Free White As Snow (Fairy Tale) by Tanith Lee Page B

He spoke coarsely, to show her he was master here; not so coarsely as he had in the forest. All that was done. She had been virtuous and afraid then—to her credit, yes, yes. Now she was lawfully his before God, and must thank him.
    He did kiss her. Her teeth were closed. He drew back and took a breath. “Now, is this kind?” A second kiss. The same. All altered.
    “Did I wed you for this, you sulky slut? Get a crown on you for this? Unlock your doors, or do I ram you? Is that what you like, eh? A bit of a battle? I’m used to those, I can give you a fight easily enough, if you like.” And he drew back his arm, slowly, to show her its muscle.
    Her expressionless face was like white eggshell.
    “Have your way,” she said. She did not even speak the same. “But expect nothing.”
    “I expect my way. That’ll do.”
    So he got her to the bed, threw her over, yanked up her clothes and forced himself into that tepid, hard, ungiving body, dry to annoy him, which moved only at his thrusts.
    Her face was like that of something dead. The eyes were glazed. Just like that other bed of snow—
    Perhaps it was only the drink in him, he had drunk a lot, that turned the course of his energy astray. He crammed on and on, trying to rub up a spark. But he began to see he went nowhere in her lifeless body. Necrophily was not for him. He needed under him a reaction—the spurs of enjoyment, failing that, the spur of another’s panic and pain. He shouted in her dead face then, in her glistening eyes. Still raised over her, still inside her, he caught sight of himselƒ , across the room, in the edge of the mirror.
    Quite how he did so, he was afterward unsure, for the mirror did not seem to be at the right angle to picture him. Was that some of her sorcery?
    What he saw was distorted. The man-creature in the glass was swarthy with hearty meat and drink, panting and piglike. While she—she was simply a mound of velvet that might only have been
one more cover on the bed. As if she were not there at all.
    It put him off. That, and the drink, and the girl with her averting sign, and this one’s uselessness.
    He pulled away, left her. He did up his clothing, and swore so the room rang like a bell.
    Then he meant to thrash her. Her face should have it first, let them all see the brand of his displeasure.
    She was upright, standing there all ready, the frozen hag.
    She said, “Do what you want.”
    “You know I can’t. You cuntess, you’ve spoiled it. Well—you I’ll spoil the next—”
    “Beat me if you want. If you make another thing in me”— thing , she said, not baby, thing —“I’ll cut it out of my inside, as I should have, with the other. And if you beat me I’ll cut my throat—so you’d better see to it first, as my father wanted. But I’ll scratch out your eyes. I’ll tear you and then I’ll cut my throat”—her voice was rising now, like a low, cold-frozen gale from the sea—“or I’ll hang myself the way you hanged Lilca—they’ll all see—they’ll say, ‘Look what she did to escape her life with King Draco.’”
    And then this monster gave a laugh. It was not loud, nor dramatic. And although her voice had risen, this was soft, nearly lyrical. Yet it struck him like a shriek.
    She had lost her fear, it seemed, of being cut. The voice of the forest was still in her. She said now what she should have said before; she had the strength to say it, for she had not yet realized she might be afraid to die.
    Draco again raised his arm. But like his erection, the penile upthrust of anger did not sustain itself. Instead he felt queasy.
    Had she put something in the wine her servant gave him? She was mad enough.
    “These are fine grounds for divorcement, woman. Shall I cast you out?”
    “Yes,” she said. “I would like that the most.”
    “Be damned in Hell, you fucking sow. I’ll keep you, then. You’re mine, till Isay so. Till / want. Do you hear?”
    “Have what you want, king,” she sang at