However, that was not all.
After dinner, I couldn’t take my eyes off their nine-year-old prince. Such a beauty, the boy was. He was well mannered and shook my hand in such delicacy I have never seen before, but he seemed bored by the presence of the elders like us. His beautiful eyes were scanning the castle for the princess.
I asked my husband to summon our daughter and introduce her to the prince, hoping that cupid will strike his arrow and bind their hearts with velvet threads of love forever. Who else could I think of being my daughter’s husband in many years to come?
As our loyal servant escorted my lovely Snow White down the stairs, her black hair waved down her back on the white dress she wore. She looked paler today than usual – the sun had become her worst enemy lately and she wouldn’t go out in the light. Her room was darkened with the curtains rolled down over the windows, but she was still looking fabulous like a princess, licking her blood-red lips once she laid her eyes on the beautiful prince. It was appetite at first sight.
The prince seemed to cherish her as well. When the prince and princess’s eyes met, all elders exchanged murmurs and started gossiping about how beautiful they were. The sun splayed through the curtains and suddenly Snow White didn’t mind the sunlight in the prince’s presence. They played together and he chased her across the castle but Shew was deceivingly smart in hiding and manipulating, always with that doe-eyed smile on her face.
My eyes followed them everywhere they went in the castle. I was worried, for the prince was one of the boys with an infinite appetite for girls. However young the Reds were, their men had a reputation of growing up and becoming womanizers, but they also had a reputation for being irresistible to women. Shew had grown with an uncanny appetite of beautiful boys at such age. I could see it in her eyes whenever she met one.
What I feared was about to happen eventually. I caught the prince pushing Snow White gently to a corner and God only knows what that beautifully mischievous nine-year-old had in mind.
As I parted them, my husband summoned for one of his favorite young huntsmen, about Snow White’s age. The king had a habit of training young boys he trusted to become huntsmen and later help him defend the kingdom against the demons lurking outside the kingdom. The young boy huntsman was to escort the prince and the princes so nothing crazy happened.
Then the crowd was waiting for us outside to celebrate and bring joy onto the day the two kingdoms became alliances – and maybe more than that in the future. We, the elders, approached the people, heading out to the balcony when we heard a sudden scream behind us.
I tuned back, my heart racing, praying that it wasn’t what I feared. I was too late.
The young prince was lying on the floor, shuddering helplessly as if possessed by demonic spirits, like a fish throbbing for breath out of water. His eyes were all white as he screamed in pain. I could spot the two bitemarks on his neck and his blood trickling down onto the white and black marble floor.
I looked for the huntsman but he was gone.
Titling my head, I saw her, my daughter, Snow White, standing in the middle of the castle hall with blood dripping from her lips, but still looking as innocent as a white dove, as if she just overdosed on red cherry-flavored ice cream – we didn’t have that in the 18th century but you get what I mean.
As we ran toward the prince, she seemed astonished at the prince’s fainting, wondering why he didn’t like her biting him, why her bite hurt him as if she thought of it like a kiss or something. And I though the prince was a danger to her. She looked at me with her fangs drawn out, but with those doe eyes, pleading as if she were the victim not the predator.
“What happened to him?” She wondered as my husband used his magic powers to erase the king and queen’s memory so they forget what happened. He was such a master at the dark arts, but used wisely.
“Take her away from here,” he growled as he held the boy and laid him on a table. “I know how to save him.” He locked himself alone with the boy in the room for he didn’t want anyone, even me, to see how he will resurrect the prince.
I pulled my daughter away, up the stairs, to wash her face and her blood-dripping dress. She licked the prince’s blood form her hands like tasting melted chocolate from the palm of your hands.
“You can’t do that,” I yelled.
I wasn’t surprised. I knew what she was long ago but I needed the right moment to see her change with my own eyes. Still, my love for her chained me and stopped me from taunting her properly. It is as if I were teaching her the etiquettes of how not to drop a plate or a spoon while she ate.
“I can’t do what?” She sounded confused, still licking her lips.
“You can’t just bite anyone you want to.” I gritted my teeth.