The Rules of Ever After by Killian B. Brewer

brush onto the floor, she turned and spread out her arms. “Welcome home, princess.”
    “Home? My mother?”
    Cauchemar walked slowly across the room, the train of her gown dragging a trail in the thick dust. Paying no attention to the girl’s questions, she pulled a torch from the wall beside the chamber door and snapped her fingers at its tip. A bright flame flared and illuminated the room. She carried the torch to the wall across from the bed and stared at the portrait that appeared in the flickering light of the flames. Katerina rose from the floor, walked up behind her aunt and looked over her shoulder at the image of four smiling faces. A bearded young man with blond hair and a golden crown draped his arm across the shoulders of a beautiful young woman whose crown adorned long, curling blonde locks, which spilled over her shoulders. A little boy with white-blond hair leaned on the woman’s knee. All three stared lovingly at the baby in the woman’s arms. Katerina squinted to see the image in the dim light; she noticed that the woman looked a lot like herself.
    “The first painting of you.” Cauchemar turned to walk back toward door to put the torch into a mount on the wall.
    Katerina stood silently staring until the image faded as the torch moved farther away. She crossed the room and sat on the stool in front of the vanity. Looking at her reflection, she pulled her curls forward and let them drop over her shoulders like the woman in the painting. “That woman looks like me.”
    “She should. She’s your mother.”
    “That’s my family?”
    “Was.”
    “I still don’t understand,” Katerina said, as she shifted her gaze to the eyes of her aunt’s reflection.
    “Little girl, you’re not the only one with secrets in her heart. The story I told King Henry about your royal heritage was not a complete lie. You’re in the castle of the queen of Cantera, where you were born. Well, it was her castle until the invasion of the troll king, Thrigor. I was here when it happened.”
    “Yes, you said you were walking with me in the woods.”
    “Well, that part was a little untrue. Here,” Cauchemar said as she reached over and ran her fingers along the mirror. “See.”
    The glass began to wobble and hum. Katerina watched as her reflection faded and the reflected room grew bright. The tattered furnishings around the room in the mirror were suddenly whole and clean. The white lace curtains fluttered lazily in the windows, and sunlight streamed into the room. The woman from the painting rushed into the mirrored room holding a baby and dragging a boy behind her. Katerina turned around to look at the room. It was the same dilapidated room with no one but Cauchemar behind her.
    Cauchemar grabbed her head and turned her face back to the mirror. “These are reflections of the past. Watch your mother.”
    Katerina watched the woman in the mirror as she flitted about the room in a panic. Dropping the little boy’s hand, she ran to a large trunk at the foot of the bed and flung it open with her one free hand. She dropped to her knees and put the baby in the open trunk. Grabbing the little boy’s hand again, she lifted him into the trunk and urged him to sit down. She raced to the door and pushed it shut. As she reached for the key, the door flung open, knocking the young woman to the floor. Katerina gasped as Cauchemar stalked in. However, this was not the Cauchemar she knew; her face lacked the familiar wrinkles and lines, and her now-silver hair was a cascade of raven curls. The blonde woman jumped up and flung her arms around the other woman. Katerina noticed that the Cauchemar in the mirror did not hug back. The two women hurried to the bed and began a frenzied conversation, with the young queen pointing at the children in the trunk again and again. The young queen dropped to her knees before Cauchemar and clasped her hands in front of her face in a pleading motion.
    “What is she saying?” Katerina kept her