Narissa was gone long before the dwarves returned, but the prince waited. They did not look for him, but he hadn’t really expected them to. He had no way of explaining what happened anyway.
Eventually he was forced back to the witch’s quarters, but he refused to watch her gloat.
“Look at me,” she said.
“No.”
“Don’t be like that. I’ve been waiting to ask you for so long.”
“I don’t feel like answering,” he retorted. At that moment he dreaded the words.
“We were making such progress. I thought we had established that you don’t get a choice.”
She touched the mirror and he was forced to turn towards her if only to tell her to stop.
“Mirror, Mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all?”
He steadied himself for the sick sensation of her name being dragged from his lips. Yet even as he prepared to fight not to say the words, another answer sprung to his mind. The prince began to laugh.
“What could you possibly find funny at a time like this?”
“Snow White.”
Narissa’s face grew pale.
“What did you say?” she hissed.
“Snow White is still the fairest.”
“You’re lying!”
“How could I? It’s your spell that makes me tell the truth. So when I say that she is more beautiful dead than you alive, you may take me at my word.”
“It’s impossible. She is a corpse!”
“Perhaps it has finally occurred to me that even the homeliest scullery maid would be superior by default,” he spat at her.
“How dare you speak to me like that?”
“What will you do to stop me? I’m lost to you, Narissa. You’ve finally pushed me over the edge. Go ahead and use your stupid little rhyme all you like. I just hope you're prepared for the answer you’ll get.”
“You’re insane!”
“Oh, I probably lost my mind years ago. You’ve just taken away my last reason to care. Goodbye, my queen. I’ve decided I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
The witch’s expression darkened. Her amber eyes blazed as she reached for the chair by the vanity.
“If you won’t speak to me, then I have no further use for you,” she threatened.
“Are you resorting to violence? How pathetic,” he said, unable to think of a reason to try and stop her. “Go ahead and do it.”
With a cry, the witch threw all her energy into smashing the mirror.
It felt like his soul was shattering. The world seemed to turn white as he lost track of what was real.
The next moment he was aware, he found himself lying on the queen’s floor. It suddenly occurred to him that he could feel the cold stone on his cheek. When he forced his eyes open he could see his hand moving as struggled to get up.
Unsteadily he reached up to touch his face. He couldn’t tell if the fracture Snow had described was still there when his whole body still burned, but there seemed to be nothing there but his own smooth skin. Apart from a few cuts from the shards surrounding him, he seemed to be perfectly restored.
A whimper distracted him from this revelation. He looked over to see Narissa crouched on the ground beside him, trying to shield herself from him.
“Don’t!” She cried, as he pulled her fingers.
It was as if her face was broken. A fissure had formed over one of her beautiful amber eyes, and it was rapidly spreading. There was no blood though. Instead, a trickle of tiny silver crystals began to flow from the wound. She cried out as the cracks started to form across her hands and throat.
“Help me,” she begged.
The prince could not stop her own magic from rebelling against her. He could only hold Narissa while the rest of her body shattered just as the mirror had.
Knowing how much he had always hated her, with the last of her breath she asked through crumbling lips why he had stayed. He wasn’t able to answer before the woman who had been his entire world for hundreds of years dissolved into sand.
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