Heart of A Hunter: A Snow White Retelling

By E. L. Tenenbaum

Daimyon was raised with one purpose: dedicate his life to his queen and kingdom by becoming an elite Huntsman. It's all he's ever wanted, and, under his father's tutelage, he commits himself body and soul to achieving it. Soon, Daimyon becomes the youngest-ever Huntsman and begins his service with the certainty that his life is just as it should be. So, when he's called before his queen and given a direct order to kill a traitor to the Crown, he has no reason to suspect he won't carry out his mission quickly and quietly.

Then Daimyon learns the startlingly truth of his target's identity and can't bring himself to kill her. With this unintentional rebellion, Daimyon has no choice but to go on the run from the queen he's given his life to serve. The queen, however, intends to finish the job he couldn't and exact revenge on her disloyal Huntsman.

Fearful for the lives unintentionally tangled with his, Daimyon must now determine what's more important to fight for, the oath he swore to his queen or the princess who caused him to break it.

Heart of a Hunter is the Fifth in the five-part End of Ever After companion series which rewrites classic tales of ever after.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melange Books, LLC
• Release date: May 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781680469004

E. L. Tenenbaum

E.L. Tenenbaum is fairly certain a bookstore is really the happiest place on earth. In addition to being an author, her love for stories in different shapes and sizes has led to a degree in journalism, a stint as a script reader, and a few runs as writer/director for community musical theater. When she's not reading, or writing, she enjoys speaking at middle/high schools as a visiting author.For more information about previous/current/upcoming work follow her on social media or visit her website.

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Heart of a HunterTitle Page

HEART OF A HUNTER

Copyright © 2020 by E. L. Tenenbaum

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ISBN: 978-1-68046-900-4

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Fire & Ice Young Adult Books

An Imprint of Melange Books, LLC

White Bear Lake, MN 55110

www.fireandiceya.com

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Smashwords Edition

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Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

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Published in the United States of America.

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Cover Design by Caroline Andrus

End of Ever After Novels

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End of Ever After

Lies of Golden Straw

Beautiful to Me

Human Again

Heart of a Hunter

Map

Contents

Ever After

Before

Allegories for Life

The Trial

Initiation

The Early Years

Beginning and End

Fugitive

Winter Refuge

Rotted Core

Heart of the Matter

As the Path Winds

War Torn

Lighted Way

After Ever After

Acknowledgments

Thank You For Reading

About the Author

Also by E. L. Tenenbaum

LH"U

Ever After

Once upon a time, I was naïve enough to think I would happily live out my life as nothing more than a Queen’s Huntsman. Some kings set round tables, others design cabinets or chambers to assist their rule; the queens of Calladium keep an exclusive cadre of highly trained Huntsmen. There is no greater service to the realm, no greater sacrifice a man can make than to commit his life to Her Majesty. That was my father’s dream for me. I heard it in his voice every time he called my name and saw it in the decisions he made in my upbringing. In looking toward the future, that was the only image to ever fill my vision, and there was never cause or hint to think it would be otherwise.

One: I loved the outdoors, the noise, the rush, the intricacy of nature, the whisper of nimble paws in dirt, the flutter of hidden wings amid canopies of leaves.

Two: I loved the training, the thrill, the pain, the challenge, and especially the promise of enhanced abilities I would gain for pledging my life to the service.

Three: I loved my kingdom; always have, always will. Nothing can dislodge Calladium from my heart, ever. I will not reject her because of those who once ruled her, those who mucked my father’s vision for my bright future, nor will I abandon her after she forcibly wrenched my life out of my hands and replaced it with one I never asked for.

Four: I only ever wanted to be like my father, only ever wanted to dedicate my life to my queen and serve alongside him as the most elite of her men. And I did until the betrayals, both hers and mine.

For once I met the young princess, my entire life, with all that I’d given for it, with all that I’d built for it, was thrown into disarray. One look, one plea, and I thoroughly smashed to bits the only life I’d ever known and wanted. It may have been a moment of weakness. It may have been a moment of strength. Some days I’m still not sure what stayed my hand and threw my ambitions away. All I know for certain is that I cast away the life I was intended to lead so that hers would not be forfeit.

Because, odd as it may seem for a Queen’s Huntsman—a dangerous man possessing a singular focus for fulfilling his queen’s will—a heart, of all ungovernable and unrefined things, beats at the center of my story.

While it may seem obvious, considering the queen’s unsettling focus on one particular heart, this is of a different kind.

The heart that betrayed me, the heart that saved me, was my own, a troubling thought because it should have been quieted for good the day I joined the queen’s service, the day when the only heart that was supposed to beat in my chest was Calladium’s.

I couldn’t have become a Huntsman had it been otherwise.

I couldn’t have achieved so much at so young an age if it was. I was destined to serve my queen as her Huntsman, not her husband.

But I let my heart get in the way and it overtook my life completely.

None of this was ever supposed to happen.

Before

My father was a wolf among men, so much so that he was generally regarded with a careful mix of awe, fear, and fascination, usually from a safe distance. He also commanded a wolf, a tall, regal white beast whose hulking presence beside my father’s own long shadow sometimes made it difficult to distinguish between the two. Father was an alpha wolf in almost every aspect of his life, which sat well enough with Queen Stella, who expected as much from the Captain of her Huntsmen.

I’ve heard many stories about my father, both when he was alive and since he’s been gone, and while I don’t quite believe them all, I don’t discount any. Maybe Father really cowed a tiger until it was meek as a housecat, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he stared down a hissing pit viper, maybe he didn’t. The unquestioned acceptance of such stories attests to the type of man he was.

As if his position wasn’t already respected enough, Father solidified his status in Calladium through the luring away of one of its most eligible, enviably lovely, well bred, always impeccably dressed young ladies from the life she was supposed to have led.

Mother grew up in a world of immense privilege. She lived with her parents on one of her grandmother’s estates, and the elderly woman took a specific interest in her eldest granddaughter’s upbringing. Great-grandmother intended to raise a lady of the realm, a woman who could marry into any sort of power, certainly not settle for its most notorious servant. For most of her life, my mother learned her lessons well and seemed poised to continue her family’s well-established tradition of marrying somewhere into royal families. Then, disaster struck one night at a party held in her grandmother’s home.

From the way the story is never told aloud but always whispered in the ear, it could well be assumed that the earth quaked so violently half the kingdom crumbled, or that all manner of monsters and demons escaped the Dark Forest and sucked dry the souls of hapless victims in attendance.

Rather, the ruin to the family reached well beyond the devastation of such cataclysmic events, though the party that night was said to have been quite an impressive affair.

To the family, the only fact that matters is that Father was there.

It was the first time they met. Something about her burning red hair, something about his fierce, purple-ringed gray eyes. They shared three dances. It was suspicious enough that no one could stop talking about it, and my parents did nothing to discourage anyone either.

Mother would laugh that Great-grandmother near whipped up a hurricane the way she beat her fan to keep from choking on the gossip vines reaching across high society. Mother, of course, was unaffected, though she did warn Father that her grandmother was beside herself, as they were feeding the flames of rumor.

Let them burn, Father replied easily, revealing a mischievous half-grin that made her melt then as it would the rest of her life.

As much as Great-grandmother tried to keep Mother from seeing the captain again, the battle was lost from the outset. The young lady couldn’t very well be hidden away; she needed to attend balls, parties, and other socials to establish her place in society and catch the eye of a proper suitor. As for Father, well, no one could say no to Father. Or bar him from wherever he wanted to be. Not if they valued their lives. Or the wholeness of their very selves. Because the only thing bigger than my father was the myth surrounding him, which is saying much because he was a rather formidable man, both in mind and body.

So the Queen’s Captain made it a point to be wherever the young lady was, and the lady was gracious enough to give him her heart in return. Knowing the way Mother looked at Father, the way he looked at her in return, I doubt she ever could’ve been happy with anyone supposedly more suitable because of riches or titles.

When Mother did marry Father, it was without her family’s approval, so she was effectively disinherited. They never said as much, of course, for if word ever leaked that any slight had been done to the queen’s favored captain or his wife, new graves would have to be dug immediately. If the bodies were ever found. Either way, Mother had little to do with her family after the marriage, and I can’t be certain that I ever met anyone from her once-distinguished line. At least not knowingly. Even well after I was born, people whispered that Mother had gone off the path as it were, that specially designated, safely sheltered road set out for her from childhood. Not that any of us could have known it then, but I would follow Mother’s lead much as Father’s in the coming years, for all that he raised me to be just like him.

Though he didn’t always show it, I’m certain Father cared deeply for Mother and didn’t just sweep her away to spite convention. I have to believe it, for how else can I explain their happiness together, to what else can I attribute such fierce pride in his family? How else to explain the heart I could never silence within me? What other reason can there be for why I would have his very same flaw? How else to understand the traitor that was to undo us all?

As far as anyone knew, and they knew the truth as it was, the young lady was happy in her new life, with her wolf of a husband and the little pup they molded to be exactly like his father. An alpha. A predator. A Huntsman in every way.

I won’t pretend that my childhood was idyllic. With his sights set on having me serve under him in the queen’s elite service, Father was anything but kind. But he was not cruel either, which may have been the only reason I so readily embraced the life he paved for me. Even at a young age, I knew what kind of man my father was, knew what kind of power he wielded and how people reacted to his name and presence. The only person in the entire kingdom who never feared him was Queen Stella herself, and that was only because he had sworn his life to her. Though it wasn’t Queen Stella, but the queen she replaced who first made my father the most feared and esteemed person in the land. That Queen Stella kept him at his post was a testament to her intelligence, knowing that she wouldn’t find a better captain than my father. Looking back now, I would even believe there were times when Mother regarded him with a mix of fear and awe, too, not quite able to comprehend how this could be the man she married.

Father started training me to be a Huntsman at too young an age for me to ever know anything about childhood. Almost all other Huntsmen enjoyed being children until they were sent from home for military training around the age of ten or eleven and were singled out for special oversight within the first year or so. Most of them weren’t accepted into elite training before the age of twelve, and that was only after extensive and rigorous testing proved they might be able to handle the life ahead of them. Even then, there was no guarantee they would be sworn in as a Huntsman after their course of study was complete, no less than six years later.

A Huntsman is more than a guard, a soldier, a warrior. A Huntsman is the eyes, ears, and hands of the queen, who trusted in them for the execution of her will without always issuing a command. He was the source of her information and the servant of her justice, the kind of man who makes others uneasy even from a distance. Any regular folk would be hard pressed to think of something more frightening than a Huntsman knocking at the door, even though a Huntsman never knocks and never makes himself known. Unless he has to. Usually, he simply makes one man speak or another disappear, the only evidence that he ever was a dim outline of a figure in faded memories. So to be a Huntsman is a dubious honor. No man was more revered, no man was more feared, than he.

They step away from you, I once observed to Father while we were walking through the busy streets of the capital Araisa, where we lived. I must have been seven or eight at the time, and though I knew what he was, I didn’t yet understand the full power of it.

They step away from what they think I am, he replied.

You’re the Captain, I said easily.

Father shook his head. A wolf once left his cave when the evening sun was casting long shadows on the ground, he began without breaking stride, tucking his message into a story as he so often did. "As he ran, he caught sight of his lengthening shadow.

"‘Look how big I am!’ he exclaimed. ‘To think I was ever frightened of others when I’m so much larger than everything else. Surely, I can overpower any lion!’

Just then, a lion came roaring into view, the low sun casting his shadow toward the wolf and quite effectively blocking out his smaller one. With one blow, the lion easily knocked out the wolf.

Father paused, waiting to hear what conclusions I’d draw from the fable, one of the few games we ever played.

Do not give in to false vanity, I suggested.

Father nodded. What else?

Appearances aren’t everything, I added.

And? Father pressed.

And do not give credence to what has no substance? I ventured.

Father didn’t reply, which meant I could do better. I thought harder, but couldn’t think of anything else, so I remained silent as I’d been taught.

Focus on the shadow, Father intoned, and you will often lose the substance. These people, he gestured to the passersby trying to innocuously scoot out of our way, are terrified of the shadow.

That’s good. Right?

Father nodded. We must be men equal to our shadows, though we often cast a larger one because it’s how it must be. However, especially in dealing with others, men like us must not forget just how much smaller the source of the shadow can be.

What is the source? I asked.

Father smirked. A man, he replied. Despite everything, we are but men.

My childhood was a summation of lessons, warnings, and instruction. All for the purpose of training me for the life I was supposed to lead, and unintentionally preparing me for the one I do.

Once singled out for elite service, a boy underwent a rather demanding training regimen to prove himself a worthy candidate for the Huntsmen. During that time, he went from boy to man, from man to Huntsman, an experience which leaves marks so deep they can never be ignored, covered, or removed. Like the predatory animals he is supposed to emulate, soon after taking his oath, a Huntsman is given those very traits. The eyesight of an eagle, the hearing of an owl, the speed of a cheetah, the grace of a cat, and so on. Each animal gives something to these men, and in return, each man chooses an animal as his lifelong companion, his iskira.

Fittingly, Father’s iskira, Spectre, was a great white wolf, an utterly magnificent, yet utterly terrifying, creature, the likes of which have not been seen before or since.

All this considered, it may be easier to understand what it meant when Father sat me down at the tender age of three, having barely mastered the art of running without falling flat, and informed me that my life was no longer my own. My training would soon begin. I nodded and agreed because that’s what I was expected to do, but mainly because I was three and wanted to please Father.

I don’t know that I would have protested or fought against his dream for me had I known what was to be. Still, that hasn’t kept me from wondering what if I’d been more like my mother and strayed from the path set out for me much earlier. What if I’d never qualified to be a Queen’s Huntsman? What if I’d never paused long enough to see the girl, beautiful and fierce and unafraid to look me in the eye, with every intention of serving my queen by cutting out her heart?

The king married Queen Stella when I was nine years old, and my father had already been Queen’s Captain fourteen years. Before marrying the king, Stella was the daughter of an obscure, irrelevant nobleman, more royal in name than practice. Yet, somehow, the nobleman managed to marry off two daughters to royalty, one to the neighboring King of Laurendale, whose charming son Alex would be the hero of his own faery tale, and the other somehow hooked her claws into our king. It was the kind of good fortune my great-grandmother had always hoped for my mother.

The king’s first wife, Queen Isolda, is the famed one of the faery tale, the one who pricked her finger and watched her blood drop through an ebony window frame onto the pristine snow outside, the one who dreamed of a girl with pitch-black hair, snow-white skin, and blood-red lips. It wouldn’t be long before her wish came true and she gave birth to a little girl who was said to be the most beautiful in all the realms. The queen, however, didn’t get to enjoy her gift long, for a few years later she suddenly became ill and soon after left her husband and only daughter behind in this world.

In listing this series of events, I wouldn’t rush to any conclusions. But, as my father once carefully noted, "He’d only just finished his first year’s mourning, then she was there."

And when the new queen moved in, she had every dark window frame painted over.

No one was ever quite certain as to how Queen Stella gained control of the crown, and I don’t just mean in becoming queen. No one doubted the whispers about what kind of power she held over the king, that it may have been his voice governing, but the words he spoke were presumed to be hers. In Calladium, unlike other kingdoms, the queen balanced the power of the king, an interesting feature of our monarchy which allowed for the creation of the Queen’s Huntsmen. The exact origins are as shaded as the men themselves, who began as myth and legend before taking real shape as men whose sole purpose is the queen’s will. It’s generally agreed that the source stems from the interesting relationship Calladium has with magicals, one distinctly more developed than most other kingdoms across the realms.

Back when Calladium was barely a century old, a fierce war broke out among various magical factions, those that lived beside humans, like nymphs and faeries, and those that lived apart from them, like pixies and water sprites. It was fierce enough to threaten the foundation of our still young nation, and even drove the dwarves into seclusion in and around the Dark Forest with fierce claims that they would not side with any magical who would willingly war against another. The King of Calladium didn’t want to interfere, and for good reason, too. Not only was he rightly unwilling to enter into a war of magic without any of his own, but he also feared meddling in what seemed an entirely magical affair. Rather, he was content with allowing it to run its course and then align with the victor.

His queen decided otherwise.

In direct opposition to her husband, the queen protected the tormented nymphs and faeries in whatever way she could. She sent food and funds when sprites spoiled their supplies, and offered shelter and her own personal guard to bolster their numbers against the pixies.

Furious, her husband had her barricaded in her rooms, officially because she had no guard to protect her.

Despite his interference, with the queen’s added resources, the tide was turned and the sprites and pixies subdued. They still hold a grudge against humans because of it. Once peace was brokered, the nymphs and faeries approached the queen, vowing, as all magicals will, to repay her kindnesses with one thousand and more.

The first thing they gave her was a way to ensure the king could never exert such power over her again. It came in the form of a handful of purple vials, one for each of the guards who’d come to their aid. The second thing was the potential for each Huntsman to have an iskira.

My father never said it out loud, but there was something about Queen Stella he didn’t trust. He kept his suspicions carefully hidden, but as his only son and the man molded in his image, I could read my father like no one else, including my mother. As such, he didn’t have to speak for me to pick up on certain doubts he harbored toward the queen he served.

Stella may have seen an opportunity and taken advantage of it. She may have created the opportunity herself. I have no proof of either, but, knowing what I do now of the kind of woman she was, I wouldn’t discount anything.

However it happened, once Stella was our queen, she implemented subtle shifts in the attitude of governance that are painfully obvious in retrospect. Most of it had to do with the way she held her power close, much too close, and the way the Huntsmen were eventually manipulated because of it.

At first, she didn’t ask them for anything irregular. Then, slowly, there were small abuses, instances she used one or two Huntsmen to take vengeance for petty grievances or to intimidate certain men into making arrangements for her personal gain. And the more she asked for small favors, the more normal it was to fulfill them. The first time, it may have only seemed a trivial matter easily forgotten, something Father may have known about but overlooked in viewing the wider picture, but enough trivial matters pile up and a man soon faces an order he simply cannot obey.

I don’t know about the others, but such was the type of order facing me. Refusing to fulfill it cost me much more than I had ever been willing to pay.

My training began in the early hours of the day, when even the dawn had yet to awaken. Father roused me from my blissful sleep, warm and cuddled up as only a three-year-old can be.

Today you learn how to serve your queen in practice, he informed me.

He handed me my clothing, a silent command to get dressed quickly and follow him outside. As Captain of the Huntsmen, my father was in and out of the house at all times of the day, so there was no way to know if this was the hour when he too awakened or if he was simply stopping through the house en route to his next destination.

It was the beginning of summer, making the morning that much earlier, the day that much longer. That morning was cool and dark, innocent and tranquil. In truth, it was a rather pleasant time to be up and about, well before anyone else was awake to pry open the day’s secrets.

Spectre was waiting for us in the small clearing to the side of our house, the one that buffered our home from the forest that lay beyond. I should have been afraid of the great beast like everyone else, but I never was. Not because he was particularly gentle or docile around me, and I was plenty in awe of it, but I was used to him and knew that wherever the wolf was, Father was too, in a way.

Iskira at his side, Father led the way into the woods. No word had yet passed between us, but as we went deeper and deeper in Father began to speak. Without preamble, he revealed the secrets of the forest to me: little notes and facts about the kind of ground we walked upon, the life around us, what other animals had been there, how the weather affected it each season. I listened attentively, hearing all, but understanding little. I’m sure my face was serious, my posture determined, my focus fixed on Father to imitate the way he moved. I did not know what we were about, I only knew I wanted him to be proud of me.

We walked for what seemed like hours and hours, though it probably wasn’t more than one or two. The day brightened for us as we trekked deeper