“If I had a dollar for every time you asked me to leave you, I’d have around three dollars in my pocket,” Loki said.
Sadly, she didn’t laugh. Snow White felt weary and tired. Loki knew she wasn’t going to hurt him, but what if anyone else entered the castle? It was best that he stayed with her until the morning. Then he’d start a new journey to find a cure for her curse.
“Scooch over,” Loki said playfully.
Snow White’s face knotted.
“I said scooch over,” Loki said, squeezing himself next to her in the coffin. “There’s room for both of us.”
“You really want to sleep with me in a coffin?” she said.
“Wow,” he waved his hand. “Sleep with you, no. That’s too soon to talk about in our relationship. I’ve only known you for a couple of hours…and in a dream. But sleep in a coffin next to you, yes. It’s not like I have ever slept in a bed before.”
Snow White laughed. Her blue eyes struggled shining from behind the blackness. Loki didn’t mind. Her laughter was enough.
“You’ve never slept in a bed?” she wondered as he embraced her from behind, his arms caressing her, his knees bending to fit in the coffin.
“It’s on my bucket list,” Loki said.
“What’s a bucket list?” she wrapped her hands around his.
“Oh, I forgot you’re immortal. You don’t need a bucket list. It’s a list mortals like me—now that I’m officially a Minikin—have of the things they want to do before they die.”
“What else do you have on your bucket list?”
“Saving a princess,” Loki teased her.
“And sleeping in a coffin with her?” she joked.
“If she’ll let me grow old with her, then it doesn’t matter where I sleep next to her—of course, I know you’ll never grow old.”
“Even if she’s a monster,” Snow White sounded as if in pain. She was resisting hurting him and submitting to the darkness inside her. It made Loki remember when Carmilla looked at him in the dream, provoking the same unexplainable darkness inside him. “They say that all monsters have to die, you know,” she continued.
“Except the beautiful ones,” Loki held her tighter and closed his eyes. He knew that he’d sleep well tonight. As eerie as it seemed sleeping in the coffin, he didn’t care. He was next to her, and her cold body gave him the warmest feeling he’d ever experienced.
As he slept he saw the two black sheep he’d been dreaming about. This time it was clear to him. One was Snow White and the other was him. They were the two outcasts who were going to make it through this world as long as they were together.
***
Hours later, Loki woke up to a screaming in the castle. He let out a sigh, wondering when he’d be able to wake up peacefully like ordinary people do. He wiped his eyes and noticed Snow White wasn’t in the coffin anymore.
The screaming got louder downstairs.
“She’s mad,” Loki heard someone tell him. It was Nine, the cat. “Really mad,” Nine bit his nails, his tail standing upright.
“What are you doing here?” Loki snapped.
“We like to follow you, in case you need our help,” the squirrel said, standing behind the cat. It was looking with wide eyes toward the door leading downstairs where the screams came from. “She’s really mad, and she’s going to kill everyone downstairs.”
“Who is mad?”
“Snow White,” Nine said, trying to get the squirrel off his back.
“Move away,” Loki was worried he’d step on them and ran to the door.
He stopped midway when the Schloss started shaking heavily all of a sudden. It wasn’t the Schloss’s anger this time, but the whale’s. It was shaking the whole island. Loki looked back at Nine and Mr. Squirrel for an explanation. They’d always seemed to know more than him.
“Part of the curse of eating a piece of the apple is that the whale will keep shaking the island madly until she feeds her darkness,” Nine said.
“It’s Carmilla’s way of making sure Snow White stays cursed,” Mr. Squirrel explained.
Loki didn’t care much about the island or the curse. He was only worried about Snow White, knowing the kind of pain she was suffering.
“Loki,” Nine and squirrel said in one breath as Loki rushed down the stairs. “Only you can save her. Do you understand? Only you can save her!” Mr. Squirrel stood up on Nine’s shoulder in case Loki couldn’t hear him.
Loki dashed downstairs, skipping steps as everything in the Schloss shook violently. Lamps flickered here and there as he caught a glimpse of the forest outside falling apart slowly through the vibrating windows.
As Loki came down the stairs he noticed someone fall from the second floor and land on the couch. It was a young teenager. He was bleeding, but wasn’t dead.
“What’s going on?” Loki quickly reached the teenager and shook him by the sleeves.