The Goblin Cinderella (Fairy Tale Heat Book 5)

by Lidiya Foxglove

“I did no such thing,” she said. “I am innocent on all counts! Perhaps Mr. Hassari and your father have indulged in the same rich foods. You are blaming me for a heart attack!”

  “I found the poison in your house,” Aunt Kayska said.

  “You’re—mistaken,” my stepmother stammered.

  “And if you did not kill me, madam, then why did you steal my ticket home?” Mr. Hassari asked.

  My stepmother opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She was completely cornered and she knew it. All right, I must admit, it was very enjoyable to see the moment that all of this dawned on her. A smile crept onto my face.

  “You!” my stepmother screeched. “You wicked goblin! You and your aunt set all this up! Your majesty—“ She implored the king. “It’s a goblin trick. They have forced your son into falling in love with this wretched girl.” She was nearly spitting at me. “I pray that I do not see you take the throne of our beautiful elven kings and queens! You, with your mother’s dirty blood. It makes me sick.”

  My stepsisters started crying again. “I can’t bear to see it,” Gwyn agreed. “Cinderella isn’t fit to be a princess. She talks to rats!”

  “Mice,” I said.

  “She puts mice in our bed!” Cerra chimed in. “She’s dirty and gross. Look at her! You must all be bewitched to think she should be a princess!”

  It took everything in me not to shrink away, to hear such hatred spewing from their mouths. I knew I had not done anything to deserve it, but a part of me still took it to heart. I started to feel small, wondering if they were right in the end, and the people of Wyndyr would always see me as they saw me.

  The crows suddenly stirred and started flying around my indignant stepfamily. The girls screamed, swatting at the black feathers that swept around them. My stepmother managed to grab a crow in the midst of the chaos.

  “No!” I cried. “Please!”

  That only made things worse. She held the crow by one wing and put it under her boot. “I’ve always wanted to do this to one of your little pets,” she said, before she crushed it to death.

  I let out a ragged scream and launched at her. Sure, a princess probably shouldn’t be known for attacking her stepmother in the Hall of Marble Pools, but…

  “I was a child.”

  “A half breed child,” my stepmother said. “Always predisposed for trouble.”

  I heard Fersa growl behind me. I felt the presence of Ithrin, Wrindel and King Borel, Mr. Hassari and my Aunt Kayska, all of them bristling. No one agreed with my stepmother. And if even the royal family didn’t agree with her, what did I have to fear?

  I stared her down—or up, because she was taller than me, but my anger emboldened me. “I was a child who had lost her mother, but I had my dear father—and then you came along. Lovely and mannered on the outside, but I know what is in all of your hearts. You have savored every moment of tormenting me. I don’t know if you hate goblins, or me in particular— No, I know what it truly is. You hate yourselves. You know that it is no way to live, taking pleasure in tormenting a lonely girl. For six years you have blamed me for everything that has gone wrong in your lives. For not warming your bed on a cold night or tightening your corsets enough. Believe me, I wished I could tighten your corsets so well that your stomachs would pop out of your mouths.”

  The crows started cawing, their feathers ruffled. They took flight, circling closer and closer to my stepfamily’s faces.

  “Call them off!” my stepmother cried. “This is your doing!”

  “I have given them no commands,” I said. But the crows knew. Somehow, they knew what I wanted.

  I stepped back as my stepmother screamed.

  The crows attacked my stepfamily. They had lost one of their own and now they were merciless. Sharp beaks pierced and jabbed at their eyes. The crow on my shoulder, which I had started to think was some sort of leader, merely watched. I watched, too. I watched as my stepfamily was assaulted by the crows, all three of them finally dropping to their knees, clutching their bleeding faces.

  “Get a healer out here,” the king said to one of the guards, but his tone was more grim than urgent. I think he was on my side. My stepsister’s screams echoed through the hall as my stepmother wished we would all go to the depths of hell.

  The crow on my shoulder flew down as I held out my hand. It perched itself there and bowed to me. It met my eyes in a strangely human gaze, and I understood. Wherever this crow had come from, it had always been meant to be my protector.

  Then all of the crows flew toward Ithrin. For a moment, it looked like they were going to attack him next. My breath hitched. But as they reached him, their bodies started to melt away, and he absorbed them in a mass of formless shadows. The dead crow vanished as well.

  “They said they prayed not to see you take the throne,” he said, in a strange voice that was not his own. His eyes went unfocused. “I merely granted their wish. All my love and blessings to you, Ellara and Prince Ithrin….for a long and happy reign. May you love each other as we love each other.”

  Ithrin clutched his heart, gasping as he started to see me again.

  “Ithrin, did you summon those crows?” I asked. “Who…who was speaking?”

  “What did you do?” the king asked, more severely.

  “Yes,” he said. “I did. I called for help to the realms of the dead. I wanted to speak to Mr. Hassari, thinking he had succumbed to the murder attempt. But the voice that came instead said she was…Ellara’s mother. She asked if I would open a channel for her from the world beyond.”

  “And you agreed?” the king asked. “You agreed to open a channel for the dead?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “The crows saved me…,” I said. “They were with me back in the work house. They helped me fight off Mrs. Rennick and the guards and get out of the gates. So you’re saying that was really…my mother? She was speaking of my father…’as we love each other’…” I clutched my forehead as my tears started falling. “They’re together, aren’t they? They’re together now…and she protected me.” She got my revenge, I thought. She attacked them as an elven princess could not…

  Oh, my wicked goblin mother. You knew what my wicked goblin heart wanted.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, as Ithrin put his arms around me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ellara

  The next day, the next week…it was all a whirlwind.

  My stepmother, blinded by the crows along with her daughters, went to prison, awaiting trial for murder, which would probably leave her locked up forever. She was sharing a cell with her old friend, Mrs. Rennick, who was going on trial for abusing and imprisoning the women of the work house.

  My blind stepsisters could never fuss at their stupid mirrors again. They had no money, no other family to turn to. They told me, haughtily, that their friends would surely help them, and they would make me sorry someday. In a way, I had to give them; it takes a very special kind of personality to remain haughty after crows have pecked your eyes.

  The very next day they shuffled back into the palace, singing a different tune, while I was discussing my father’s business with Mr. Hassari. “Ellara…we didn’t mean all of that, yesterday. We were just saying it because Mother told us to,” Gwyn pleaded. “You wouldn’t really leave your sisters to starve on the streets, would you?”

  “You can go to the work house,” I said. “I’m sure you could sew sails.”

  “The work house?” Cerra wailed.

  “You were going to leave me there forever while you claimed my father’s spice farms and even my identity in Cabria.”

  “That wasn’t us, it was Mother!”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that you two would have taken any pity on me if your mother was out of the picture? You have taken every opportunity to belittle me and hit me, regardless of whether she was around.”

  Mr. Hassari glanced at me. “You girls wished to go to Cabria? There is plenty of work on my farms.”

 
; I picked up the quill we had been using to sign papers, and wrote a tiny note on one of the margins: Please take them with you. I will rest much easier knowing they are hundreds of miles away.

  When I put down the quill, he picked it up and wrote, There is manure to be spread on the fields.

  “Why should we go to Cabria now?” Gwyn asked.

  “Because, here, if you ever leave the workhouse, you run the risk of your friends seeing you in this state,” I said. “What would Lisitha think? The neighbors?”

  “Cabria is a cheap nation to live in,” Mr. Hassari said. “And the weather is very pleasant. You will have a better chance of finding a husband there.”

  I knew my stepsisters’ vanity would win out. To them, nothing was worse than being seen by people they knew in a reduced state. When Mr. Hassari left for home, they accompanied him. He assured me that he would be back soon to discuss trade.

  I went back to my house just once, to collect the things still left from the days Father and I had been happy, and gathered up the mice and spiders to give them a place to live in the palace—some out of the way nook where the servants wouldn’t kill them and I could bring them treats. Aunt Kayska came with me and I gave her a few things that belonged to Mother. Cook was still unconscious on the floor.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Aunt Kayska said, waving me back to the carriage.

  “You won’t—kill her? I mean…I don’t like her, but she is just the cook.”

  “My dear, I’m not a murderess. I will do nothing to harm her. I just want her to remember me.”

  Fersa stayed in the palace for a couple of weeks and we had a marvelous time exploring the place, like a couple of giddy children getting excited over every little waterfall and storeroom of armor. Wrindel made an unsuccessful attempt to seduce her.

  “It’s a little flattering,” she said. “A handsome prince finally giving me a taste of love-making. But…Prince Wrindel? I damn sure won’t be his first…or second…or tenth.”

  “You are wise to wait,” I said. “I’m sure when you get home, you’ll find the right sort of person who would make a good husband.”

  “What a bloody sensible response. Easy for you to say when I know your future husband’s already fucking you good.” She looked wistful.

  Fersa didn’t really have “palace manners”. I liked her, though. I had always tried to live up to the elven ideals my father taught me and never dared to say anything too out of step from what was expected.

  She also had to leave before my wedding. I helped her write her father’s family, and read her the reply. They seemed pleased to hear from her, in a long and flowery letter that smelled like perfume and asked her what her dress size was, and suggested she would have a tutor to learn to read.

  She wrinkled her nose. “They’re going to think I’m an animal.”

  “You should probably try not to curse so much at least for the first few months…”

  “They’re going to hate me, aren’t they?”

  “Your aunt sounds pretty welcoming in the letter. Just because they have education and they want you to have an education too doesn’t mean they’ll hate you. But you’re also a grown woman, you know. If it’s absolutely terrible, come back to Wyndyr. You’ll always have a place in the palace.”

  “Come back with my tail between my legs? Never.”

  “I just want you to know that you can,” I said. “Either way, I hope you learn to read and write just so you can write me! I want to know how it goes. You could use me for practice. I don’t care if the letters aren’t perfect.”

  “Good. Because they won’t be. I used to spend more than half my time as a wolf, not a girl…” She looked at her hands. “I suppose my new family won’t ever want me to be a wolf.”

  “Maybe you should just see before you worry about it,” I said, crossing my fingers that they were as nice as they seemed in the letter. Fersa could have a hard road ahead, and I knew how difficult it was to fit in sometimes.

  I sent her off, already dressed for a respectable reception, in a fine dress made of warm browns and golds, and a red cloak, a striking backdrop for her long black hair.

  As some of my new friends departed, others arrived for my wedding, including King Nyar and Queen Sabela. I first saw them at the reception, on the night before I was to be wed. My eyes went wide at Queen Sabela’s beauty, while King Nyar had an undeniably attractive presence despite being a bit ugly to my eyes. (I wondered if I would think so, if I had grown up in the goblin kingdom.)

  “Your majesties,” I said. “I am honored beyond words that you made this journey.” And I truly was. Their presence added legitimacy toward our wedding in the eyes of the people, promising new alliances for the kingdom. No goblin king had visited Wyndyr in over a century.

  “It’s our pleasure,” King Nyar said. “It’s my hope that we are in a new age of peace. All across the land, races that were once at odds have been forging alliances with the bonds of marriage, and none makes me happier than to see a goblin marrying a high elf. Our ancestors have fought each other in numerous wars, but we are the custodians of a golden era.”

  “I think you’re right,” King Borel said. “It’s up to us to give our descendants a better world than our ancestors, and we’re off to a good start.”

  Later on, Sabela grinned at me and said, “I made him say that little speech about peace.”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course, Nyar agrees with the sentiment entirely, but he would have said it more bluntly. How he grumbled about it! I think part of the reason goblins haven’t gotten along with high elves is because they don’t know how to manage the flowery speeches.” She sipped her wine. “I hear you and I have a lot in common. Daughters of merchants turned royalty.”

  “I didn’t know you were the daughter of a merchant, too. Was it hard to become a queen?”

  “Not really. Goblins are very…casual. So you see, the hardest part is managing relations with other races. But at home, all is well, and that’s the most important part. I get a lot of chances to relax. You have a lot to manage, don’t you? Not just a princess, but owner of saffron farms? Will you go to Cabria to see them? More importantly, will you send us some as a gift of goodwill?” She laughed.

  “Of course I’ll send you some! Maybe someday I’ll go. I have so much to learn about the court. I don’t want to leave…yet. We’re still investigating the work houses and I think I should probably visit them just to show the poor women there that I’m on their side, and there is so much more we could do about relations with the wolvenfolk and goblins, and…well, I hope to have children soon.”

  “Remember—one day a time,” she said.

  It was a poorly kept secret that Ithrin and I had already consummated our marriage many times over, but that night I slept apart from him, as custom demanded. I barely slept at all, in fact, but laid awake in wonder at how quickly my life had changed. And in the end, it was all thanks to my Aunt Kayska and her wicked little spell. I crept out of bed and looked at the moon and stars shining out my window, and made a wish that I would be worthy of the position in which I had found myself.

  In the morning, my sleepless, giddy self was rushed through a round of pampering and primping that would have made my stepsisters very jealous. I sat in front of the mirror, trying not to fidget as they fastened tiny pearls in my hair. It all seemed a little silly…until Aunt Kayska entered, carrying a pillow with something odd on it…my horns, wrapped in a filigree of gold.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “I’m going to put them back where they belong, my dear. I spoke to Ithrin about my idea. As the witch of my village, people come to me with every sort of problem. I have never known a goblin to lose their horns, but I have known people of all sorts to lose their teeth! Sometimes I can secure them with a fastening spell and metal wires. I thought the same thing might work for you. And you are a princess, so we want this to befit your station. Ithrin had the palace goldsmith make these little cages of gold.
I’m going to fasten the wires to the nubs, and I don’t think they’ll be going anywhere.”

  “Oh…auntie, thank you…they’re beautiful.”

  “I will be going home before long, but remember, child…even though we have miles between us, you always have family that loves you. Some of these elves will snub you, I know it’s true. When they do, feel free to write to me, and I will always take your side.”

  “Just promise me you won’t cast any enchantments.”

  She squeezed my hand. “I told King Nyar I wouldn’t start any wars. I’ll make you the same promise.”

  I supposed I could accept that.

  A crown of small golden flowers went around my face, and ribbons in the colors of the royal house trailed down my back. My cheeks were dusted faintly with gold. My dress was like liquid cream, buttery and soft and silky, clinging to my small curves before it trailed behind me. I wore my glass slippers, too, as a symbol of the night we met. It was cold that day, and elven weddings were always held out of doors, but a white fur-trimmed cloak was placed on my shoulders. I was very glad my horns were restored, because otherwise I had never looked so much like an elf. I was equally proud of both sides of my heritage.

  I walked a long path blanketed with autumn leaves, maidens carrying my train, and Ithrin waited for me at the end. He smiled, his dark eyes warmer than I had ever seen them, and wrapped his hands around mine. We said our solemn vows before the court, and he lifted me off my feet when we kissed. Then it was time to feast and dance the night away.

  Ravok and Kayska danced together most of the night, the old goblin blushing as my godmother teased him. Sabela took off her shoes and showed me a goblin jig. Wrindel, now the most eligible bachelor in the land, had a parade of swooning ladies on his arm, but Ithrin observed that he seemed unusually restrained. “Dare I hope that you've met someone?” he asked.

  “Possibly,” Wrindel said. “But I’ll have to forget about her. It would never work.”

  “Why not?” Ithrin narrowed his eyes.

  “She’s a mermaid,” Wrindel said. “She helped me track down Ellara’s stepmother. A beautiful, clever mermaid…and we have plenty of pools to keep her in. But what do you do with the lower half, then?”