"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"

Yet another queen, asking the same bloody question as always.  I stifle a groan.  Now more than ever I wish that I could avoid the summons, but that's unfortunately not possible.  At least this particular interaction should be quick; the queen calling me is a very traditional queen as royalty goes.  Nothing like the aqua-skinned empress or the huntsman, which is boring, but at least it means that I won't have to spend much time with her.

She, like most of my current wielders, is purely human, but she's got more than a touch of magic in her veins.  Unlike the huntsman's queen – or, I should say, Ben's queen – she's a powerful sorceress.

She looks the part, too; her gown is draped with black lace and her bodice is made from wine-dark deerskin.  Though she tends towards the puffy side, her yards of corset lacing do a good job of concealing it.  She maintains her beauty with a regimen of spells and potions, but underneath the glamour her time is coming to an end – crow's feet mar her eyes and wrinkles surround her mouth.

I bring my mask into focus in her mirror and make it bob respectfully.  The huntsman is sleeping right now and none of my other wielders are doing anything particularly interesting, so I bring the bulk of my attention to bear on her world.  "You a..." I start to say.  Then I pause. 

Something has shifted in her kingdom in the past few hours; there are whispers of the princess's beauty floating around the marketplaces.  The  murmurs are hushed and furtive as the peasants cast wary glances over their shoulders, but there's no doubt that the commoners are enthralled by the princess.  She's only thirteen, so I wasn't expecting this yet, but I suppose she's developing early.  Her dusky skin is flawless and her body has already started to show curves, so she's well on her way to being a stunning beauty by the standards of this kingdom.

The queen, on the other hand, is rapidly losing the battle against time.  Her subjects regard her with a mix of superstition, awe, and fear; it's no wonder that they don't speak much of her beauty.  They adore the princess, though – she's the epitome of sweetness and light.  To my mind, she's a bit too sickly sweet, but there's no accounting for mortal taste.

I sigh.  "Your stepdaughter is the fairest of them all, your majesty," I tell the queen, smoothing away any expression from my mask.  "Her beauty has outstripped even yours."  Now that I know the truth of the situation, my geas won't let me say otherwise, but sometimes such flattery can ease the blow.

Not this time, though.  The queen's face hardens into icy lines and her lips press together firmly.  "Very well."  She spins on her heel, dress flaring around her, and barks at the guard standing at the door, "Fetch the huntsman."

So far, everything is proceeding normally.  Her lack of visible anger is a bit disturbing, but she's never been one to rage and throw things; she bottles them up and lets them sit like a fine wine.  Only when they're aged to perfection does she let them show at a time and place of her choosing.

In that, she's the opposite of Ben's queen.

The huntsman, however, reminds me strongly of Ben – or at least he did the last time I saw him.  Today, though, he wears an expressionless mask as he kneels before the queen.  "Yes, your majesty?"

I tune out the next few minutes of dialog; I have no interest in their banal chatter.  Like I said, I've seen this sort of thing happen a thousand times and more; there's almost no point in watching it unfold anymore.

I suppose I feel some sort of responsibility to my wielders, though, for I don't abandon the scene entirely.  It's probably pointless – there's no hint that any of the players on this stage will abandon the well-worn road that they tread.  But I watch anyway.  On the miniscule chance that something shifts, I want to see them carve a new path.

Plus, my huntsman – Ben – is still sleeping, so I've got nothing better to do.

This queen doesn't hand my mirror to her huntsman, but I flicker from reflection to reflection after him as he strides into the forest in search of the princess.  She's picking flowers in a meadow not too far away from the castle, singing to herself as she plucks the most gorgeous blooms.  Even the birds sing along with her, reinforcing my impression of her as too saccharine to tolerate. 

The miners will be delighted.

When the huntsman stalks out of the trees, she gasps and drops her bouquet.  Then she giggles.  "Oh, Sir Marius, I didn't hear you!"  She smiles winsomely at him.  "What are you doing here?"

He cocks his crossbow and lowers it to point at her heart.  "I apologize for this, princess."

I frown.  This isn't supposed to be happening.  Last time I paid any attention to the huntsman of this world, he was a caring family man with a daughter only a year younger than the princess.  Even when he killed so the castle could eat, he made sure that his prey died cleanly and quickly. 

So why is he suddenly willing to murder the innocent girl standing in front of him?

She inhales sharply, tears forming in her eyes.  "What... why are you doing this?"  A hint of a sob catches in her throat and a single tear rolls down her cheek.  Her current demeanor should be enough to melt the hardest of hearts; she's beautiful even when she cries.

But the huntsman remains unmoved.  "Her majesty's orders," he replies curtly.  "Don't make this harder than it has to be." 

She sniffs and takes a step towards him, hands outstretched.  "Please, Sir Marius," she begs, voice shaking with fear.  "Don't do this!  I..."  She gulps.  "I don't... want to die."  The last bit is nearly a whisper.

A hint of pain appears on the huntsman's face, but it's quickly erased.  "My apologies, princess."  Without waiting for her response, he pulls the trigger.

The bolt catches the princess in the sternum, right below her collarbone.  I hear the nauseating crack of bone echo through the air as she collapses, blood pouring down her chest.  The bright crimson doesn't quite look real against her dark skin and lavender dress; it's as though a mad artist threw a bucket of paint at her.

Her whimpering gasps make it clear that this is no game, however.  She clutches at the bolt with both hands, tugging feebly, but there's nothing she can do now.  She'll bleed out in a few minutes; I think the bolt nicked an artery.  It's a horrifying end for a thirteen-year-old who should have had her whole life ahead of her.

Gradually her struggles slow and her eyes roll back in her head – she's mercifully unconscious.  I thought I was inured to mortal sorrows, but I feel a pang of sadness as the huntsman rolls her onto her back and yanks the crossbow bolt out of her chest.  Blood follows in a spurt, pooling on the ground around her and staining the grass scarlet.  He's expressionless, and I don't know why I ever thought that he reminded me of Ben – they're nothing alike.

Part of me wants to return to Ben, to the wonders of Underhill and the cruel beauty of the Sidhe, but I force myself to stay and watch.  This was not supposed to happen, and I have no idea why everything is suddenly going sideways.  The princess's life was not supposed to end like this!  She was supposed to seek shelter with a group of miners, not bleed out in a lonely meadow.  But the men who would have taken her in are toiling away in their mine, happily oblivious to the tragedy occurring above their heads.

The huntsman unsheathes a serrated, foot-long knife from his belt and slashes it across the princess's throat with a frown.  Blood gurgles out of the wound as she thrashes once, then falls into the broken ragdoll stillness of death.  He nods in satisfaction.

I don't want to watch as he butchers her like a deer, but I do anyway.  He does as clean a job as possible, but he's soaked in gore by the time he wrenches her heart from her chest, leaving behind a grotesque mess of shattered bone and pulped muscle.  The gaping wound forms a macabre contrast with her childlike face, which is somehow untouched by the violence. 

Even in death, she's beautiful.

I wonder what will happen to her now.  Mortals have a plethora of stories about what happens after death, which encompass everything from glorious feasts to endless torment.  They all want to believe that their spirits will survive even as their earthly husks decay, but I've seen no evidence that they're correct.

Then again, I've got no proof that they're wrong, either.  I already know that there are worlds where I cannot visit, so it's possible that mortal spirits travel to them when they die.  They certainly don't remain to linger in the world that they've left behind, though – ghosts are nothing more than emotional imprints on the fabric of magical energy of the world.  The sapient undead, like liches, are 'dead' in a sense, but it's more of a transmutation than true death.  As far as I know, there's no way to return once a mortal has passed beyond the veil.

Still, there's a part of me that wants the princess to get a second chance, a way to remedy the unfairness of this situation.  None of this mess makes sense, and, if there's one thing I can't stand, it's an unanswerable question.  I can feel the irregularity of the situation grating against my senses – the multiverse shows no signs of a new path being forged or a rarely-used one being reinforced.  It's as if this death didn't register in the world at all.

That shouldn't be possible.  This particular path is as broad and well-worn as a highway, and deviations from it are both rare and obvious.  The multiverse should be humming like a harp string as the echoes of the huntsman's act vibrate through the space between the worlds, but it's perfectly still.

Maybe too still.

I've let my attention drift as I ponder the puzzle in front of me, but now I tune back into the world with the dead princess.  There's something subtly wrong with it... but I can't quite figure out what.

Then I take a closer look at the ruby puddles sinking into the dirt, and I realize that the color isn't as vibrant as it was only minutes before.  The bright scarlet has dulled to a muddy maroon, and it's not because the grass is absorbing it.  The foliage, too, has morphed from a vivid emerald to a sickly shade of olive – it's a subtle shift, for the most part, but now that I've noticed it I can't unsee it.  Everything from the flowers to the huntsman's jerkin has shifted hue slightly, as if an invisible hand dropped a neutral-density filter over the scene.

What's worse, the image isn't as clear as it should be.  I feel like I'm peering through the dimmest, palest reflection out there, but I've got plenty of suitable vantage points that should give crystalline views.  Are my powers waning?

The thought sends a spike of panic into my brain.  I force myself to relax and think rationally, switching my attention back to Ben to verify the extent of my powers.  He's still sleeping – snoring, to be precise – in the middle of the opulent suite that the fae had provided.  The colors there are rich and bold, and my view is unclouded; the same is true for another half-dozen worlds that I check.  It seems that the problem is due to this particular world, not an injury to my abilities.

A wave of relief swamps me.  I'm literally nothing without my power to watch through reflections; I can't even begin to imagine what would happen to me if I lost that.  Would I be trapped forever in the space between the universes, drifting in the icy silence with no way to communicate?  Or would I simply vanish as soon as my last connection with the multiverse was severed? 

I don't know, and I don't want to find out.

My attention has drifted away again.  The huntsman is now presenting the heart to his queen, who gives him a chilly smile and sends him on his way.  There are guards waiting for him in his quarters – he'll never see another dawn, but he doesn't know that.  She does, though, and her smile has more than a tinge of malicious satisfaction as he bows his way out of the throne room.

The entire scene revolts me, and there's no reason for me to stay any longer.  There's nothing I can do to repair the situation now, the queen has no reason to summon me anytime soon, and I can't bear to spend another minute in a world rapidly turning towards darkness.  I pull the scattered fragments of myself out of a thousand different reflections and regroup in the space between the worlds, deliberately blanking my awareness of that particular world.  If the queen summons me, I'll be forced to return, but I'm not going back of my own free will.

Thankfully, I've got a far more entertaining diversion waiting for me.  Ben continues to slumber – his snorts make him sound like a grumpy bear – but he'll wake soon.  Until then, I can be patient.

* * *

There's no one in the throne room now – the queen is gone, the huntsman is dead in his room, and the court has been dismissed for the day.  Good lost, evil triumphed, but the world still spins onwards through the vast emptiness of space.

There's something different about it, though.  If anyone was around to notice, they might comment on the oily feeling of the air or the lack of brightness in the sky, or maybe the lackluster glow of the flowers in the meadows.  Those with a talent for magic might feel the darkness lurking in the currents or might sense the increased difficulty in casting spells; more powerful mages might even have an inkling of what causes it.  They'd probably be wrong, but they could guess.

If they were particularly perceptive, though, they might have a chance to figure out what's really going on.  If they noticed the hair-thin crack that's edging its way across the mirror at the back of the hall, they'd have a chance, at least.

But no one will.

* * *

Author's Note: I'd love some feedback on this chapter, as it's a bit different from previous ones.  What do you think about the shift in tone?  Any predictions about what will happen now or why the story didn't play out the way it was supposed to?