She looked at me, and her eyes were hard in a way I’d never noticed before. Had they always been that way? “I never pretended to feel otherwise.”
“But you wanted me to be queen. Why?”
“You loved a king.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I said. “You know he wasn’t my true love, that I was just a foolish girl. You did not want me to see him, to go to a ball, to have his child. You only wanted me to be queen.”
“I wanted a good life for you.”
I leaned forward. “You sent me to the palace for revenge, didn’t you?”
She looked at me. Her brown eyes seared into me. “You are queen,” she said, “and you are with the man you wanted. And you are the most beautiful woman in all the kingdom.”
“Other than her.”
“Who is to say?”
“The mirror you gave me,” I said.
She shook her head. “You cannot blame me for your own thoughts, my child. For the fears that come over you, when you look at yourself in the glass.”
“Where is she, Mathena?”
“Who?”
“Snow White. I know Gilles brought her to you. Why would he do that?”
“He wanted to save her. He is a good man, Rapunzel. A better man than that ridiculous king.”
“You took her to the house of the bandits,” I said. “Why would you do that?”
“Why does it matter? You wanted to eat her heart.”
“But I . . . ”
“Stop it!” she said, sharp and bitter. “Do not be weak. Gilles only brought her here because of you.”
“Why do you hate the kingdom so much?”
“Because they cast me out,” she spat. “After all I’d done for them.”
She was shaking with anger. From the mantel, Brune let out a long squawk. The whole room turned black with her rage.
“Because the king and queen betrayed you?”
“They all betrayed me. I loved the king and queen, and he forced himself on me, and I was innocent. No one defended me.”
“King Louis? He forced himself on you?”
She nodded to me as it sank in.
“He raped you,” I said. “That is why you sent her to the bandits. So they would do the same to her.”
“Yes,” she said, through gritted teeth.
“What happened?”
I reached over and took her hand. A lock of my hair was caught on my arm. I felt a spark of energy when I touched her, and then all her agony and rage moved into me, in a rush of darkness that nearly knocked me unconscious. She had always been hidden to me, before this moment. Now I understood why.
“One night, he sent for me. I thought the queen needed me, I rushed to his room. He had had much to drink. I resisted, but it did not matter. He was accustomed to taking whatever he wanted.” Her speech had all the fever of words long held back and being released for the first time. “He was a king. He did not care that I loved another, or that I loved his wife the queen. He took me as if I were a common whore.”
“And then?” I asked, choking through the blackness of her heart. I had to twist my hand away, for some relief. She barely seemed to notice.
“Marcus found me that night. I told him what had happened. When he confronted the king, Louis named him a heretic and sentenced him to death. I told the queen what had happened and begged her to intercede, but she blamed me for all of it.”
I was speechless, watching her.
“No one interceded. None of my friends at court dared to stand up to the king. When they were leading Marcus to the gibbet, to hang him . . . That is when I turned him into a stag. It was the only way to save him. As they were leading him from his cell to the platform.”
“And then you couldn’t change him back.”
“No. I tried but I never could. I tried for nearly twenty years.”
“Is that when you left the kingdom? After you changed Marcus?”
“They banished me. I had to leave after performing that kind of magic. That’s when I came here, into the forest.”
Something seemed off in what she was saying. “To . . . You mean that’s when you came here, to this cottage, this tower?”
She nodded slowly, watching me intently.
“But I thought you went with me,” I said. “You lived next door to my parents, my mother who longed for the rapunzel in your garden.”
“No,” she said. “I came straight here. To leave the kingdom, and be closer to Marcus. I realized I was pregnant with you shortly after that.”
“But . . . ” I stopped. It was too unthinkable to say out loud.
She nodded. “I am your mother, Rapunzel.”
“No. That does not make sense. My mother . . . ” I realized, then, that everything I thought I knew about myself, she had told me. The abusive parents, the rapunzel my father had stolen, the mother wasting away from hunger and need. I looked at her again. “You . . . ?”
“Yes,” she said. Her eyes grew wet as she watched me. “I thought it was better that you not know.”
“Is . . . Marcus was my father?” I lowered my voice as a realization of horror descended on me. “Am I the daughter of a stag, as the gossips at court say? Is that why you did not want to tell me?”
She shook her head sadly. “My daughter,” she said, reaching out to take my hand in her own. “Marcus is not your father.”
“But then . . . ” The momentary relief was replaced by something worse. A dawning notion that was more horrible. Unthinkable.
“Not . . . the king?”
Her eyes did not leave my face. Her hand gripped my own. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.
A dizzy unreality made me numb. It took many moments for me to really understand what she was saying, and what it meant.
“That would mean . . . ”
I looked to her, waiting for her to tell me this was all a mistake, but she just sat watching me with those wet, sad eyes.
“Josef,” I said, finally, verbalizing the terrible thought. “He is my half-brother.”
“Yes.”
“I am married to my brother?”
“Yes. As Hera was to Zeus.”
I snatched my hands out of hers, and put them on my belly. I was sick. The same sick I’d felt realizing that I’d eaten the heart of an animal. All those years, all that time. Him climbing my hair, coming back for me, making me his wife. My brother. And she had known. My mother.
I shook my head. “Why would you—You wanted me to marry him. You killed Teresa so that I could marry him. How could you do that, when you knew?”
“The prophecy,” she said.
“What?”
“The prophecy. An old prophecy, made centuries ago by a very great sorceress. She said that the kingdom will end when a brother and sister lie together on the throne. Now, finally, the prophecy is fulfilled. This kingdom will end with you. Even now the armies are gathering outside the castle gates. The Chauvin pendants are falling. The one heir, Snow White, is gone.”
“Is this all . . . because of what they did to you? You would destroy the whole kingdom for it?”
“I loved my king, I loved my queen, I loved the court, more than anything,” she said, with a fury and grief I’d
