort feels, and a glance at Dovey’s amused smirk tells her that, yes, Dovey is definitely enjoying this more than she is. She’s about to say something, banish the ghost of something too tender that has just entered the room, when she’s saved from further humiliation by a knock on the door.
“What?” She barks. Dovey’s smirk just grows.
The door opens, and Lesso sees brown locks before she finds herself looking at Belle, “Am Ah interrupting, your majesty?” Belle asks, curtseying low.
“Fuck off,” Lesso replies, and rolls her eyes at Dovey’s protests. “Fine, come in,” she says, grudgingly, and glares at the way Dovey greets the girl with too much enthusiasm for Lesso to bear. “What do you want?”
“Youz always make me fill so welcome, ma'am.” Belle deadpans, and Lesso suppresses the urge to groan. It’s not just Edmund, anymore. It’s Belle, too. She wonders if that means she’s losing her touch, because before this quest, she thinks the Nevers would rather eat their mud-dirtied boots than believe anyone could ever speak to her this way.
“Ha, ha,” Lesso replies, aware she sounds like a teenager, and sits down in the lounge chairs in front of the fireplace. She doesn’t invite Belle to sit down, but Dovey does, and Lesso has to grit her teeth to not want to smash Dovey for the little smirk she sends her way. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Ah was in the area,” Belle shrugs, “so Ah wanted to come by and visit.” She pauses, allows for Dovey to reminisce on their times in the library for a little longer, before turning back to Lesso and saying, a smirk identical to the one Dovey sports on her face, “It's been almost a year since youz last saw me, ma'am, did youz really not miss me? Not even a lit'l?”
“Nope.” Lesso pops the ‘p’. “Dovey, on the other hand, won’t shut up about your project.”
Belle had, in the year since she’d finished the job at their castle, began a project with Dovey’s blessing to encourage girls to read more. It sounds tedious, all that paperwork, considering this is an inter-kingdom project, but Dovey had loved it.
“Is that why you’re in the area, Belle?” Dovey asks.
“Yes. Ah’m working owen a public leeberr in mah village, and Ah wanted to come by and visit the public leeberr Queen Snow White has established here.” Belle replies, taking a dainty sip of tea the servants set in front of her.
“And how is Maurice?” Dovey asks, “I haven’t heard from him since last month.”
“Papa is weew.” Belle grins at Dovey, “He wanted to come with me, but Ah sent him to the other kingdoms to spread the books.”
“Good for you,” Dovey says, smiling indulgently at the young girl. She hasn’t changed much in the past year, except for her growing boldness in the presence of Lesso.
“Ah did also hear a bat the upcoming good news in your kingdom,” Belle continues, almost nonchalantly. “A bat the queen.”
“We can neither confirm nor deny,” Dovey raises an eyebrow, “But who knows? You might want to watch your mail. There could be something important there, one day.”
Belle squeals. “Oh, Ah’m so excited!”
“Did you hear anything else in your travels?” Lesso asks, suddenly interested. She hasn’t really spoken to Snow White about Charming, nor about Adam in a long time. She knows about Snow White’s gradual infiltration into the Kingdom of Beaumont’s council, knows that there are whispers about a quiet revolution and a new queen crowned in place of the old king, long since displaced. But Dovey’s been sitting out of the council meetings more and more as well, claiming Snow White didn’t need her anymore, and Lesso doesn’t exactly have Snow White’s birds.
Belle thinks for a moment. “Ah visited the Moors, a few months back. Have youz ever met Queen Aurora?” Lesso shakes her head. Snow White probably had, but as Dowager Queen she avoided most of those events. “Her fodlaw is the King Stefan, who rules over the kingdom next to the moors. She didn't agree with the way he treated the fairy-folk, and so she took over the kingdom herself with the help of the magical beings.”
“How did we not hear about this?” Lesso murmurs to Dovey, and Dovey makes a motion that could be a shrug, and gestures at Belle to keep speaking.
“It was all anyone could talk a bat at the village for a lit'l while. Papa sayz the Moors are a new power to watch out for. The fairy children are adorable, though, and they liked the books Ah gave them.”
“What about Maleficent?” Lesso asks, raising an eyebrow at the suspicious lack of villain in the story.
“Who?” Belle asks, her brows drawing together in confusion.
“You know, the fairy who cursed Aurora to sleep when she pricks her finger, blah, blah, blah?” Lesso frowns at the way Belle’s look of confusion doesn’t change. “Was Aurora cursed?”
“Not that Ah know of,” Belle shrugs. “She's been pretty active in environmental activism since as long as Ah can remember.”
Lesso exchanges a look with Dovey, and she can see what she’s thinking because she’s thinking the same. Is this because of their presence?
“Ah think King Stefan was cursed, though,” Belle continues, “There's been talk a bat that for a long time, too, with him being unable to walk even though the doctors can't find anything wrong with his legs.”
Huh.
“And the Kingdom of Perrault recently held a ball for their crown prince. Officially, it was for the people to meet their crown prince. Unofficially, Ah herd it was for the prince to select his consort.” Belle wrinkles her nose and her look of disgust tells Lesso all about how she feels about the ball. “He fand a girl, but the girl didn't want to be princess consort and leave her family.”
Dovey quirks an eyebrow. “Cinderella.”
Belle blinks. “That's funny. The girl's family works in coal, and her name is something like Ella!”
Lesso and Dovey exchange another look. She wants to believe that Lady Tremaine is still Lady Tremaine, but from the way Dovey looks as confused as she does, she isn’t sure that would be true. Names hold power. Lady Tremaine, from their world, knew that, the same way Rafal knew that. So she took Ella’s name and made her Cinderella, while Rafal took Leonora and made her Lesso. These are not coincidences.
“Anything else we might have missed on the international playground?” Lesso asks, trying her best and failing at not being sarcastic.
Belle doesn’t falter, though. “Not everyone is lucky enough to get Snow White as a ruler, ma’am.” Lesso just glares, and Belle continues, still unfazed. Lesso has to pause and wonder if she’s really become that benign during this quest. “Weew, youz know about King Adam, of course.”
“What about him?”
Belle looks around at both of them, a look of shock clouding her expression. “Youz didn’t know? I thought… Weew, no matter. He was overthrown by his fodlaw's old counselors, and he haunts the Uncrossable Mountains now.”
“Sucks for him,” Lesso says, dismissively. She couldn’t care less about Adam, but she can tell from the way Dovey’s mouth flattens that she’s unhappy with the way Adam’s story played out. Lesso is still of the opinion that Adam got what he deserved.
“Are you okay?” Dovey asks, interrupting Lesso’s thoughts.
“What? Oh, of course.” Belle looks as though she’s been jerked out of her thoughts as well by Dovey’s question, but she gives Dovey a small smile. “Thank youz for asking, professor. Ah haven’t thought a bat Adam in a long tom.”
“And what about Charming?” Lesso asks, worried about the way Dovey might continue to ask about the young girl’s mental health. Admittedly, Lesso doesn’t hate Belle. At the same time, she cares more about whether or not Charming is still alive.
“Prince Charming?” Belle thinks for a moment. “Ah don’t know. King Triton called him back to the sea, and ever since then no one’s really been talking a bat him. Prince Eric of Hayna is really popular, though, as next in line to the throne.”
Lesso let’s Dovey take over the conversation from there, reeling inside at the knowledge that Belle has just unknowingly given them. The Storian had told them that they needed to change the fairytales, and what Dovey and Lesso have done is change Snow White’s story. But if what Belle says is true, then they haven’t just changed Snow White’s story.
Ariel didn’t give up her voice for a man. Belle didn’t fall in love with her kidnapper. Aurora was never cursed for something that she didn’t do wrong. And now, even Cinderella isn't treated like a servant by her stepmother.
And Snow White? She’s changed the most. She’s the queen now of her realm, an ambitious monarch with an iron grip of politics and a dedication to change. She’s not the fourteen year old girl-bride of a prince anymore.
These aren’t all the fairytales. But suddenly, Lesso sees a little more hope. “Do you think Snow White contributed to this?” Lesso asks Dovey, once Belle has taken her leave and left to go visit the public library in a flourish of goodbyes and promises to visit again that Lesso’s protests against were left unlistened to.
To her credit, Dovey doesn’t need to clarify to understand what Lesso is asking immediately. “I wonder, too. Snow told me about her meetings with the Moors a few weeks back. I didn’t make the connection that Queen Aurora of the Moors is, well, Aurora.”
“We should ask her,” Lesso decides. “Some time. When we can. Whether or not she had something to do with Aurora being less of an airhead and actually useful. I didn’t even know she was into plants and saving the planet and all that shit.”
“I remember her being asleep in class often.” Dovey replies, her own tone softening as she remembers the past. “But I also don’t remember her interest in the environment.”
“She should’ve been an easy win for Evil,” Lesso says, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She may never have liked the green fairy, but Maleficent was powerful, and she shouldn’t have lost.
Dovey doesn’t chide her, even though Lesso can tell she wants to. She holds her tongue, probably remembering that Aurora was her student and Maleficent was Lesso’s, and the imbalance in Good and Evil didn’t kill Aurora.
“Perhaps we should add nature as a choice in electives for the students when we get back,” Dovey says, lightly, changing the topic. Lesso lets her. She’s tired of thinking about the ifs and should’ves of being Evil.
“If we get back.” Lesso corrects, almost a habit by now, and Dovey acquiesces, as is her habit by now.
“I want to go ask Snow White,” Lesso stands. “If what Belle says is true, princess, we won’t have to be here forever. We just need to change one fairy tale at a time, and wait for the domino effect.”
Dovey makes a motion almost like a nod, but her lack of enthusiasm makes Lesso hate the way this quest is slowly crushing out hope in her.
“We’ll get out of here,” she tells herself, unsure if she’s saying it outloud so Dovey can hear her or if she’s saying it so she might believe it too. “We’ll get out.”
“I hope so.” Dovey replies, her tone soft.
In the night, Lesso sits up. She’s been tossing and turning for hours, unable to get Snow White’s words out of her mind, when suddenly, it hits her, like a bolt of lightning, so hard she’s unsure why she never realized it before.
“Ariel is actually a forerunner for Triton’s throne,” Snow White said, propping up Dovey where the mirror slid on the slick tables. “She is quite the strategist, and has a willingness to cooperate with the land kingdoms. She has the support and backing of many of the land kingdoms now, and mine especially. And of course, Belle and her project are creating a lot of discussion about the nature of education around the kingdoms,” Snow White tucked her hair behind her ear. “Many girls are being offered the chance to change their lives. I have brought it up at our counselor meetings as well.”
Lesso gaped. “I simply suggested that Aurora take what she wants.” Snow White said, lightly, with a gentle squeeze of Lesso’s hand. “The way thee did teach me.”
Storian above.
“Lesso?” She hadn’t realized she said the words aloud, but Dovey’s concerned voice pierces through her realization. “Is something wrong?”
Lesso turns, and lights a candle on her nightstand. She doesn’t answer Dovey for a moment, though, unsure how she’s going to put this into words. She feels as though the world is suddenly too quiet to listen to, tilted to the side and shaken.
She remembers Dovey saying she’s glad Lesso had never been sent on a quest, would never want to be Lesso’s nemesis. But she’s on one, now, isn’t she? Isn’t Lesso on one right this very moment? Nemeses have to destroy one another.
Is this… She swallows hard against the thought. There are too many thoughts running through her head, but she knows this: Dovey as a mirror in a world in which both of their magic glows do not work is probably the most defenseless she’s ever going to get Dovey. It would be so easy to pick Dovey up right now, smash her into pieces on the ground, and never look at her again.
The Evil inside of her, the side that has Rafal standing on her left shoulder, is whispering at her to do it. Do it, it screams, do it. You have to destroy your nemesis! That is the whole point of a quest!
Another thought strikes her hard, and she bows against it, as though a blow was delivered to her physically. Does Dovey know? Does Dovey know how close Lesso is to picking her up, destroying her, so that she might finally be Evil enough, be enough for the voice whispering on her shoulder? She remembers Dovey telling her that she imagined her nemesis to be more masculine.
Does Dovey know?
“Lesso?” Lesso can tell Dovey’s voice is concerned now. She can even picture the way Dovey’s face would look, even though Lesso is still standing with her back to her.
The voice on her shoulder whispers, delicately, seductively: Do it. Then it shrieks: Just do it! Do it, you fucking coward! Destroy your nemesis so that Evil can win, once and for all!
“Dovey?” She asks, her tone quiet, still not turning around to meet her eyes.
“Yes?” Dovey, alarmed by the seriousness with which Lesso says her name.
DO IT!
She remembers the vow she made to herself. Never again would she play the pawn of a dead man. She also remembers shouting at Dovey:
CLOSE IS NOT ENOUGH!
She closes her eyes. She swallows, hard, pushes back with all her might.
“Do you remember when you asked me, if you weren’t Good and you weren’t Evil, what you were?” Lesso remembers the night like it was yesterday. She hadn’t had an answer for Dovey then, but now, after all these years, Lesso thinks she might. She turns, meets Dovey’s eyes. She clears her throat, hating the way her voice trembles, but she meets Dovey’s eyes and wonders if Dovey realizes how much danger she is in right now.
Dovey frowns. “Is that the night when Snow White asked me if she could wear pants?”
“Yes.”
“I remember.” Dovey is still frowning, uncertain as to where this conversation is leading. “What did you say?”
Lesso draws an unsteady breath, her hands already trembling with the weight of what she is about to do, the knowledge she will have to bear for the rest of time. “I said I didn’t know, then. Because it wasn’t Good of you to turn a blind eye to the Nevers that died year after year because of the imbalance. But it wasn’t Evil of you either, to have truly believed that you were doing it for the Good of the world.”
“Okay,” Dovey says slowly. She’s looking at Lesso, her eyes open, unafraid, as though she doesn’t realize, and maybe she doesn’t, that Lesso is her nemesis. Lesso doesn’t believe that, though, even as she hopes desperately that Dovey doesn’t.
She’s not stupid, though. She’s under no delusions about her co-dean, nor about the woman who’s lived in her pocket for two decades. Dovey’s still looking at her, trust in her eyes, confusion at Lesso’s abnormality, so innocent, so completely defenseless.
In the moonlight, it would be so, so easy to grab the win that Evil so desperately needs.
“So what does it make me, then?”
Lesso swallows, and takes a step closer to where she’s propped up Dovey. Her hand trembles as she reaches out and picks Dovey up. She looks Dovey in the eyes.
“It makes you human.”
Something tugs inside of her, tugs at her chest, and instantly black begins to fringe on the edges of Lesso’s sight. The last thing she sees is Dovey’s eyes, wide and frantic, dazed but beautiful. Lesso wonders, hysterically, if what she’s seeing now might be reserved solely, completely, for her.
Everything goes black.