The sledge cut through the snow. Pale trees blurred past in spectral procession, their branches bowed not from frost but reverence or fear. Wind whispered beneath the silver runners, carrying the distant howl of wolves, and something fainter still: the brittle creak of reins pulled tight by a creature straining to please a mistress who never noticed effort.

The White Queen reclined beneath a heap of white furs, head tilted back as though carved from ivory. She did not shiver. Cold belonged to other people.

The dwarf at the reins hunched small and stinking while his breathe fogged into little ghosts. His beard had frozen in places. He dared not speak.

"Must you jostle me so?" Her voice broke the silence like a glass goblet cracking. "You drive as though your ancestors were moles. Do you require eyes, or simply permission to use them?"

The dwarf flinched. "Forgive me, my Queen. The snow's drifted deep—"

"Ah," she interrupted with the faintest smile. "So it is the snow's fault, I see. How comforting to know Nature herself has conspired to offend my spine. Shall I chide the wind next for its insolence? Scold the sky for its—"

SNAP!

Suddenly, the sledge lurched. The world tilted. The dwarf screamed. The Queen flew. She struck snow – her furs bursting apart like feathers - then tumbled, fast, faster, through a blur of trees.

She used her magic to protect herself against the hard landing. Then ...

A door. The air was unnaturally warm. It smelled of dust and lavender. There was no snow here, just coats: wool, fur, moth-bitten collars that reeked faintly of old perfume and damp human skin.

The White Queen blinked. She hadn't traveled to other worlds since leaving Charn. Now, she found herself inside a wardrobe in another world.

She pushed the door open just a crack. It creaked, low and long, like something old remembering how to speak. Light slid in; a warm, unwelcome thing. It poured across her feet, reached toward her face, gentle and unafraid. Her pupils pinched. The light here did not flinch beneath her gaze. The air did not bow. There was no hush of enchanted trees, no scent of snow or spellwork. If magic lived in this place at all, it was old, faded; threadbare as a prayer in a forgotten chapel.

Beyond the coats, a room unfolded: quaint, domestic and drenched in softness. It was a space that reeked of safety. The kind of room made for small laughter and quiet lives.

And there ... there she was.

A daughter of Eve.

Seated at a vanity, turned slightly from the wardrobe, she brushed her hair with the casual intimacy of someone who had never had to earn her reflection. Each pass of the bristles was a kind of effortless indulgence and entitlements to softness. There was no sorcery to it - no enchantment, no glamours, no illusions. In short, there was no performance. The daughter of Eve didn't try to be lovely. She simply was.

That was precisely the insult. That was the crime.

The White Queen's hand traced the doorframe, her fingers tightening in slow, glacial pulses. Raw beauty like this was heresy. It defied cost. It defied pain. She imagined slipping through the warm hush of the room, her hand closing around that soft, unsuspecting throat, not to crush, but to claim; to drag her back across the threshold, back to her throne room in Narnia. There, she would pose her like a doll, capture that unguarded grace, the heretical beauty and cruel lightness of someone who had never suffered to be seen. She would preserve the unknowingness. Freeze it in time. Chisel the fleeting into forever.

She let the door groan open - slowly, deliberately - as though the wardrobe were breathing her out, exhaling frost into a room too warm to notice. Her crystal-laced boots made a gentle click on the floorboards as she stepped out of the wardrobe.

"Such a small mirror for so much beauty, little petal" she said. Her iridescent gown clung like liquid starlight while her jagged crown refracted cruel little halos across the walls. Her eyes were pale as prophecy.

Before she could get any silly ideas, the White Queen snapped her fingers and placed a paralysis hex on her.

Click, click, click.

"Hush, now. Let's not spoil our first rendezvous with silly instincts, daughter of Eve." She looked at her through the mirror on the vanity. Then, standing behind her, she plucked the brush from her frozen hand and began to groom her hair with careful strokes firm enough to assert control, gentle enough to mimic care. "You don't need to speak, little thing. I already know what you would say. You'd lie. And I ...," she purred, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear, "..., I am very good at seeing through lies."

The bristles caught a knot. She paused and then worked through it as if she'd done this a thousand times before on dolls that never fought back. She pulled through it a little too hard. Her mouth curved upward, but it wasn't quite a smile.

The last of the tangles surrendered with a muted snap of hair between bristles. Then she placed the broom back on the vanity. She tilted her head, watching her frozen reflection.

"My hex will melt soon", she said. Her magic wasn't so strong in this world. "A few more heartbeats and you'll feel it. First your fingers, then on the tip of your tongue. Your instincts will come scrambling back like frightened little mice." She drew a fingertip along the hollow of her throat. "I don't want you to do anything stupid, sweetling. No screaming. No running. No trying to wound me with your little mortal courage." Her pale eyes met hers in the mirror. Her lips were so close she could've kissed her temples. "I only want your name, daughter of Eve. Names are such intimate things, after all."

She straightened, and the air grew colder as she rose to her full height.

"Say it prettily, when you can. I like things pretty."