Two years later
The Cursed King might be a fearsome name, but two years on, King Dane was revered as a king who shared in the mourning and grief of his people, who listened to and cared for them instead of hiding behind his ivory walls.
In the immediate aftermath of the Demon War, he set up war tents on the palace grounds to temporarily house all the citizens who'd lost their homes in the war—something that no king had ever allowed. Then all the gold and resources that trickled in from the Northern Lands went properly into rebuilding homes and filling hungry mouths, and any lords or powerful traders who attempted to line their own pockets were promptly executed for corruption.
None of these things diminished the pain of loss, but they were the first step to restoring people's trust in the crown.
No matter what he did, there were naysayers who couldn't get over the fact that his curse had brought near-doom upon them all, and more others who doubted the motives behind his deeds.
And they would be right to doubt him. None of what he did came from a place of selflessness or benevolence. Not really.
He liked to think that Cassie was somewhere up there as a star, shining brightly, watching and guiding him. Imagine if she saw him do absolutely nothing to protect the people and rebuild the kingdom she had given up her own life to save. Even as a star, he was confident that she would find a way to kick him in the backside and take back everything she'd written in her last letter to him.
No, he couldn't have that. What she said—about seeing him in their next life and the next—that was what he lived for. But if he lived this life as a loser, she would probably only want him as a pet cockroach in her next life.
He had to think of her in this way: the fun and fiery Cassie who had never feared to defy him and pull him into line, even when she was alone in the palace with no one at her back. If he did not, he would crumple into a mess before her glass coffin. Again.
Even after two years, the pain did not subside. All it did was morph into a constant, dull ache.
I miss you. I miss you so much it hurts.
"Papa!"
Dane looked up just in time to see his daughter hurtling through the doors of the garden mausoleum in a squealing mess of black curls and tubby limbs.
"Up! Up!" she demanded, reaching her arms up at him.
Bending down, he lifted Fate up into his arms, and her little arms—far stronger than they looked—clamped around his neck.
"Mama sleeping?" she asked in her toddler slur, peering down at the still form of Cassie, preserved in a glass coffin made by the finest tradesmen his council had sourced from around the kingdom.
Dane nodded. "Mama sleeping."
"Shhhhh." Fate held a finger up to her lips, then tilted her head to look up at Dane. "When will Mama wake?" she asked for the hundredth time.
"Soon, I hope." It was the answer he gave each time his daughter asked the question because it was the honest answer. And because he couldn't trust himself to come up with a hundred different answers to her brutally painful question without breaking down.
After two years, he still didn't know how to explain to Fate that her mother was dead. She hadn't yet grasped the concept of death, and if only he could, he would shelter her forever from ever needing to know it.
"Apologies, sire." Sir Alan appeared at the doors, huffing and puffing, likely from chasing little Princess Fate through the gardens. "The council has been waiting for two hours already."
YOU ARE READING
Bride to the Cursed: a Snow White retelling
Fantasy[COMPLETED] When a king makes an order, he expects it to be followed. When King Dane divorced his wife, he expected her to get out of his sight and stay out of his sight. Not reappear three months later in his bed, spouting nonsense about being a 'l...
