Red as Blood || A Snow White Retelling

Chapter Fifteen - The Shadows Bite Back

*happy dance* I'm so excited!!! I've been dying to write these next few chapters. Everything that happens in them will be extremely important. Plus, we'll be getting into a few more details that makes this a Snow White retelling. I hope you guys enjoy!!

I had hoped for a warm fire. Maybe a friendly face or two. What I hadn't expected was the stench of death, or deafening silence.

The town next to the entrance of the mine could hardly be called that. It was simply a collection of wooden huts with a bathhouse and a supply store. Big enough to fit the miners and any family that wished to stay comfortably, but still small enough to walk around the whole thing and see the other side easily.

Or, it would've been. As Beck and I approached, it was clear that something was horribly wrong. Normally, one could hear the miners before they saw them, especially since night had fallen and their day's work was done. They normally would be drinking and laughing, maybe one of them would play a lively song on a flute. But it was clear now that there would be no more drinking or laughing for them anymore.

"Oh my god . . . " I breathed, carefully stepping around the body of a fallen miner. His sightless eyes seemed to follow me as we walked. Beside me, Beck said nothing but had already taken out his axe.

"Stay close to me," Was all he said. I didn't need to be told twice, and put my hand on the hilt of my dagger. It did little to calm the fear that dug its claws into my heart, but the knowledge that I had something steadied my shaking hands.

There was little snow under our feet, so the blood simply sunk into the dirt and made an icy, metallic mud that sucked at my boots every time I stepped. Bodies littered the ground. Some had weapons, most had fear in their eyes that seemed still palpable in the air. All looked like they had been brutally killed by a savage animal.

"This had to be Snow," I murmured, bending down to get a closer look at one of the bodies. I fought the rising bile in my throat, and tried to ignore the fact that the body was that of a boy barely over sixteen. If he had been mutilated anymore so than he was already, I would've mistaken him for Theo. "The marks are the same. But why would she do this?"

"For food maybe?" Beck suggested. But I shook my head.

"None of these bodies were drained. So either she did it just because she could or . . ."

"Or she was scared," He finished. Sighing, he gripped his axe tighter. "I'm going to check the rest of the building, just to be sure. You stay here."

I stood up quickly. "Check for what? Survivors?"

"Among other things." He walked off.

"Figures," I murmured, pulling my cloak tighter around myself. Now that I was in the shadow of the mountains, the cold seemed worse. The discovery of all the dead miners did little to keep it at bay. I shivered. Once I dealt with Snow I would have to give all these men and women proper burials, and tell their families. But what could I tell them? The truth? That their loved ones were butchered by a monster and it was my fault? That their beloved princess was the monster that did the deed?

Yeah, that would go over well.

Minutes passed. Or hours. The shadows started the lengthen and get deeper, blacker. I squirmed in my boots, torn between calling out to Beck or just going to find him. But some idiotic, irrational fear kept me in my spot. Beside the body of a nameless boy who died much too soon. The silence was as thick as the shadows. Like a suffocating fog, it threatened to blanket everything out except my ragged breathing.