Snow White A Tale - Of Terror

She turned and looked at Lilia fully for the first time in weeks. Her gaze crawled over Lilia’s face, her throat, the pulse beating at her collarbone.

Through the kitchen, past the sleeping hounds (who did not wake—their water bowls had been laced with poppy milk), out the garden door, and into the forest. The trees swallowed her. Branches clawed her face. Her lungs burned.

“You cannot hide,” Claudia whispered. “The mirror sees all. Give me your heart, Lilia, and I will let the Seven live. Refuse, and I will send my huntsman to cut out their livers. One by one.” Snow White A Tale Of Terror

That night, Lilia dreamed. She stood in the bone garden, and Claudia stood before her, impossibly tall, her hair writhing like serpents.

And in that mirror, Lilia saw the truth. She turned and looked at Lilia fully for

Small bones. Delicate ones. Ribs like birdcages, knuckles like pearls, skulls no larger than her fist. They had been arranged in spirals on the dirt floor, and in the center of the spiral lay a mirror—not of glass, but of polished obsidian. The scrying mirror.

And in the cellar, the bone garden began to grow. Not bones this time—but flowers. White ones. Snowdrops, pushing up through the dirt, covering the skulls, the ribs, the tiny hands. A forgiveness that Lilia did not ask for and did not deserve. The trees swallowed her

Lilia said nothing.

The carriage carrying Lord Godfrey’s new bride arrived on a day the servants would never forget. The rain fell like tears from a hanged man, and the horses’ hooves sank into the mud of the courtyard as if the earth itself was trying to swallow them.

From the largest cottage, a shape emerged. A man—or what had once been a man. His face was a ruin of scars. His hands were twisted, his back bent. He wore a miner’s helmet with a dead candle on the brim.