Reset

She sighed and visibly attempted to relax herself again, “my mother accepted for me, I was to be wed. I was eighteen and he was sixty eight. I had never seen him before in my life and I most certainly did not love him. I ran to tell Daniel but your mother saw me kissing him in the stables and she ran off, I ran after her,” a small tear fell down Regina’s face as she explained with such anguish in her expression, “I made her promise not to tell my mother. But the foolish girl was still reeling from the loss of her own mother and was convinced that every daughter needs their mothers love.”

She took another sip of wine, “your mother told my mother of Daniel. She killed him in front of me. Ripped his heart from his chest and crushed it to dust.”

Emma flinched at the harsh words, she knew there was more to the story than that but she could see that Regina wanted to get to the point and get on so she had the strength to carry on.

“The next day I was being fitted for my wedding dress,” Regina smiled and shook her head, “being married to Leopold was.. appalling. The story,” she looked up at Emma and narrowed her eyes as she tried to explain, “the story you know of Snow White and the Queen, the fairest in the land?”

Emma nodded her understanding but frowned her confusion.

“Leopold loved Snow more than anything,” Regina said, “I wasn’t jealous of Snow because she was prettier than I or because Leopold loved her more. He loved everyone and everything more than me, I came right at the end of his list of loves. Below his dead wife. All he wanted was someone to raise his daughter and warm his bed.”

Emma couldn’t help but look disgusted at the thought of that and dipped her head in understanding.

“I was to provide an heir, preferably male, clearly I didn’t,” Regina sighed, “I was pregnant once but after a.. difficult.. night with the King.. I lost the child. The court physician declared I would never be able to carry a child again.”

Emma shakily put the wine glass on the table and held her hand up to Regina in an indication that she needed a moment as she quickly left the room and walked to the furthest room in the house which happened to be the laundry room. She leaned heavily on the counter in there and took a few deep and steadying breaths before suddenly lashing out and punching her fist into the hard wall. She stood up straight and closed her eyes and counted to ten while she nursed her damaged fist before quickly returning to the living room and taking her place in the armchair again.

“I’m sorry..” Emma began.

Regina nodded, “I understand. My life in the palace was miserable, I was very lonely. Not allowed to leave and I had no friends. I raised Snow as best I could but I was practically a child myself. I.. managed to.. remove my mother from my life. She ended up in Wonderland.”

“As in Alice?” Emma looked confused.

“Yes, she was the Queen of Hearts,” Regina almost laughed at the expression on Emma’s face.

“Off with their heads?” Emma asked.

“Oh yes, and out with their hearts,” Regina added, “anyway, my transition was fast beginning. Rumpelstiltskin was teaching me magic and my thoughts were becoming darker. Eventually I had a plan and a stooge to kill Leopold, a venomous snake took his life, Sidney Glass took the blame.”

“Sidney killed King Leopold?” Emma was baffled.

“He was a genie that Leopold had released from a lamp,” Regina explained and this time did laugh at Emma’s shaking head as the story became stranger by the moment, “he was a free man and he stayed at the palace. He.. he fell in love with me. He was the only person I’d seen in years who took any interest in me, not just sexually, just someone who saw me at all.”

“Anyway,” Regina reached forward and poured herself more wine, “Leopold was dead and I became fixated on killing Snow. I’d suffered for years in that palace with that.. man,” she spat out the word, “if Snow had kept my secret I would have run away with Daniel and I would have been happy with my true love. But no, I had to see Snow and her true love live happily ever after instead.”

“Rumpelstiltskin fed my need for vengeance, he made me powerful and he made me determined to get what I thought was rightfully mine. The problem was I couldn’t get Daniel back, I even enlisted Doctor Frankenstein to help me,” she shook her head at the memory and the pain of that day.

“Frankenstein?”

“Whale,” Regina told her, “of course I didn’t know who Frankenstein was, we didn’t get the movie in the Enchanted Forest,” she joked, “I believed he would bring Daniel back to me but he didn’t. It couldn’t be done. But the hope of his return and the denial of it was enough to increase my need for revenge.”