Keir had seen it before, he had felt it from the moment the disembowelled girl had appeared before him.
'It's her," his body screamed, cold fear washing over him like a tidal wave, flooding everything with destructive force that rendered him incapable of clarity of thought. The feeling mirrored what had ransacked Keir he had seen his second dead body. The first was his mother's, lying so serenely in her glass coffin, her painted flushed cheeks looking so real that he almost tricked himself into thinking she was just asleep. His second was when he stumbled upon a young woman's body in the woods on a hunting trip when he was approaching ten years, her torso seemingly torn open by wolves and her insides devoured.
"A horrible accident, but a course of nature," his father had told him, patting him on his back as he wiped up the vomit on his chin with a towel.
He had believed him, until in a game of hide and seek with his sister had led him to waltz into a secluded room in the far eastern wing of his castle, where he witnessed something he should not have.
Shadows clamped over his open mouth as he tried to scream, the sound lost in the massless abyss. Eleona smiled, red lips bleeding as her clawed fingers dug savagely into the oozing meat of a fresh heart, the squelching echoing off the walls with sick cries. The Queen's face was not the beautiful woman that his father had introduced to them on that dreadful day, but that of a hag with sagging, rotting skin and blackened teeth. The only similarity between this old witch and the voluptuous beauty were the green eyes that seemed to glow red with every dripping bite.
As she swallowed, Keir could only watch in terror as the witch's face seemed to melt, her winkled skin sizzling as it fell onto the table in front of her like acid. As she continued to eat and eat and eat, the startlingly human organs splayed out before her on silver platters slowly disappearing between those red lips, her face continued to drip and drip and drip, until the youthful, sinfully alluring woman sat before him.
"I see that a little prince has joined me for dinner," the Queen cackled, wiping the red corners of her mouth with a towel, though blood was never easy to wipe off, a smear of red finding home on her face. Letting out an annoyed "tsk", Eleona threw the stained cloth onto the ground, a talon-like finger calling the boy forward, the shadows pulling him closer.
"A witch," Keir whimpered, as the shadows slipped from his lips, retreating back into the Queen's form.
"Oh, I detest that term," the woman spat, waving away the word with her hand. "So many have called me that over the years, it gets most tiring."
"Your face," Keir whispered, eyes on the blood-soaked table in front of him as the shadows formed ropes around his wrists, tethering him to a chair. The witch grinned, caressing her cheeks as she turned her head from side to side in the mirror, admiring her beauty.
"Yes, most fair, am I not?" the witch laughed, the sound grating to the prince's ear.
"It is not your face," Keir cried out, the witch sending him a withering glare as her fingers snapped his head upwards.
"It was the face I was born with, you insolent child," the witch seethed, letting the boy's chin go harshly, his neck aching. Standing in front of him, the witch twirled, her shadows swirling around her. "It is the face that I should always have. Age and time, they tried to mock me, but they failed. They've failed for over five hundred years."
Keir gasped as the Queen spoke, running her finger along a metal place, licking the coating of wet blood as she sighed in satisfaction.
"The power of the flesh of youthful maidens is most appetising," Eleona said, "it's great for the skin."
YOU ARE READING
Snow's White | ✓
Romance[BxB] Prince Lucas thought that life would be perfect when he made Snow White his wife-to-be. At least, that was until her twin brother waltzed into his life and obliterated everything he knew. He had her same pale skin, blood red lips and dark, ebo...
