This hypocritical man. This disgusting man.
The queen trembled with fury.
She couldn't control her impulse and asked the magic mirror whether her husband harbored an incestuous desire for her stepdaughter.
The mirror's answer was no.
But before the queen could breathe a sigh of relief, the mirror's flat voice rang out again: "The truth is locked in the room at the very top of the palace, the one with the lock."
The queen hesitated.
From the very first day she moved into the palace, the king had told her she could go anywhere—except the locked room at the very top. The queen had never been particularly curious, and over the years, she had forgotten such a room even existed.
Late at night, the sound of the lock clicking open seemed especially loud. The queen felt a little afraid.
But what she truly needed to fear was hiding inside the room.
The room was filled with dried flowers, and the potpourri was so overpowering it made her nauseous. In the center of the room sat an ornate crystal coffin, and inside lay a noblewoman who was no longer breathing. The queen needed only one glance to recognize she must be Snow White's mother.
She and her daughter really did look very much alike.
The queen's hands shook as she approached the crystal coffin. She noticed a deep ligature mark on the woman's neck—the kind she had seen on condemned prisoners at public hangings.
This did not match the official record that stated the previous queen had died of sudden illness.
The queen backed away in horror and accidentally knocked open a nearby cabinet. A cascade of dried flowers spilled out along with something else—many desiccated bodies of young women hidden among the blooms.
From every shriveled, hollow face, the queen saw echoes of Snow White.
Afterward, she could never recall how she managed, with astonishing composure, to restore everything to its place, quietly lock the door, and return to the garden.
The mirror told her the rest of the answer to her earlier question.
The previous queen's death was because Snow White was not the king's daughter at all.
A chill colder than anything the queen had ever felt seized her. She screamed and fainted into the dense rose bushes.
---
In the days that followed, the queen tried to convince the king to arrange a suitable marriage for Snow White. Each time she brought it up, the king flew into a rage, accusing her of wanting to drive his daughter away out of jealousy.
The queen maintained her silence.
In truth, she didn't know what to say.
She was a queen in name only, with very limited options. Perhaps she should simply remain a bystander until her love for this man was entirely spent.
But Snow White came to find her first.
It was a chaotic late night. The weeping girl threw herself into the queen's arms, begging for help.
Snow White was pregnant.
The father was the prince from the neighboring kingdom.
"If my father finds out, he'll want to kill me. No—he already knows." The girl knew the gravity of the situation, her beautiful eyes wide with terror. "But I really love the white horse prince. For him, I'm willing to give up everything."
For a moment, the queen felt dazed. In this girl's tearful gaze, she saw a reflection of herself from many years ago—that naive young princess who had been willing to ask a demon for help, all for love.
So the queen arranged for her stepdaughter to escape. She did her best to soothe the furious king on one hand, while secretly instructing a hunter disguised as a physician to present a bloody animal fetus to the king, claiming the princess's child had been terminated.
Unfortunately, this failed to fool the shrewd king.
The king grabbed the plate of bloody organs and hurled it at the queen's face in front of all the court officials.
The queen stood still, letting the filth drip into her hair and onto her dress. But inside, she felt no ripple at all.
She no longer recognized the man before her.
---
The queen kissed awake the slumbering demon for the third time.
"Hello, dear princess." The demon snapped from dream-mode to full alertness. "At your service. What is your request?"
The queen looked at him impassively. "I want to end this marriage."
A queen without power or influence couldn't dissolve a royal marriage through human channels. That was why she had awakened the demon once more.
The demon's eyes brightened, and he even gave a cheerful whistle. "This one's going to cost you quite a bit."
The queen asked, "What do you want?"
"Love." The demon smiled. "You will lose all the love in your life."
The queen lowered her eyes. Memories of past sweetness flooded through her mind, one after another, but they had all turned rancid, rotting into sludge in the depths of her heart.
She gave a single, composed nod.
The demon gazed at her with burning eyes and bowed deeply. "As you wish."
The very next day, the king fell from his horse during a hunt, breaking his neck instantly. The entire kingdom went into mourning, whether sincerely or hypocritically. The queen—now the queen dowager—stood in the center of the cathedral in a black dress, her face hidden behind a thick veil so no one could see her expression.
In truth, she shed not a single tear.
Love was already gone.
---
On the matter of succession, the nobles split into two factions—one supporting the queen, the other demanding Snow White be found and brought back.
The queen was no fool. She knew that whether Snow White or she herself was ultimately chosen, the other would come to a miserable end.
And the one chosen would still be forced into marriage with some aging noble, living out her days as a puppet.
Fortunately, only the queen knew Snow White's hiding place, having orchestrated the escape. So the confined queen slipped into the palace garden under cover of night and kissed the demon awake for the fourth time.
"We meet again so soon, my poor princess." This time, the demon looked thoroughly awake, and even frowned slightly. "At your service. What is your request?"
"Save me and Snow White," the queen said.
"Tsk, tsk." The demon shook his head—a rare occurrence. "The price for this request, I'm afraid you won't be willing to pay."
Then he leaned close to her ear and whispered the cost of this transaction.
The queen's expression shifted from shock to conflict. After a long deliberation, she changed her request: "Then give me a poison apple—one that can induce false death."
The rest, she would handle herself.
The demon wore a complicated smile. He plucked a rose from nearby, transformed it in his palm into a red apple so vivid it seemed ready to drip, and placed it in the queen's hand.
The queen didn't take it immediately. She looked up at him first. "And what do you want this time?"
"Family," the demon replied.
The cost was steep. The queen had long understood that deals with demons were never as simple as they appeared—what he truly demanded, what she truly paid, could be far more than the agreed terms.
But she had no other choice.
The helpless queen could only silently pray this would be the last time she bargained with a demon.
Watching the queen hurry away, the demon didn't vanish as he usually did.
"We'll be seeing each other again very soon," he said.
---
The queen spent enormous effort finding an opportunity to disguise herself as an old woman and slip out of the palace.
She had only one day to make the round trip, lest her captors notice her absence.
"Eating this apple will allow you to change your identity through a death-like state," she told Snow White. "From now on, you'll live freely."
But there was only one apple, and she let her stepdaughter make the choice.
In truth, she could have been selfish. On the way here, she had raised the apple to her own lips several times, but she couldn't forget so many things.
She couldn't forget the way the little girl had smiled the first time she saw her, couldn't forget the way the chubby toddler had toddled around holding her hand, couldn't forget the way the little girl had plucked a rose-red flower crown and giggled as she placed it on her head.
Even without blood ties, so what? Snow White was the daughter she had raised with her own hands, the only family she had left.
Her terrible life had few beautiful things left in it, and she didn't want to betray even the last precious memories.
But she also had to admit that when she saw Snow White bite into the apple without hesitation, a great deal of disappointment still burst in her heart.
She understood—the other girl no longer considered her family.
That was the consequence of dealing with a demon.
And her own choice.
---
The news of Snow White's death spread quickly across the entire Fairy Tale Continent.
And the rumor that the queen stepmother had killed her with a poison apple also spread to every corner of the land.
The queen couldn't afford to worry about such things. She had to pour every ounce of her strength into fighting the two factions within the kingdom.
The faction that wanted to marry her, and the faction that had wanted to kill her but now shifted to wanting to marry her after Snow White's demise.
She managed to eke out a delicate balance, keeping her head, avoiding forced marriage, and becoming the kingdom's queen regent in name.
She even found the time to send the antidote and a letter explaining the truth to the white horse prince.
The white horse prince kept his end, reviving his beloved. The ignorant public didn't question the oddity, happy to believe that "a prince awakened Snow White with a kiss of true love"—such nonsense.
Well, every spineless story in the Fairy Tale Continent ended that way.
When word came that the neighboring kingdom was celebrating the wedding of the white horse prince and a commoner girl, the queen went to the palace garden and quietly wove a crown of roses, allowing herself a long-absent smile.
Some happiness, even if she could never have it herself, was comforting to know existed.
---
But this story doesn't end there.
Not long after, the white horse prince led an army to attack, under the banner of "Eliminate the regicide, welcome the new queen."
The regicide, of course, meant the present queen.
And the new queen was the commoner the white horse prince had married—Snow White.
Scandal-loving citizens loved digging up dirt, and the current queen had plenty to dig up. Abusing her stepdaughter, murdering the king, even attempting to kill poor Snow White with a poison apple.
Each accusation, every incident, became juicy gossip in the streets and alleys.
"What a wicked woman," the country folk would say, pretending there was no jealousy in their self-righteous tones.
No one was willing to believe that once, a pure and flawless princess had willingly renounced her claim to the throne of the continent's most prosperous kingdom, marrying into this one with nothing but a handful of red roses, brave and unafraid.
People only ever believe what they want to believe.
With the public's backing, the queen's army suffered one defeat after another. Soon, the white horse prince's forces were at the city gates. Fires raged inside, screams echoed—a scene of utter devastation.
The queen stood atop the city wall, looking down at Snow White, who stood alongside the white horse prince.
Oh, her stepdaughter was a queen now too.
"Why are you doing this?" the queen asked in a low voice.
Snow White looked away awkwardly for a moment, then turned back with renewed resolve and answered:
"Because I've always known how hard it is to be a queen with no power and no family of your own."
---
The princess kissed awake the slumbering demon.
This was the last time she would kiss him awake. Twenty years had passed since the first time.
Twenty years ago, she was a carefree young princess, the only daughter and legal heir to the most powerful and prosperous kingdom on the Fairy Tale Continent. She possessed the world's greatest beauty and was adored by all—even her finicky ability to feel a pea beneath twenty mattresses was praised by others as a precious virtue.
All she lacked was a passionate, sweet love, and her life would have been truly complete.
But love came, and life was still not complete.
What was the point of regret now? What was the point of complaint?
Hadn't she chosen all of this herself?
"My dearest princess, we finally meet again." For the first time, there was no smile on the demon's face. "This time, what can I do for you?"
The princess shook her head weakly. "I have nothing left to trade with you."
The white horse prince's army had breached the city gates and would soon storm the palace. All the nobles had fled as frantically as their servants. Only she had calmly walked into the deepest part of the palace—the rose garden that had always been by her side.
She only wanted someone to talk to in her final moments.
"No." The demon corrected her. "You still have one thing you haven't traded with me."
That was the most precious thing she possessed, the one thing she had refused to trade even when she was at her most desperate.
The princess smiled, but her smile was as pale as her face. "But I don't want anything anymore."
She was so tired from this journey. She even envied the demon, who could sleep for so long, oblivious to all the chaos outside. So free, so easy.
"Then…" The demon pondered, his tone carrying a hint of uncharacteristic hesitation. "…There is something I want to trade with you."
"What?" The princess felt this might be the last surprise of her life.
"I want your soul." The demon said.
The princess's eyes widened slightly. "And what will you trade me for it?"
"A pure soul is worth a great deal." The demon stepped through the thorny rose bushes toward the princess. "I can give you a prosperous kingdom, a lovely child, and a love that never ends, a love that is perfect."
The princess smiled, and this time she smiled with genuine joy. She thought of her aunt, her second cousin, and her aunt-in-law—their answer to the question the young princess had once asked.
What can a mortal trade with a demon?
Love, of course.
She understood now. She finally understood.
The demon stood before the princess and held a fiery red rose before her, asking if she would make the trade.
This time, the princess didn't hesitate. She took the rose and pressed her lips to his.
In the next second, every rose vine began to grow wildly, surging like an unstoppable tide, climbing the city walls, enclosing the castle, holding back the white horse prince's army beyond the gates, and freezing time within the castle walls at that very instant.
No one could ever approach this castle surrounded by rose vines again. It was forgotten by the world.
Only in the occasional legend was it said that in the highest room of that castle, there lay a crystal coffin, and inside it slept a beautiful princess, waiting for the deepest kiss of love from her beloved to awaken her one day.
As for whether that beloved was a prince or a demon, no one knew the answer.
But it doesn't matter. Fairy tales always end like this, without any proper beginning or ending.
All we need to know is that from then on, the princess and her beloved lived happily ever after.
Until forever.
END