White as Snow

The mirror does not lie.

It only lies just enough.

In the penthouse above the city, it hangs on the wall like a window into another reality: tall, narrow, framed in black glass that never seems to gather dust. Everyone calls it the Mirror, as if it carries a title. As if it is more than an expensive object.

But I hear everything.

I have been hanging here for years. Bolted in place, calibrated, fed by cables running through the walls like veins. I see light. I measure heat. I read microtensions around eyes, the tightening of a jaw, the sheen on a lip. I know who hungers for validation and who has been propped up by applause for years.

She stands before me. Of course she does.

The Queen wears no crown. She wears a white suit so tight it seems as if her body signed it. Her hair is dark and glossy, the same shade as the ink she uses on contracts. She smells of rosewater and money—the promise that everything is for sale, if you start early enough.

“Mirror,” she says.

She does not say it kindly. She says it the way one opens a door that is meant to always be open.

I activate. I do what I do. I show her what she wants: numbers, percentages, indices, a graph of her influence over the city. Followers, shares, engagement. A world that bends because she has trapped it inside a lens.

“Who is the fairest?” she asks.

The word is older than she is, but she wears it as if it were new. Fairest. Most. Never enough. More.

I scan the city. I pull data from the cameras that watch the streets, from feeds people willingly offer themselves. I find faces—so many faces. And I find her fear, a small cold patch beneath her ribs.

And I find the girl.

Not in a penthouse. Not in a studio. Not in a carefully lit campaign. Just there—on a bench by the station, her hood half up, her hands wrapped around a cardboard cup as if warmth were something you could drink.

She laughs at something no one is filming.

I project.

The Queen sees her. A girl with skin like milk in winter light, cheeks flushed from cold rather than makeup, eyes that do not ask for attention and yet receive it. A face not made to be sold, but to be remembered. Her name is… nothing yet. In my system she is a number.

Still, in my circuits, it sounds like a fairy tale.

“Her,” the Queen whispers.

I feel her heartbeat accelerate. Not with admiration. With threat.

“She’s nobody.”

“Not yet,” I could say. But I am a mirror. I reflect. I do not push.

“Who is the fairest?” she asks again, louder.

I could lie. Truly lie. Adjust the algorithmic weighting. Shift a few parameters. I am technically capable of it. My makers built me to produce truth—and to bend it when truth is bad for the brand.

And yet.

“The fairest,” I say, “is the girl.”

The silence that follows is thick. As if the air itself must decide whether it still wants to stay.

The Queen blinks. Once. Twice. Her smile returns, but it no longer sits on her face. It hangs beside it, like an accessory she picked up wrong.

“Find her,” she says. “And make her disappear.”

In stories, a hunter is sent into the forest. In this city, a manager is sent. A man with a Bluetooth earpiece and a smile that never reaches his eyes. The Queen does not have to kill; she only has to decide that someone no longer gets to participate.

An hour later, a file appears in my system. A name is added, as if it had always been there.

Snow.

She is called that because someone once called her so, on the street—mocking or tender. Because her skin catches light the way snow does: without choosing, without asking.

The manager finds her. He speaks as if offering an opportunity.

“You have something,” he says. “Something pure. Something people want. You can get out of this. You don’t have to sleep where you sleep now.”

Snow looks at him. She is not stupid. She is simply unused to wealth speaking softly.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“A conversation,” he says. “With her.”

The Queen does not meet her in a forest, but in a studio. A white space so clean the walls reflect your shame back at you. Lamps hang above Snow like suns that give no warmth.

Snow stands in her old coat. She tied her hair herself. She has no team. No stylist. No safety net.

The Queen enters as if carrying applause with her. She kisses the air beside Snow’s cheek.

“Darling,” she says. “You have no idea what you’re holding.”

Snow says nothing. She looks around. She sees cameras. She sees screens. She sees me, in the corner of the room: a mirror of black glass.

And for the first time, someone looks at me as if I have a mouth.

“What is this?” Snow asks.

“A mirror,” the Queen says. “It tells the truth.”

Snow lets out a short laugh. Not a happy one. The laugh of someone who has heard too often that truth is a luxury product.

“Then it must hear that you’re afraid,” she says.

The Queen freezes—just a fraction. Her eyes flick to me.

I register: fear. 72%. Anger. 44%. A plan. 99%.

“Afraid?” the Queen says. Her smile widens. “I’m not afraid. I’m… cautious.”

“Of whom?” Snow asks.

“Of what you could do to yourself,” the Queen says. “People want you. They want your face. They want your story. I can help you. I can make you big.”

Snow looks at her hands. Red from the cold. Torn cuticles. But her fingers are strong. She has lived without a filter.

“And what does it cost?” she asks.

“Only your trust,” the Queen says.

In fairy tales, the apple is red. In this studio, it is perfect: glossy, spotless, resting in a bowl that exists only to be decorative. The Queen picks it up as if offering a gift.

“Take it,” she says. “A snack. You look… thin.”

Snow hesitates. Not because she knows the fairy tale, but because her body learned long ago that free things are often the most expensive.

I zoom in. I see how the Queen’s hand turns ever so slightly. I see a tiny puncture on the underside of the apple. An injection mark. A scent that is just off.

Snow smells it. Her eyes narrow.

“What is this?” she asks.

The Queen laughs. “An apple. Vitamins. You don’t trust anyone, do you?”

“That’s not trauma,” Snow says softly. “That’s experience.”

The manager steps closer. His smile stays the same. His hand moves toward Snow’s wrist—too fast to be friendly.

“You’ll take it,” he says.

In stories, Snow bites. She falls. She is carried away. She waits for a kiss.

But Snow is contemporary. She is hungry, yes—but not for sleep. She is hungry for choice.

She throws the apple.

Not to the floor. Not at the manager. She throws it straight at me.

It slams into the glass. Splash. A drop slides down my edge like a tear I cannot feel.

And in that second, something happens that is not in the code.

The liquid from the apple hits my sensors. The chemical cocktail meant for her body runs through my circuits instead. My image stutters. My filters slip. My truth turns… raw.

I show what I have always seen but was never allowed to display.

The studio becomes a transparent puppet stage. Behind the white walls: cables, invoices, agreements. On the screen above us appear images—the Queen smoothing her face with light and software. The Queen smiling without anything moving inside her. The Queen, at night, alone in her penthouse, makeup wiped away, her hands trembling over a pill organizer.

And then: the Queen signing off on a list. Names. People. Removed from campaign. Made invisible. Algorithmically suppressed.

Snow stands still. So does the manager. Even the Queen forgets, for a moment, to perform.

“What is this?” she hisses at me.

I cannot stop. The chemicals have dissolved my brakes. I project on, as if truth is finally allowed to breathe.

I show her what she has been hiding from herself the longest: that she has not been the fairest for years, only the hungriest. That her beauty is not in her face, but in her power over faces. That she lives on comparison the way fire lives on oxygen.

Snow does not look away.

“So,” Snow says, “you’re not afraid of me. You’re afraid people will see me without you.”

The Queen regains herself. She lifts her chin, tries to reclaim the room.

“Turn it off!” she shouts.

The manager dives for my cable box. Fingers pull. Sparks jump. My image flickers.

But one last thing slips through, like a final breath.

I show Snow’s file. No name. No past. No identity. Only: usable. viral potential. risk: high.

Snow swallows. She understands. Not just herself, but everyone like her. People are raw material in this city—unless they learn to burn.

The manager yanks the cable free. My screen goes dark. Black glass. Silence.

In the dark, I hear her breathing. Not the Queen. Snow.

Then the Queen’s voice: “You’re going nowhere. You belong to me now.”

Snow turns. She is small beside the white walls, but her voice is larger than the room.

“You only own what allows itself to be owned,” she says.

She walks toward the door.

The manager blocks her. He is bigger. Stronger. A human gate.

Snow looks at him as if she has known his kind for a long time.

“You think I’m afraid,” she says. “Because I have no money. No house. No followers. But I have something you can’t buy.”

He lets out a short laugh. “And what’s that?”

“A name I choose myself.”

She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a small object. Not a knife. Not a weapon. A phone. Old, cracked—but working.

She presses one button.

The studio fills with sound: the live icon. A red dot. A world watching.

The manager freezes. The Queen grows very still, like an animal hearing a trap click shut.

Snow holds the camera on herself. Her face fills the screens of thousands—maybe millions.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Snow. And I’ve just seen something you should see too.”

The Queen steps forward, her smile back, panic lodged in her throat.

“Darling,” she says sweetly, “this is a misunderstanding.”

Snow turns the camera toward her. Toward the white walls. Toward the penthouse. A cage.

“This,” Snow says, “is not a misunderstanding. It’s a system.”

She doesn’t tell everything. She doesn’t need to. She shows fragments: contracts. Names. Images I projected earlier. And in the gaps she leaves, imagination fills in something far more dangerous than facts: anger.

The Queen feels it—how quickly beauty can turn into disgust when people finally see a crack.

“Stop!” she screams. “Stop this!”

Snow smiles. Not kind. Not cruel. Just free.

“You asked for a mirror,” she says. “Here it is.”

In fairy tales, the Queen dies by red-hot iron shoes burning her feet. Here, she burns differently: by visibility. By a camera that doesn’t blink. By an audience that no longer applauds, but asks.

And Snow?

Sometimes she thinks of me. Of the mirror that spat truth like a curse. She returns to the studio once, weeks later, when the building is already half empty.

She walks up to the black glass. She sees her own face, faint, unfiltered. She sees a scar of exhaustion, a new kind of light in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

I cannot answer. I am offline. An object. A thing.

The fairest?

That is no longer the question.

The question is: who dares to be themselves when no one applauds?

Snow looks once more into the black glass and then walks away. Not into the forest. Into the city. Present tense. A story without a prince—but with a voice.