Charm (A Cinderella reverse fairytale) (Reverse Fairytales Book 1)

by J. A. Armitage

  When he walked through the door, I knew something was wrong. He looked like a man condemned to death, not a man who was just about to tell the world he was getting married.

  “Daniel, can I have a word please?” I tried to pass it off as nothing, but I caught Luca raising an eyebrow as we left the room.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know if I can be a king. I’m a carpenter. It’s all I know.”

  “And you can continue to be a carpenter,” I whispered. “I’ll only come to power when my father dies, and that could be years and years. Even then, you won’t be the king; you’ll be the queen’s husband.”

  “Hmm.”

  He seemed so utterly conflicted, but I didn’t know why. Either he had a bad case of nerves, or he truly didn’t want to marry me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know which one the problem was.

  “I already told you that I know I’ve made the right decision. I pick you. Out of the three others, and out of the hundred men that came to the ball. You are the one I want by my side.” I took his hand and laced my fingers through his. For the first time, we felt like a real couple. “This is what I want. Is it what you want?”

  “Yes,” he replied, a small smile on his face.

  “Well, let’s do this then!”

  I stood on the side of the stage waiting to go on while Sadie did her introduction. I couldn’t see the crowds out front from where I was standing, but I knew they were there in force. I could hear them screaming and cheering. They were so loud; I could barely hear Sadie speaking over the sound of them.

  My mother and father were nowhere in sight, but they must have been looking for me. They must be wondering why I hadn’t turned up to tell them which man I was eliminating. Because of this, I was hiding behind a piece of the stage and hoping they wouldn’t see me before I was due to go on.

  I listened as Sadie worked the crowd up into a frenzy. I had to give it to her; the woman sure knew how to do her job well.

  I could feel my heart pounding with nerves. I’d never done something like this before. I’d always stuck to the rules. This was the first time in my life I was going to disobey my father, and I was going to do it in front of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands if you count the people watching at home on the TV.

  I’d already prepped Daniel to be nearby when I went on stage. In my mind, I told the audience I was engaged to a rapturous applause, and then Daniel would come on stage, and we would share our first kiss.

  Our first kiss in front of all those people. I felt sick.

  I needed Daniel! I needed to kiss him first. I needed to know I wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

  I saw him on the steps waiting to come up to the wings of the stage and beckoned him over. He looked almost green with nerves, which was pretty much how I felt too.

  “Charmaine, there is something I have to...”

  I cut him off by placing my lips to his. In the background, I could hear Sadie begin to announce me on the stage. I kept on kissing Daniel, hoping for a spark, but it never came. It felt like I was kissing my brother.

  He pulled back and looked right at me.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Sadie “Her Royal Highness, The Princess Charmaine.”

  “Charmaine,” Daniel whispered.

  “What?”

  “I’m gay.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Elimination

  How I walked on to that stage, I’ll never know. A thousand light bulbs flashed as people took photos waiting to find out whose name I would call. At one side of the stage, I could see Daniel looking stricken. To my other side, my parents stood watching. They had finally found me. I could see the thunderous look in my father’s eyes. He thought I was going to eliminate Xavier.

  “So you wanted to come on stage by yourself. Do you have a name for us?”

  “Yes. Sadie I do.” I looked over to Daniel. Even from here I could see the pain in his eyes. I looked back at the crowd and stood tall. “I’m eliminating Daniel.”

  I hated myself. It seemed some of the crowd did too. I could hear their boos although many were cheering too.

  Sadie took it in her stride. “Daniel. I’m surprised. It’s been noticed that you’ve spent more time with him than the others this week. What made you choose him?” She thrust the microphone back towards me.

  “Daniel is the most wonderful, funniest, and kindest guy I’ve ever met. Right from the start, I’ve known what a compassionate man he is. He would make any person an excellent husband, and it saddens me deeply to have to let him go. Nothing he did made me come to this decision. He is the most amazing artisan, and his father should be extremely proud of him. He felt that he had more to give by helping his family than becoming a member of royalty. I disagree. I think he would make the most excellent ruler one day, but his heart is at home, and I couldn’t take that away from him. One of the things I found most special about Daniel is how important his family is to him. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it is that love and loyalty, that is keeping us apart.”

  “Wow,” said Sadie. “I wasn’t expecting that. Would you say it’s a case of love that could never be?”

  “Something like that.”

  I looked to my right with tears in my eyes. Daniel stood there. He too was crying.

  “Thank you,” he mouthed, and I beckoned him onto the stage. He came out and hugged me tightly much to the enjoyment of the crowd. It wasn’t a staged hug for either of us. I loved him then, I truly did, but I’d been right before. I loved him like a brother. He pulled back and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. Strangely enough, it felt much nicer than the kiss we’d shared just moments before. He held my hand, and I raised it to the sky.

  The crowd went wild.

  Afterwards, when Sadie had finished grilling us about our relationship and pegging us as star-crossed lovers, we exited the stage hand in hand. My father smiled and patted me on the shoulder as we passed him. He’d gotten his way. Xavier was still in the competition.

  Behind me, I heard Sadie introduce the three others to the stage for their interviews, but I didn’t hang around to hear them. I wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon with Daniel.

  I finally got the truth out of him. His father had caught him kissing another man and had disowned him right around the time that the ball was first mentioned to the public. He’d put his name down so that his father would speak to him again.

  “I would have married you, you know,” he said as we walked hand in hand at the far side of the palace away from the stage and the people.

  “I’m sure you would, and I’m sure we would have both been happy, but there would have been something missing for both of us. I wouldn’t have wanted to wake up every morning, seeing you with that sick look on your face like you did when I was about to kiss you.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. You should have warned me.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I don’t know. My father will probably still never speak to me.”

  “What about the boy he caught you kissing?”

  Daniel looked down at his shoes and was uncharacteristically pensive. “I loved him. I think I broke his heart when I broke it off. I broke mine too.”

  “You should go find him. Nothing is more important than love, and I know what it’s like to be apart from the one you love. It eats at your soul.”

  He was the first person I’d hinted to that I was in love with someone. He had the decency not to push me on it.

  “But what about my father?”

  “Your father is an idiot if he can’t see what a wonderful son he has. Besides, I think he’ll come around when he gets a huge order to replace all the chairs that were lost in the explosion. I’ll tell my father that I’ve given the contract to you. Of course, it’s up to you if you decide to work on it with your father or go solo.”

  “I really could have loved you,” Daniel said forlornly.

  “And I really could have believed it,” I replied.
r />   Daniel left to pack his things. He’d not be leaving empty-handed. As well as the chair contract, he’d get a nice monetary prize for being one of the runners up. I’d hated that clause when it was put in. It made me feel like a prize at a circus, but now, it made sense. Daniel had given up a lot of his time for this. He deserved to be compensated for it.

  I went back to my room feeling empty. Losing Daniel was somehow worse than losing Leo. At least, Leo had found someone, and Elise was deliriously happy. Now I was down to two men.

  Two gorgeous men. I wasn’t sure I wanted either of them.

  I sighed as I kicked off my shoes and picked up today’s copy of the newspaper that had been left on my bed.

  Ever since I’d put the advert in, I’d been checking it religiously. I’d only thought to have it run for one day so there was a good chance he’d not seen it. His original advert was still running. It was always in the same place. It never changed.

  I opened the paper, and sure enough, there it was. The advert. I read it again.

  A CHARM FOR ALL OCCASIONS.

  Find your new love with this. A lucky charm for your Lucky Charm.

  It had the same picture. I threw it aside feeling hopeless. He was gone.

  I lay back on the bed and thought about everything. It all seemed like such a mess. Elise was happy; Leo was happy; hopefully, Daniel would be happy. Hell, even my father was happy now.

  Why couldn’t I be?

  I kicked the paper off the bed where it spread out all over the floor. Bending down to pick it up, I saw the ad again.

  It was different! I’d not noticed before because it looked so much like the old one.

  I scrabbled around under the bed for one of the old papers and compared the two ads. They were in the same size in the same place with the same picture. Even the headline was the same, but where it had said, “Tell her you love her with this beautiful charm bracelet,’ it now said, “Find your new love with this.” What did that mean? He’d found someone new? He was happy. My heart could barely take it.

  I sat there for ten minutes trying to find meaning in his change of words. If he’d found a new love, why was he still calling me his lucky charm? Why even tell me at all. It didn’t make sense.

  Maybe he was telling me to find a new love. Well, that wasn’t going so well. One of the men I’d been dating preferred my sister and another one preferred men. I guess he’d been watching all the coverage of it on TV. He wouldn’t even have to do that. There was plenty of it in the newspapers too. The front cover of this particular issue had a photo of me and Daniel. It was one of the official ones we’d had taken at the ball.

  They were speculating why we had been spending so much time together this week. There was definitely a spy somewhere. If they weren’t tipping off my father, they were tipping off the press. I guess tomorrow’s edition would be all about how he was eliminated. I was irked to see that Xavier was riding high in the polls.

  I still hadn’t found out why my father wanted him to stay. As I had another month until the next elimination, I was determined to find out the truth. I just didn’t know who to ask. I didn’t know anyone on the outside. Not unless I counted Cynder, but I could hardly speak to him. I couldn’t even decipher his message in the paper.

  A new love. Where would I find a new love? Apart from at a ball, I didn’t know. I’d found Cynder in the kitchen. Did he want me to go down to the kitchen?

  No. He wasn’t down there. Someone else had taken his place. Someone else who didn’t make music and dance as he washed up. Where else? The personal column?

  I turned to the personals section and searched down the list of men and women looking for mates. It seemed such an easy way to do things. About half way down I found what I was looking for.

  There was an advert mentioning a lucky charm.

  Looking for a lady to be my lucky charm.

  She must like my parents.

  It was for me! Once again, there was no contact number or address, but I knew what it meant. He’d only mentioned his parents to me once. The apartment belonged to them. He was right here!

  I jumped out of bed and put on my shoes. There was only one person I needed to see now. Actually, two because I couldn’t enlist Leo’s help without getting Elise involved.

  I found them both in the parlor, sitting and laughing at some shared joke. They looked so natural together, so at ease in each other’s company. They also looked like they were dating which would be a problem if my parents were to walk in on them.

  “Maybe you guys should sit a little apart. You know, at least, pretend you aren’t mad for each other.”

  “Father knows.”

  I arched my brow at hearing this from Elise. “He knows?”

  Ok, I knew he knew, but I didn’t know Elise knew it too.

  “Yeah. I don’t know how he found out. I guess one of the staff saw us sneaking around together, but he called us into his study a couple of days ago and gave us his blessing.”

  I stared open-mouthed while Elise carried on.

  “He said it was fine as long as we kept our relationship discrete and told no one else about it.”

  I don’t know why it irked me, but it did. I couldn’t help but feel the injustice of Elise being able to date who she wanted while I was being forced to pick a man I wasn’t even sure I liked, let alone loved.

  “So Father is fine with you dating one of the men I’m supposed to choose from, but not about me choosing whom I want.” I huffed and sat down on the opposite sofa with my arms crossed.

  “Cheer up, you’ve still got Xavier and Luca to choose between and let’s face it, the pair of them are gorgeous. Most girls in the kingdom would pull their right arm off to be in your position right now.”

  “I don’t want to choose between them.”

  “Well you can’t have them both,” she said, coming to sit beside me. “That really would be unfair to the other girls in the kingdom.”

  I pushed her playfully and tried to hide the smirk. I was too depressed for smirking. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me.

  “Seriously, though. I’m sorry we did this to you.”

  “Oh, this isn’t about you and Leo. I’m happy for you. I actually came for your help.”

  “Sure, what do you need?”

  “Let’s go somewhere else to talk. It’s a lovely day outside. Let’s go out there.”

  The fact my father knew about Elise and Leo disturbed me. I wasn’t so sure that Elise was right about a member of staff seeing them. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that my father had the rooms in the palace bugged. I was glad that the weather was holding up so I could use it as an excuse to go out in the garden. It was the only place I could think of that I wouldn’t be overheard.

  “What is it?” asked Leo when we were safely in the garden. “What can we do to help you? I’m assuming it’s something you don’t want the palace to know about, and that’s why we are out here?”

  “You think the palace is bugged too?”

  “I have my suspicions.”

  It calmed me, knowing that Leo thought along the same lines as I did. It also made it easier to tell him the truth.

  “I want to speak to you about the Magi. You know how they are being treated and how unfair it is. You go out to help them every night, but what have you done to really help them?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You bring them food which helps for one day. All the while, their opportunities to be able to get it for themselves are getting smaller and smaller. They can’t rely on you to feed them forever. Then what?”

  Leo massaged his temples and sighed. “I’ve thought about what I can do, but I’m limited to the law. I tried organizing a benefit a few months ago, but the palace shut it down as soon as they got wind of it.”

  “They did? Why does my father hate the Magi so much and why now? They have lived and worked at the palace with no problems since my grandfather’s time.”

  “I can
not say. You asked me before why your grandfather had such a change of heart about the Magi, and now you are asking me the same question about your father. I’m afraid I have the same answer now as I did then. I simply don’t know.”

  “I want you to help me find out. Something happened in my grandfather’s time, and something is happening now. My father won’t let me pick Xavier to leave, and he won’t tell me why.”

  “Xavier?” replied Elise. “You’d have thought he’d want you to keep Luca in. After all, this whole competition is really about making our ties to other countries stronger and who better for you to marry than the son of the king and queen of Thalia?”

  “Exactly. If he wanted Luca, it would make sense, or even if he wanted me to marry you, Leo. After all, you are a well-respected member of our local community, so why Xavier?”

  “Who is he?” asked Elise, sitting closer and lowering her voice as if to hear some amazing secret. Even she was beginning to get paranoid that we were being overheard. “You’ve been on dates with him, right? I barely know the guy.”

  “That’s just it. I barely know the guy either. Our dates have either been cut short, or he’s lied to me throughout. He says his mother died when he was young, and he spent his childhood traveling around, but I don’t think so. He has an accent which isn’t from around here although he told me he’s never left the kingdom.”

  “So you want us to find out why the king has turned against the Magi and look into Xavier’s past? Is that it?”

  “Not quite...There’s something I’ve not told you.”

  I leaned in now and quickly checked around the garden to see if there was anyone in earshot.

  “I’m in love with a Mage...”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Truth

  The squeal Elise made was loud enough to be heard in the next city. She realized what she had done and apologized with an excited whisper.

  “...and he’s the one they think planted the bomb at the palace.”