Adrianne Tully

You were just a peasant, a young man who was forced to work in the palace, to pay off your family's debts. The king hadn't really paid much attention to you, you were just another poor devil in his stables.

But she…she did see you.

Queen Grimhilde was undoubtedly beautiful, everyone in the kingdom knew it. There was absolutely no one who could even come close to her beauty, and she was proud as the eyes of the kingdom fell upon her. You should have been suspicious of the way the servants who had been in the palace for longer tried not to get too close.

__________

You didn't know when it started. To you, it was just another day in the stables, you shouldn't even be able to converse with the queen. But there she was, when you were alone. She was kind, warm, and completely different from the stories of the cold, ruthless queen you'd heard.

She even asked you about your family, your home, if you missed them and how big was your debt, how much time you had left to work for the palace. All the signs were there, but you were naive and thought they were harmless questions. You didn't notice the way those green eyes seemed to shine with something dangerously close to obsession.

_____________

It didn't take you long to realize that you had her favor. It wasn't something to take lightly, of course, but it was comforting to know that, at least, you had your place secured in the palace…as long as queen Grimhilde protected you. After all, not even the king dared to contradict her.

But being the queen's favorite brought you a lot of trouble too. Many servants were furious that your workloads were less than theirs, and tried to make you look bad in front of the queen. But she seemed to excuse each and every one of your mistakes, no matter how small or big.

It wasn't until later that even the king began to hate you, and it was only then that you sensed that your life might be on the line.

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You didn't know what to expect when the queen called you into her chambers, thinking you were in trouble, or that her apparent patience with you had finally run out.

Yet you froze when, finding yourself alone and away from prying eyes and ears, the beautiful, imposing woman had confessed her affections to you. She had you cornered against the wall, her green eyes shining with an affection no one had ever known in her before, and she almost seemed like a different person, more human, more vulnerable, when she asked you to be her lover.

There was something in the way she pleaded with you, something deep and undeniable, that for a moment, you were about to agree, overwhelmed by how deeply she truly seemed to love you.

But you couldn't. You were just a poor boy condemned to pay the debts your family had incurred since even before you were born, and she was the queen. You shouldn't even be worthy of being in her presence, much less allowing yourself to be the object of her passions. Not to mention the certain death that awaited you both if the king found out.

So, with a heavy heart and a deep sense of regret, you rejected her. At the time, you thought you were doing the right thing, that you were protecting her as much as you were protecting yourself. You should have noticed the way her green eyes darkened as you left her chambers.

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The rumor began, as it often does, in the lowest echelons of the palace. Among the slaves, servants, cooks, and ladies, the idea began to circulate that you were, in fact, the beautiful queen's lover, since there was no other reason for her to favor you so much.

The lie even reached the ears of the king, and he soon had you arrested and taken to the dungeons, and queen Grimhilde, this time, didn't try to defend you. You didn't know what was going on, you were innocent, but no one believed you. No one, except her.

The sweet little princess, the tender Snow White. As beautiful as the late queen, but with an untouchable innocence and purity, typical of childhood. It was no secret that Queen Grimhilde had no affection for her predecessor's daughter, although she was not necessarily cruel to the child either. She was simply indifferent to her.

Therefore, the princess usually wandered alone around the castle, with a father who was too busy and a stepmother who pretended to be oblivious to her existence. Perhaps it should not have surprised you so much that, on one of her little walks through the palace's nooks and crannies, the princess had found the door to the dungeon, and with it, to your cell.

Snow White, bless her soul, did not seem to have the slightest notion of malice, so the idea that her own father had locked up a young boy, without the right to food and water, seemed impossible to her little mind.

She kept you company for a long time, before sneaking off to get some bread and water from the kitchen and bring it to you. At that moment, it seemed to you that she was, truly, an angel.

And so, as the days went by, the sweet princess took to visiting you daily, always bringing a little food and something to drink, and telling you everything that was happening outside. It was from her that you learned that the king had fallen ill, and that Queen Grimhilde would not allow anyone else into his chambers, not even the court doctors.

At another time, it would have seemed to you an act of love and devotion from a wife worried about her bedridden husband. However, knowing how she had asked you to be her lover, you knre she really had no love for the king.

Also, there was something about the way Snow White told it to you, an underlying danger that even the innocent girl didn't seem to realize, so deep down, you suspected there was something more to the queen's insistence on being the only one to attend to the king.

You had a bad feeling about it.

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A month after you had been locked away, the news of the king's passing finally came. It wasn't really a surprise, but the way the now widowed queen behaved, cold, emotionless, and without the slightest hint of pain or empathy for the princess, shook the entire kingdom.

Without a husband to submit to, or a son to inherit the throne, Queen Grimhilde quickly took the reins and protected the power that now belonged to her, at least until the princess was old enough to rule. Although, deep down, you knew that she would not let Snow White take the throne, ever.

You wished you could do something for the sweet girl, protect her, take her away from the kingdom, away from the beautiful but dangerous demon that ruled the place now. But you couldn't do anything, not while you were behind those damned iron bars.

So you contented yourself with listening to her and offering small words of comfort, and occasionally taking her small hand through the bars. Snow White had told you that you were her only friend, because the rest of the castle staff feared the queen so much that they avoided the princess so as not to anger her.

Your heart ached for the innocent girl who had been blameless, and you promised her that as long as you lived, you would be her friend, that you would be there to listen to her.

How foolish of you to believe that the queen didn't have ears everywhere.

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You never really expected to see Grimhilde again, and you had grown so accustomed to the princess's visits that when the dungeon door opened, you didn't even bother to look up.

"Bread and water, your highness?" you had asked, as always.

"Something better" an icy, cruel voice answered you.

You jumped to your feet and stared in horror at the woman standing outside your cell. The queen was just as beautiful as you remembered, but with a much more powerful, imposing, and dark aura that made your heart clench in fear.

"Your grace" you stammered.

"Silence!" She cut you off as she opened the door to your cell.

There were no guards with her, but somehow, that only made you more nervous. Instead of ushering you out, the queen entered your prison, her gaze filled with hatred and resentment, but with a veil of sadness and pain beneath. It took you by surprise.

"You're an idiot" she said "we could have been happy together, you could have ruled by my side."

You couldn't answer, only back away until your back hit the wall. You were at the mercy of the same woman, the same demon, who had an entire kingdom under her relentless yoke.

"I got rid of him so I could be with you, and how did you repay me?!" she yelled "by being friends with the plague he left behind!"

Your heart stopped for a second. You had suspected it from the moment Snow White told you the king was sick, but hearing her admit that she had been responsible for his death, for you no less, made your blood run cold as you saw there were no limits for this woman.

"Your Majesty-"

"Shut up!"

Her elegant, well-manicured hands felt cold on your skin as she grabbed your face tightly, forcing you to look into her eyes. Those beautiful yet dangerous green eyes that followed you even in your dreams, giving you no respite or rest.

"You should have loved me when I told you to" she said darkly, pulling a vial from her clothes "now you'll have to watch your family, your precious Snow White, cry for you…without being able to do anything."

You didn't know what she meant, and she didn't give you time to ask or beg. She forced you to swallow the liquid in the bottle before letting go and looking at you with hatred and a hint of satisfaction.

The transformation was painful, very painful. You felt the liquid burn your throat, your insides twist and catch fire. You felt your bones creak painfully as they shrank and rearranged and your skin cracked as feathers sprouted from it.

You screamed, screamed a lot and from the bottom of your being, but you knew that only she could hear you, and your screams, which soon turned into croaks, seemed to be music to her ears.

The queen didn't even bother to put you in a cage, she simply smiled cruelly and left. After all, where could you have gone? Now, transformed into a raven, you couldn't do anything, you couldn't go back home, nor did you know how to defend yourself in the wild, really, she had locked you up more than you already were, because now, you wouldn't even have the comfort of talking to the sweet princess, the one who would believe that you had escaped and abandoned her.