Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As a boy, he could never be beautiful. It did not cross mother’s mind to curse him, it would not take. Finn is a man now, and can understand such things.

He understands he should not covet beauty for himself, even as he glares at his reflection in a silver goblet. Pale, thin and sickly-looking, he was never the favourite. A man must want beauty in others, in women, but must not crave it within.

An old scar, a cluster of dead veins, mars his forehead. At times it still hurts, the memory of a pommel brought down on a boy’s skull. Trying to kill him. He earned it for his sister, and for this protection he is protected from her appetite.

She would never want his heart to eat, Finn has more use alive. He stares into the face reflected by warped metal, barely recognizable as his own. It isn’t the scar, he thinks. That is not what spares me.

Knowing her secrets is a more powerful currency. His sister keeps him because he has faded memories of their mother’s face. Because he reaches for his blade when she, even undying, is in danger. Because he can remember when her name was Revna, though Finn is not allowed to speak it.

He isn’t hungry, and yet always is in her wake. Staring at the remains of a queen’s meal makes him at once queasy and jealous. Half a dozen songbirds stare at him with dead eyes and empty chests, all but one. One raw little heart remains. Finn takes it in his fingers, puts it to his tongue. 

There must always be enough milk, or else his sister will bathe in blood. 

Strong-armed girls file in and out of the bath all morning, hauling cow’s milk. Just for it to end up on the cobblestones, or down the throat of something foul. In this one way the queen thinks herself soft, looking down at writhing filth with pity. She is fair, his Revna.

He would not say she is kind, without being asked to.

The stout, black-haired milkmaid looks nothing like his sister. There is no pleasure in eating a bird’s heart soaked in frigid gore. Finn licks his lips but they’re still stained thief-red. 

He waits, ravenous for her disturbed expression. But the milkmaid’s broad, plain face is only hungry too. Boring girl, he thinks. Aren’t we all?

She has a black, clever eyes that flit to his guilty mouth. Then back up to Finn’s cruel stare, pale as the dead fish she saw in the market. It sends a shiver up her spine. Finn mistakes it for a chill. 

A peasant girl. But not from the gutter, one could know that with a glance. She’s too clean. 

Finn looks for beauty’s curse when he sees a woman. None are ever quite the fairest, but some are enough. If she is a maid then he is still a boy, tow-headed and pale-eyed. This achingly dull creature will not do for his sister. 

This is always where it begins, to want beauty for himself can end only one way. But she is not beautiful. He watches her from the corner of his ice-coloured eye, observing because it gives him pleasure to unnerve. 

The spots of brick-red flush on her cheeks are the only charm she has, she rolls her stocky shoulders and lifts her chin straight up. The milkmaid’s eyes close, gently rocking her head from one side to another. Her neck is a column, Finn can nearly taste her heartbeat.

“Mind your burden, you must not spill any,” words are summoned from somewhere that knows better to speak to her. If he cherishes orders, why disobey them?

For the look on her face. For the confusion at being addressed, the slight quickening of fear. Who is she to a lord, or the queen’s brother but a body to reprimand?

“I won’t, milord, for there’s none to spare.” She replies. My lord seems beneath him, and yet no greater title does he have. Who is he to a dairymaid with an empty bucket? “The milchers give less every day.”

She has the sense to remain fixed when addressed. Being spoken to is a shackle about the ankle from which there is no running. To turn one’s back on royalty, even a usurper, is asking for a knife-wound along the spine. 

Cattle are dying. Everything alive is, with nothing to eat. Soon Revna will soon have no choice but blood for her bath.

A cow is staring at him with bovine stupidity in deep, black eyes. How foolish of Finn, to think he saw a woman craning her neck to entice him. She is nothing more than a scared animal. 

“That will be all,” he snaps his red fingertips. Finn likes giving orders, too, no difference in tone to commanding his dog. 

The milkmaid dips a shallow curtsy, no variation between her iris and pupil. She does not blink, watching his sour face like the ash-coloured pearls around the queen’s neck. 

She backs out of the room.

—

The dairy is a small cage with only one door. Chilled air wraps around her, she presses white knuckles into a pound of cold butter. She kneads its blood from it, the off-white milk that will rot unattended. Her fingers are soft and careful.

From the back he appraises her. Two black braids twist around themselves, held beneath a linen cap. Her long neck is bare. She’s sewn little hearts onto the collar of her shift, one of them looks broken. It bunches in on itself under her grey kirtle.

His sister is clever enough to know Finn at all times. The milkmaid is consumed by her task and does not notice a presence behind her. She sings as she works; “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me. Let Me Hide Myself in Thee. May the Water and the Blood From Thy Riven Side Which Flowed, be of Sin the Double Cure, Save from Wrath and Make Me Pure—”

A pity his sister cannot eat sweetly-sung hymns, or he would offer up the dairymaid like a songbird with her chest open. But Revna will not be satisfied by such things, and so the woman is useless in another way.

Still Finn is beneath her note. She plunges her butter-smooth hands into a vat of freezing water, washing clean hands cleaner. The milkmaid bathes after dark by firelight, scrubbing away even the potential for spoil. Milk sours so easily. 

Her face does not move when she sees him. Dull, tired eyes rimmed with shadows beneath merely glance off his dark shape. She looks over her shoulder and then away, as if tired of his company and unwilling to feign respect a second time. 

“You turn your back to me?” Finn asks, “On your queen?”

“Is she here?” the old maid replies. “I don’t see her.”

“I am her kin,” he hisses. There is no need to press his advance, she has nowhere to run. “To speak to me is to speak to her.”

If Revna was king he would be a prince. There is no word for brother of the queen. But with him at her side she does not rule alone, insubordination surrounds him. 

“Am I needed?” she asks. The maid sounds uninterested still. It makes Finn laugh, shortly and cruelly. 

“Turn to me,” he says. “The queen needs nothing from you, your face is worthless. But I—”

He’s never seen such eyes. Finn looks in despair of himself in two, dark mirrors. His life is a mass-execution of only the most beautiful. By comparison, her plain features are twisted and hideous. There is nothing enticing about her, it compels him closer.

Finn can think of something he needs. The maid can imagine it as well, and up come her hands to try and stop him. He expects nails, claws at his eyes and throat. Instead, they fold over her heart.

Unknown to him, her fingers slip between halves of her shirt. Feeling for the handle of a knife. Let him try. She does not close her eyes, she begins to pray.

Oddly, he expects an Our Father. Instead, she says, “And if thy eye causes thee to sin, gouge it out and cast it from thee–” This does not stop Finn, though it does repulse him. She grows louder, “for it is better one member should perish than the whole body be cast into hell.”

He’s upon her in two paces. The room is small and narrow, a tunnel to prey. But the maid stands her ground, chin raised in defiance. She continues, “And if thy right hand causes thee to sin, cut it off– It’s in the bible somewhere, it’s a promise. I’ll rend the hand that touches me.”

Finn has not touched her. But he looms, long arms of black leather on either side of her head. He has not as much height over her as he would like, she can nearly look him in the eye. 

“I will eat your heart, I’ll tear it out with my teeth,” he enjoys the threat, staring at her from under pale lashes.

“Then I will be dead, you’ll have no swordhand,” she spits. “And God won’t let me remember what you do.”

She fumbles with her blade as he draws his, her fingers are stiff with cold and fear. But she does not cry, not even when the edge of a dagger pierces her. Finn draws a line of fire, leaking blood down her cheek. 

The cut is not deep, only a flesh wound. The maid is free to touch it, to feel the sting and come away sticky-red. Finn isn’t standing over her any more. The door squeals on its hinges when he slams it behind him.

He is shaking, the rain outside lashes the mud. All the miserable sky in this miserable country does is weep. 

Girls are dying, true maids with the rose stolen from their cheeks and the gold from their hair. Their queen demands beauty first, and then the life of any woman with some youth left. Plainness will not protect even an old maid’s clean, unscarred face. And Finn wants to kill the milkmaid himself, exactly as she is. Blade to his lips, to tongue and he tastes her blood. 

This is his promise, he will know it again. 

Chapter Text

Ravenous, Ravenous. His sister always is. What it takes to keep her grace young comes ever at higher cost. A crone at her feet, hair and eyes of cotton. A bag of bones thrown back into the street for the dogs. In this way his queen is not soft.

She has her back to him, butter-coloured curls not yet dry. Revna takes no notice of anyone, in her own world when things are going well. Thinking of her mirror while milk is still dripping from the ends of her hair. Bath done and now she wishes to be flattered by the shape behind golden glass. The one that Finn has never seen.

In truth, there is much to flatter. When her skin glows with stolen life, she is at her most beautiful. And when she is happy, so is he. Even as he is most alone. The land is beginning to die, it always does. But it still has a few drops of blood to be wrung out.

Finn is younger by an hour and he does not carry it in his face. Stern, proud. Cruel. The way he thinks an elder brother ought to look, that is what his sister needs.

“You look flushed,” she says. Still she has not looked at him, but a sister knows. Her brother thinks he’s clever. She turns her head slowly. 

“I thought the matter could be urgent,” he replies, rather brusquely. It gives away that he has something to hide.

“Sycophant,” she sounds like the mean, pretty thing he knew in his youth. “Were you in the scullery again? Finn, chasing serving girls is beneath you.”

“I found a bit of sport,” Finn has his guard up in an instant. Revna has eyes in the back of her horns. Truly, what had he expected?

“And you think of her still,” his sister’s idle teasing curdles slightly at the edges. “Is she alive?”

“For now,” he’s cautious with his answer. “She has no value as a gift.”

“That hardly matters to me at the moment,” Revna’s teeth are cold diamonds in her smile. She kicks the body still at her feet, the crone’s heart gave out minutes ago. 

“So not the scullery,” she says, back to playing games. His sister is unpredictable in her nature, shifting like a flame. “Perhaps a village girl. But I thought they all had fleas.”

He shows his teeth when he smiles, the edges slightly forced by malicious humour. “She works in the castle,” he says. The queen will find out, there is no hiding his old maid. “And she is no girl.”

“But still common,” Revna sounds comforted by that. As if there has been meaningful competition for his affection in the past, her brother could almost laugh.

He has felt it keenly since they were children, drawn to her. He imagines all men are, but in this way Finn is special. His sister allows him to give in to that sick tug near his heart. This beauty is a curse, do not forget. 

Neither is certain the other is barren, but both suspect it. Magic has a heavy price. They can only take life. Eat it. Finn has no wife and will never take one. He cannot choose his other half, it has been chosen for him.

“As dirt,” he agrees, carefully. Before her golden mirror, she preened only with his face as reflection.

“Do you remember begging in the market square?” she asks. His queen entertains herself remembering times of suffering, even their own.

“I do,” he says, “We took asylum in the cathedral after nightfall.” 

“Or the guards would have feasted on us,” she finishes. “And do you remember what they sang of, the bards in the square? Disgusting songs about dairymaids rutting with ploughmen at harvest.”

He better-recalls the ones about war, but Finn’s veins turn to ice. A good thing that he did not try to deny any attachment, less painful long-term. For him, anyway. He cannot guarantee the safety of the maid.

“Vaguely,” he says, “the memory is returning.”

“Might you also remember that you are my brother?” She smiles coldly. 

“That I could never forget,”

“And yet you carry on like a farmhand,” his sister snaps. “Go ahead, brother, make your sport. But remember I own the woods you hunt in..”

The game is over, with no chance to win. The reprimand stings harsh as a slap. A lot of ugly things toil under their roof, but Revna knows precisely where. Before that she knows him, and where he goes. He cannot trick her. She knows the contents of his ribcage better than himself.

“Yes, your grace,” he bows his head. Finn’s face falls, disappointed in himself less for the act than being caught in it. Shame turns his face hot, humiliation stains his pale cheeks rusty. 

Were it jealousy compelling her, perhaps he could forgive. As soon as she has what she wants he is no longer fit for her attention, she’s waiting to sweep out of the room. To rush to her mirror for what he has always told her. The game truly ends only when he agrees to do as he is told. That is Finn’s value to her.

“And clean up the mess,” Revna drawls. She toes the corpse towards him for good measure. “Dust is getting on my floor.”

–

The milkmaid wears her shift in the washtub. Water-swelled, the linen sticks against her skin like a veil. Hiding her body even from herself. 

If she could hide her face from the world, she would. But she can’t even hide it from the shadows. Her eyes, black as pitch, keep looking for him.

Finn wonders if she knows to keep watch, if he is not the only threat. Her knees are tucked to her chest, a snake in a defensive coil. Beneath the water, clutched in her hand is the knife she made a promise with. She wouldn’t get through his wrist-bone with such a small blade, but he believes she would try. 

Revna should not know she even breathes, so he keeps his distance. No need to be taught the same lesson twice. 

The stable smells of horses, but she of soap. Women have their own rituals, she performs hers on hair long enough to strangle a man. She unwinds greasy-black braids, her head sinks beneath the water. The wash tub overflows.

He only allows himself to breathe when she couldn’t possibly hear it. His sister will find out, but if he has his way the dairymaid won’t. 

Finn thinks of the way she looked at him in the bathing room, about how milk would cling to her coal-hair. She rises, hot water meeting cold air and turning to smoke against her skin. She looked at his lips, he knows she did. A promise to maim him rests beside the way she would not take her eyes from him. 

She still won’t, it seems. The milkmaid bares a cloth-wet shoulder, clawing her nails against her scalp. Then she turns, as slowly as Revna did. As aware of his presence as none else could be. Her eyes are wet pools of unreadable malice. She turns like a selkie in the water, her shift looks like a second skin.

Her elbows up against the tub, she hides all but the top of her head behind them. She says, “Look away, I’ll be getting out soon.”

“I shall not,” he replies, half-smiling with discomfort. It appears his maid is not easy to catch unawares. The game has changed, this one he always wins.

“Must I make more threats against your eyes?” she asks. “I happen to like them.”

“Flattery is wasted on the likes of me,” he says from the dark. She watches where he is, finding only the slightest outline of his shape. 

“I can like your eyes,” she says, “And mislike the cunning behind them.”

“You speak very freely to your lord,” he spits. To gain a measure of control, his dark shape rises just out of her sight. He steps forward, taller than her now by threatening degree. 

“You behave very freely, and not in the way of a gentleman,” she says. 

“I do not claim to be one,” Finn sneers, even as he calls himself a lord. The word sits ill on his tongue. There is no distinct title for usurper queens, let alone their bastard brothers. “And I take as I please, I have won that right.”

“You did not win me.” she says, “And you did yourself no favours; skulking around like having to-do is some foul punishment.” The milkmaid hates him. She must, with her basilisk eyes. Deep and cold like the dead crone’s, glaring over the tops of her arms. “Well it isn’t. Not with you, not with any man.”

Finn’s stomach lurches. It is not in his nature to ask politely for anything.  He wonders who he is alone with, no part of him fears death so he is blind to threats up close. A man does not soon forget such a molten stare, he expects the knife before he sees it. But it does not come. 

Her eyes are black glass, watching his face with fascination for his discomfort. In two days her cheek has healed a little, it will scar. He could open the wound again, maybe then she would cry. She was so afraid of him, so angry with him. But she never cried.

“Turn your back,” she says again. “Before I drown.”

“I had forgotten you were a nun,” Finn tries to hurt her, self-comforting to lessen the blow as he obeys. 

Water rains down from her shift and hair. The milkmaid tucks a knife beneath her cuff. Then she steps from the tub, wrings her hair. She glares at his back as she approaches like a predator, but only taps Finn on the shoulder.

“I am not for God,” she says when he faces her. “I’ll have you.”

He stares, lips slightly parted in hesitation. Finn nods, the gesture distant from his overbearing first attempts. The milkmaid crowds him, stepping closer and lifting her hands. They settle over his cracked, black-leather doublet. He is still wet with the rain outside.

Finn seizes her shoulders, permission changes very little about his conduct. The milkmaid is solid as a stone when he tries to throw her to the stable floor. She pushes him harder, gracelessly landing with a thud on his chest. If she’s lying down, he’ll lie with her.

“You can get hay all over your back,” she smirks, “but I’ve no desire to bathe again. Stay down.”

Compelled to give some kind of fight, he pushes himself up on his elbows. The maid still has her hands on his shoulders, allowing him to rise no further.

Finn is more content to lie beneath her than his pride allows. He aches, he always does, stretched thin as vellum. He bleeds ink from his wounds, no man can live this long and stay flesh. Her firm weight chills the tops of his thighs. The milkmaid tugs her wet shift over her knees before it tears, a flash of bare leg and then her bruised knees on either side of his hips. 

So he’s a whore’s client. It suits him, Finn doesn’t have time for kissing. He arranges his face to something cruel, she was nearly interesting.

But what possesses him to touch her? Perhaps only that she’s still so clean. His thin, cold fingers circle a purple bruise in the shape of a dog’s tooth. Sharp at the top, curved like a canine.

“Bessie kicked me this morning,” she offers. Her smile is breathless, the milkmaid’s hips rock against his. The slowest fire ever started. “Stupid cow.”

He goes still, then presses against where it hurts as hard as he can. She hisses, grabbing Finn’s wrist and tugging it over his head.

She can hold a beast in place with a fraction of the pressure. The maid leans her whole weight forward, pinning him beneath her. But he’s far from helpless, Finn stretches his fingers, he would only need enough force to break her grip and sink them into her eye. 

The milkmaid kisses him instead. He is coiled like a nerve, his edges cannot soften. But his mouth goes slack against hers. 

For a moment he almost enjoys her warmth. She’s as soft as he imagined, her tongue trying to part his lips. He breaks free of her grip around his wrist and Finn’s palm clouts her hard around the ear.

The milkmaid lurches back, but not before biting down on the lip between her teeth. Finn groans, coppery blood bright on his palate. She gives him no chance at defence, hitting him across the cheek in revenge. Then there are fingers at his throat, her thumb pressing into his pulse.

“If you want to fight,” she growls in Finn’s face, “I’ll fight. If you want to fuck me, you’ll kiss me. Is that plain?”

“As mud,” he spits, seeking to wound.  “As plain as you.”

“And yet you’re beneath me,” she stares down at him with unflinching darkness. 

He wants to snap that she has the teeth of a feral hound. But the old maid dips her head, silencing him with another kiss. As soft as before, as her hands and the rest of her. Clean, even as it tastes a bit like his blood. But what doesn’t?

She takes both wrists this time, no chances. He could make his muscles steel and refuse to bend, but instead he allows the maid to arrange arms about her waist. Finn holds her loosely, until she ruts against him and his grip tightens. He hugs her beating heart against the crushing stillness in his ribs.

He kisses the tops of her breasts, as soft and taught as unbaked dough. Finn sinks his teeth into her flesh, like he’s thinking of the best entry point. Her sternum will have to break to accommodate him. 

“Why is it you always seem to have blood on your lips?” she’s smiling, petting the bed of her thumb over the stain. It stings, and he twitches. 

“I said I would eat your heart,” Finn chokes on a breath when she threads her hand between their bodies. Pushing down, clawing at the strings holding his breeches closed. “Why let me?”

He falters on the question, does not know how to ask why she’ll have him now. Finn repulses all but one, he has learned to enjoy being unwanted. The milkmaid is ruining it.

“You’re a bit handsome,” she says. “And no one’s ever wanted me, either.” She milks poison from a snake’s fang. Never came poison from a sweeter place.

Beneath his doublet, buttoned to his throat is a shirt. Beneath that, his thin neck. She sinks her teeth into the flesh so carefully, with none of his sister’s certainty she won’t leave scars. Whatever bruises she kisses into his skin will have to go unseen and unhealed.

He hisses at the sting, even as Finn cannot remember being treated with such unhurried fascination. She desires him, that much is clear, but the reason for it is unsatisfactory. The maid merely likes him, but she marks him so gently. An impermanent brand he will struggle to explain later.

There is now conflicting proof about who he belongs to. Fear squirms in his gut as readily as lust, of his queen. It has never been in question who he wants, and Revna is a jealous creature.

But Finn cannot persuade himself from under this different woman, that would not please him. When she kisses him again, and he is losing track of how many times, he thinks only of his amusement.

–

In the end, they undress no more than they need to. Finn does not see her bare chest, nor the ribs and heart beneath. The still-wet skirt of her nightshift hugs her waist when she’s done, his spend sticking her thighs together. She paws at the opening in his trousers even after he’s gone soft, pulling noises of pleasure-pain that she hungers for.

He barely made a sound in the act, seems only capable of vulnerability now he’s come. Finn is weak beneath her, until she sits back on his knees and helps him sit up.

There is no coming back from this. His chest and shoulders are mottled with the ghost of her lips and teeth. The maid’s neck and sternum are similarly mapped.  Hiding, rutting in the dirt with a peasant like an animal is not something she can walk away from. Vengeance will be slow and sisterly, if he allows the queen to finish his business.

Finn wants one more kiss. That he allows, before he makes his choice. His hands cup either side of her plain face, unusually tender with the skin around her throat. Just above her jaw. Soft breath on his lips from hers, so close. A new kind of promise made and broken in a few beats of her heart.

She knows it’s coming, he would not touch her this way if he meant to touch her again. Now when he should expect the knife Finn is blind and the small blade bites into a soft hollow in his collarbone. It is not driven deep enough to kill him, no such force exists. 

But he screams, the grip on her head suddenly crushing. One precise turn of his hands and there is a dead milkmaid on top of him. Her warm weight slumps heavy against his chest, her perfect neck snapped. 

Her lungs are frozen in their last breath. The milkmaid sighs into his ear, the rattle sounds like part of a song. Let me hide myself in thee. 

Her ribs are easily broken, as soft on the inside as she is out. He uses her knife to open her chest, still sticky with his blood. He has a power unlike his sister’s, the unflinching ability to carve his way in using only his teeth. 

Finn buries her in the woods. Don’t ask what he does with her heart.

Chapter Text

Her ghost will never leave, she outlasts the longest night. She unfurls herself from a new hiding place in the dark with each visit. Finn feels coarse, black hair on his face. In his mouth. 

She makes her own light, his ghost. It flickers from the cavern between her breasts, where blood-soft ribs extend like teeth from a broken jaw. Sickly, blue light is where her heart should be, pooling in the hollows of her gaunt collarbones. Beneath her eyes.

Black eyes, wet in the light. Weeping in rage, she despairs of him. She does not let him weep alone in his locked bedroom. Of course she is angry tonight, angry people fill his life.

Finn cannot hear her palm cup his bruised ear. Cannot feel it because she is dead, but his eyes squeeze shut until he imagines a hand on his cheek. And that the touch gives some comfort.

“Most unhappy,” she drawls, tears pooling at her chin. “Most unhappy business, she has Cain’s killing urge.”

“Shut up,” he spits, threats come as naturally as breathing. “Or I will dig up your rotting bones and cut out your tongue. I do not want you here, away.”

“If the dead can never return as you admit,” she snaps, “then you’ve no right to order me. I’m not here .”

As if to test his resolve, her glow begins to wane. The dark is hungry, it wants to eat him. Finn lurches forward, cruel hands seeking her milky light as it fades to nothing.

“Wait!” he stifles his own desperation. “You never leave when I order it. Stay.” 

The last word is extracted from between his clenched teeth. What he says sounds half-muffled, as if spoken through water. His head is swimming, there is a buzzing behind his eyes. He wants to sleep, but sleep will not get rid of her.

She’s there after Finn blinks. Bathing him in cold light, her black hair coiled like a rope around her neck.

The ghost carves a pale line over his eye, where the nail split his flesh. No outward memory remains to guide her, but she sees it. Every scar, every flaw, every decaying inch. He feels small under the short, dark tunnel of her stare.

“Good thing she doesn’t wear her hair as long as I do,” the shade still cries. Her tears disappear where the light ends, turning to mist. 

She, Snow White, nearly made good on a milkmaid’s promise. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. Cast it from thee. He let her fly away like a scared bird, and the task was so simple.

Revna has reason to be violent, if the princess had stolen his dagger she might’ve cut off his sister’s right hand. How could she make a fist around the kingdom’s throat without him?

His life has value. He has value. Even as Revna struck him hard about the ear until it rang.

A corpse lunges at him, her cold hands no longer ghost along the age lines in Finn’s face. They have a death grip around his neck, clay lips brush his ear.

“If she did, she might’ve strangled you with it.” She is not weeping any longer. He is afraid of how solid she looks.

“Who were you?” he asks, terrified that he is wrong. That her ghost is real. “What was your name?”

She has the coldest lips, they press against the shell of Finn’s ruined ear, “I was Tess.”

Her hair is long enough to kill him. A whiplike noose around his throat, a marriage knot around their wrists. Together, ‘til death parts them. His is soon, almost here.