The Fairest of Them All

“I am here to see my husband,” I said.

“I believe he is sleeping,” the guard replied, visibly uncomfortable. I studied him for a moment and then realized, in one sharp flash, that something was wrong.

I walked straight to the door then, before he could stop me.

“Wait!” he said, as I pushed into the king’s chambers and made my way to his room. I could hear the guard storming after me. In front of me, I heard muted sounds from the king’s bedroom. A cry, a laugh.

I threw open the door.

He looked up.

He was spread out over his massive, fur-covered bed. On top of him the red-haired woman from dinner moved, her sweat-covered body glistening in the firelight, her neck stretched back, face turned to the ceiling. Even more shocking was the second woman—stretched out next to Josef, fully undressed, her hands sliding over his chest and her face buried in his neck. When she lifted her head and looked straight at me, I gasped out loud. It was Yolande.

“Rapunzel!” he said, scrambling now to sit up, pushing the red-haired woman off of him. Yolande jumped up and began searching frantically for her clothes.

I stood there, not believing the scene in front of me. The room smelled like musk, sweat, sex.

Josef rushed up to me, a horrified look on his face, and the two women moved behind him.

“Forgive me, my queen,” he said, reaching for me.

“Don’t touch me!” I spat.

I forced myself to look at Yolande, who was awkwardly trying to slip her thin body into her complicated, multilayered dress.

“I want her banned from this palace,” I said, without even thinking. The words were flames leaving my mouth. “I want both of them gone immediately.”

“Rapunzel—” he began.

“Both of them!” I said.

Already there were several guards at the door.

I turned to them. “As your queen, I command you to take these women from the castle.”

They looked from me to him, unsure how they should proceed. I turned back to the king and he seemed to recoil from my gaze, my anger like a fist in front of him.

Yolande was suddenly at my feet, on her knees. “Please, my queen, do not send me away!” And then, to him: “I implore you!”

She could have said anything at all to me then. I didn’t care. All the pain and worry I’d felt since coming to the palace seven long years before, feeling all their judgments and disapproval every day, every month, every year—all of it gathered together into one tight knot.

Another moment more and I would have used magic to cast her out of that room. With rage like that, I could have done anything, I was sure of it. But then Josef nodded to the guards. “Take them from the palace,” he said. “Obey your queen.”

They had tears streaming down their faces, the two women, both barely dressed, and never in my life had I felt hatred the way I did then.

“Please, my queen,” Yolande said again.

“Take them!” I said, and suddenly I was the wild creature from the mirror, my shadow self. I could feel the reddening of my body, the dirt in my mouth and twigs in my hair. I was so close at that moment to destroying all of them. I could have pointed at each one of them and turned them to flame. “Take them away!”

He stood next to me as the guards took the two women from the room, crying and pleading for mercy. I remained unmoved. I had killed for this man, this king.

A moment later they were gone.

“Rapunzel,” he said, turning to me, once we were alone. “I love only you. I—”

“Don’t speak to me,” I hissed.

Shock and fear entered his face. He’d never seen me like this. No one had ever been angry at him like this. He was a spoiled king who could have anything he wanted.

But he couldn’t have me. Not now. Not anymore.

“Good night, my king,” I snapped.

I stepped away from him and moved toward the door.

“Rapunzel,” he said. “It is you that I love. You who are my queen.”

I’m surprised I did not turn him to stone when I looked at him. He meant it, I realized. But it didn’t matter.

And then I turned and left the room, walking as calmly as I could back to my own chambers.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I whispered, in the faint light of the fire, after I’d calmed down and let my rage melt into sorrow. “Who is the fairest of them all?”

I wiped tears from my face, and peered in to see. In the glass, I saw Yolande and her thin, tall body, the pale freckles sprinkled over her shoulders. Kissing his neck. I blinked and saw my own tear-stained face, my eyes huge and full of pain, fury.

“Rapunzel is the fairest,” the voice said.

I focused all my desire, my pain and rage, my humiliation, down into a point of light, but now there was nowhere to go. What else was there, beyond this?

“Then why did he bring them to his bed and not me?” I asked, staring at my own face. “Why, if I’m the fairest in the land? When he knows how much I want to give him a child?”

But the mirror had no answer for me.

Just my own wild face, staring back.

16

After that, Josef pursued me as ardently as he ever had, trying to dance with me at the evening feasts, coming each night to my rooms the way he’d done before, but I refused him each time. It didn’t matter how handsome he was, how authentic his love. I’d waited for him, been locked in a tower for him. I’d never lain with anyone but him in all the years I was without him. I’d killed for him. I’d loved his daughter when my own son lay in the earth.

Now my body turned cold when he was near. He was not a bad man, I knew this. He loved me, though that love might not have been as deep as I would have liked. He was a man who loved pleasure and joy and did not mean ill toward anyone. But he was not a faithful man. He was spoiled, as Mathena had said. Used to having whatever he wanted. It was what he’d been bred for.

At times I thought I should be more understanding and forgive him for what he’d done.

But I could not. My heart was cold, my disappointment bitter.

It did not take long for everyone else to see the great divide between Josef and me. It seemed to hurt Snow White more than anyone. She worshipped her father, as any girl would. She overlooked his sins, focused on mine.

One night at dinner, I was seated at the high table next to Josef. We were entertaining a visiting retinue from one of the great estates in the countryside, led by one of the king’s most favored knights.

Snow White was laughing, flirting with the young male members. At fifteen, she was the image of her mother, and had suitors in every corner asking for her hand. The king turned to me and asked me to dance.

I refused.

I’d never refused the king so publicly, and an awkward silence came over the table. Snow White stopped laughing, and stared at me with disgust.

“I will dance with you, Father,” she said loudly, standing and walking toward him. “If your own queen will not.”