his next dinner! He loves the Red Fire.” She laughed gaily and grabbed her sister’s hands. “Isn’t today magical?”
“Yes,” Ingrid agreed, looking at her new teacher instead of her sister. “Magical, indeed.”
The queen wanted her dead?
It was inconceivable. It couldn’t be possible! She must have heard the huntsman wrong. But he’d had a knife pointed at her and now he was kneeling on the ground, weeping.
Could it be true?
Her heart was beating so fast she feared it would burst out of her chest. The wind seemed to pick up and roar in her ears. Every nerve in her body told her to leave him, but she felt rooted to the spot. This did not make sense. Aunt Ingrid wants him to kill me?
Curiosity got the best of her. “Why?” she whispered, her voice shaky.
The huntsman didn’t look up. He had slipped back into his habit of avoiding eye contact. “She’s jealous of you, much like she was jealous of your mother, the old queen,” he said. He paused, seeming to struggle to find the words. His long sigh turned into a sob. “She suffered the same fate the queen wanted for you, I’m afraid.”
Her mother? Snow felt her knees buckle. “No! That’s impossible!”
“It’s the truth,” the huntsman swore, and he bowed his head again. “You’re not the first the queen has tried to strike down.” He looked around. “Your mother’s death came at the hands of my family, I’m afraid to say.”
Snow was too stunned to speak. This man was clearly out of his mind. Her mother hadn’t been killed. She’d fallen ill . . . hadn’t she?
She remembered her father’s voice breaking as he gave her the news. Snow had already been in bed, waiting for her mother to come say good night, when her father had come in with tears streaming down his cheeks. She immediately knew something was wrong, but she never would have imagined something had happened to her strong, radiant mother, a woman who had always seemed so full of life. She’d seen her mother that morning before she’d headed out for the day on official business—what type of business, Snow did not know. But that was not unusual. The queen was always off meeting with folks in the kingdom and outside of it, listening to concerns, mediating differences, attempting to solve the latest problems that had arisen . . . including a terrible plague that had sprung up. She had kissed Snow’s cheek and gone on her way, saying she’d be home before dark. By evening, she was dead. But the plague had been rampant at that time, killing so many others in the surrounding kingdoms, and it was said to be fast-acting. Snow had been shocked, but she’d never questioned the cause of her mother’s sudden death. . . .
She looked at the huntsman again. Could he be telling her the truth? Had her mother been killed by her own sister instead of a disease?
Suddenly, she felt a pressing need to hear what he had to say about her mother. If Queen Katherine had been betrayed by Ingrid, who had then taken her crown, Snow needed to hear it. She felt a surge of adrenaline mixed with sudden anger course through her veins. She wasn’t leaving this place till she knew exactly what had happened all those years ago.
“Huntsman, tell me what you know,” she said, her voice stronger than she’d ever heard it. She knew the situation was delicate. The knife still lay on the ground where it had fallen, mere feet from the two of them. “Please, sir. You owe me that much.” She could feel her hands shaking again. She tried to keep them steady.
The huntsman stared at the ground. “Your mother died at my own father’s hands, I’m afraid. He was the castle huntsman before I, but his work for the queen went deeper than hunting and foraging for food. I am told she tasked him with killing the queen so she could marry your father.”
“No,” Snow said, her voice breaking. It felt like the world was spinning. “No!” she said more forcefully, willing the words to not be true.
“Yes, Your Highness,” the huntsman said, his voice cracking. “My father confessed this to me on his deathbed.” His face crumbled. “It seems my father was her personal slave, much as I’ve become. Your aunt told him that if he aligned himself with her, he’d have great power when she sat upon the throne. And he believed her. He died