Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella

by Megan Morrison

  Jasper caught her.

  The last thing she saw as he bore her away from the blaze was the blur of Serge’s wings as he hurtled past them toward Dash, dodging falling flames.

  HE didn’t dodge them fast enough.

  When his left wing caught fire, he felt it in every part of himself, and he screamed, contorting as he reached out for the kneeling prince and the boy he was clutching.

  The roof crumbled and caved in. Flaming beams tumbled toward the prince. Through blinding pain, Serge seized him by the sleeve and snapped his fingers.

  The last three living creatures on the fifth floor of the Jacquard workshop vanished in a cloud of blue dust.

  HER heart beat like a wheel in a rutted road, jarring her body with every uneven strike. Jasper set her on the cobblestones and extinguished what remained of the fire on her skirt, and then he soared once more into the burning building.

  Above the narrow street, smoke had turned the sky black. Ashes fell like snow upon Ragg Row, where all was chaos. Bodies lying still. Bodies twitching. Bodies alive but burned beyond endurance. Children sobbing in the gutter across the road. Fire bells ringing and sailors from the wharf running, bearing buckets of river water, staring up at the blaze they could not reach.

  “Raglan,” screamed a boy. He knelt by a charred body that lay splayed upon the stones. “Raglan, get up …”

  Ella hobbled to the boy and stooped behind him.

  “It’s dangerous,” she choked, her voice dry and burned. “We have to get out from under the windows. Come with me.”

  “Raglan — Raglan —”

  The boy buried his face in the dead man’s chest and would not be moved.

  HE brought the prince and the child to the street and collapsed on the cobblestones.

  “Your wing,” cried Gossamer, flinging fairy dust at it. The flames sizzled and died, and Serge moaned. “Try to flutter,” she said grimly.

  “It feels — dead —”

  “If you feel it, it’s not dead.”

  Serge fluttered and roared at the pain of it.

  “There are hundreds still trapped,” she said. “The fire’s still burning. Stay right where you are and help put out the blaze while we keep up the rescues.” She raced back into the building.

  Serge closed his fists to replenish his dust, and he summoned a wave of water. He sent it tumbling toward the flames.

  A sailor took the unconscious boy from under Dash’s arm and splashed water on his face. Dash looked wildly around him for the faces he knew. His guards. Nettie. Ella.

  Clutching his dislocated shoulder, he searched the frantic street, calling their names, becoming more desperate as no answer came. At last he tripped over Ella, who knelt at his feet with her arms around a boy he recognized. Singer.

  Ella looked up at Dash, her eyes bleary with exhaustion. “He won’t leave without his brother,” she said.

  Dash knelt to pick up Raglan, but his shoulder flared with pain so acute that he shouted and grabbed it with his other hand. “It’s out of joint,” he managed. “I can’t.”

  A sailor in the street dropped down at once beside him. “Your Royal Highness,” he said. “Could I help?” Dash nodded, expecting the man to pick up the body. Instead, the sailor took Dash’s upper arm in his weather-beaten hands. “I can put this back in,” he said, “but it’ll hurt. Bad. With your permission, sir?”

  “Do it,” said Dash, and he clenched his jaw and threw back his head, hissing as the sailor thrust his shoulder back into its socket with one agonizing shove. The haze of pain dimmed.

  “Thank you,” he said to the sailor. “What’s your name?”

  “Marl, sir.”

  “Marl — would you carry him?”

  Marl picked up Raglan, and Ella helped Singer to his feet. As they limped away together, out of range of the fire, scribes moved in around the group of them, clustering close.

  “Are you in pain, Your Highness?”

  “What did you see inside?”

  “GET BACK!” Dash roared, advancing on them with aggression he had felt for years and never used. The scribes scattered, yelping. “Look around you!” he shouted. “Help these people!”

  The scribes stumbled away.

  IF the fairies hadn’t come, it would have been much worse. That was the only comfort she could give herself. Thanks to the fairies, in half an hour, every living worker had been evacuated from the Jacquard workshop. In an hour, the fire was out. It had destroyed the entire fifth floor and a section of the fourth. Families came running to find their own people. Wail after wail of grief pierced the air. Bodies were lined up like lumber along the street.

  Soon more fairies arrived — many dozens of fairies — who took up the work of recovering bodies and assisting lost children and the wounded. Ella helped them however she could, and so did Nettie, who asked the victims gentle questions as she brought them water and bandages.

  Dash remained across the road on a doorstep, holding Singer in his lap. Singer was motionless, his face buried against Dash’s injured shoulder, and though Dash looked pained, he kept hold of the boy and did not move.

  Ella found Jasper in the crowd and brought him to Singer’s side.

  “Hi, Singer,” said Jasper, crouching down. “Ella told me about you. I’m going to take good care of you and get you something to eat.”

  He led the boy away.

  “You’re burned,” Ella said. Dash’s bare head was livid with a handful of small, bright red scorches. “I’ll get ointment —”

  “I’ll be taken care of,” he said flatly. “Don’t waste the supplies.”

  Ella dropped down upon the step beside him. Together, they stared at the destruction before them. The dead had to be carried away. The orphaned had to be provided for. Workshop repairs would take months, and some who had lived through the fire would starve in a few weeks when they could find no other work.

  “You were heroic,” she said. “Saving that boy upstairs. He was awake when his mum came looking for him — I hope you got to meet her. She wanted to thank you.”

  Dash covered his face and began to cry.

  ALL those people dead. His guards too. Dead. That was his fault — he’d killed them, bringing them here. Lariat Jacquard had killed them. He wept, and Ella hugged him close. Being near her again was such comfort — even here, in all of this. He put his arms around her and hid his face against her neck.

  “It was terrible,” he managed, his teeth chattering though he was not cold. He couldn’t control it. “Even before the fire started. So much worse than I pictured.”

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “But now you know. Now you really know.”

  He nodded and held her tighter.

  When she suddenly pulled away, he looked up, confused, and was shocked by the sight of the king’s carriage. It stopped before them in the street, and Dash was caught wet-faced and unprepared as his father descended.

  King Clement strode to the doorstep and crouched before Dash, his face ashen. “You’re alive,” he said. He seemed not even to notice Ella. “The guards rode back to raise the alarm — they said you were in the fire.”

  “I was,” said Dash, startled by this show of fatherly concern.

  “What in Tyme’s name were you doing there?”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” came a voice that chilled Dash’s blood. “What were you doing there?”

  LARIAT Jacquard’s snarl took her so by surprise that she gasped. Lavaliere stood at her mother’s side, her face bizarrely altered, staring at the wall above Ella’s head. Tears had dried in tracks down her cheeks.

  “Who destroyed my workshop?” Lariat’s voice snapped like a whip. She turned her vicious eyes on Ella, just as men in guards’ uniforms approached — but they weren’t royal. They must have been Lady Jacquard’s own security, and they hauled a struggling Neats between them.

  “Your Majesty,” said one of the guards briskly, bowing. “Your Highness.” He shoved Neats forward toward Lady Jacquard. “We found him
hiding on a cargo boat at the wharf, my lady. Hoping to escape, no doubt.”

  “My lady,” Neats whined. “I told them not to crack those acorns in the workrooms — I confiscated every single one I saw, and I sent the sick ones home when I heard them coughing. I swear on the Shattering, I did everything you asked me.”

  Lady Jacquard’s eyes held their target. “You,” she said to Ella. “What was your role in this?”

  Ella’s chest constricted.

  “That’s only Kit, ma’am,” sniveled Neats. “Just started working for you today.”

  “This girl got a job in my workshop today?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I put her upstairs just an hour before the fire started.”

  “Where upstairs?”

  “On the fifth floor, ma’am.”

  Lady Jacquard’s face lit with triumph. Ella felt the noose slip around her neck.

  “No.” Dash leapt to his feet. “You can’t.”

  “An unbelievable coincidence,” Lariat Jacquard said, feasting on Ella with her awful eyes. She turned to King Clement. “This is Ella Coach. The girl who attacked Lavaliere at Coterie. I want her arrested for sabotage. And murder.”

  The king motioned for his guards.

  “Get back.” Dash pulled Ella to her feet beside him and put his arm tight around her. “Don’t touch her.”

  His father waved his guards forward. Spaulder reached for Ella’s arms, but Dash stepped between them.

  “I’ll fight you,” he said recklessly. “I swear.”

  A few of King Clement’s guards forcibly restrained him. The others tied Ella’s hands and marched her away, while behind them, Dash thrashed and swore and shouted for the fairies. Ella heard him calling Jasper’s name, and Serge’s.

  “How dare you?” cried a familiar female voice.

  Sharlyn stepped in front of Ella, stopping the guards’ march. Ella sagged with relief.

  “Where are you taking my stepdaughter?” Sharlyn demanded, her voice hard. “And why? There are laws, aren’t there? Who ordered this arrest?”

  “His Majesty the King,” barked Spaulder. “Stand back.”

  Sharlyn took Ella by the shoulders. “Say nothing,” she said. “Not one word. Not one. Do you understand me?”

  Serge was with them in a flash, grimacing in pain. Half of one of his wings was charred coal black and ragged around the edges; ashes molted from it when it moved. “Ella,” he panted. “It will be all right. I’ll do everything in my power. I’ll speak to your stepmother — we’ll organize your defense. There are witnesses who know you didn’t start it —”

  “Clear the way!” The guards wrested Ella out of Sharlyn’s grip and marched her onward.

  They reached the barred door of a military detention carriage, where the guard on her left stopped short with a soft cry of surprise. “Look,” he said. “Is that really …”

  Spaulder turned back, and his heavy chin dropped.

  “Skies,” he said, his voice almost reverent. “It is. It’s Queen Maud.”

  HIS heart leapt. His mother was here.

  She wore the same servant’s uniform that she had departed in, but at her arrival, the chaos of Ragg Row fell still. She ran from her carriage to her son and took his face in her hands, while the world around them watched her, riveted.

  “Let him go,” she said.

  The guards obeyed her, and Dash stumbled free of their grip.

  His mother searched his face with eyes that were swollen from crying, and then she gathered him to her and rocked him. He slumped. From the safety of her arms, he saw his father’s awestruck face.

  “Maud,” said the king in wonderment. “You read my letter?”

  She let go of Dash and turned on her husband. “Don’t think for one second that I traveled here because of it,” she said. “I came because I saw, in the Criers, that without my knowledge or consent, my only child, who is not of age, is betrothed.” She looked at Lady Jacquard as if she were a roach she had found on her pillow. “I arrived at the palace to be told that his life was in danger. Now I find guards assaulting him in the street when someone should be tending to him? Look at him, Clement. He’s burned. Explain yourself.”

  The street was silent. The only thing moving was Nettie’s pen.

  “Take your daughter home, Lady Jacquard,” said Queen Maud when the king said nothing. “I will take my son.” She turned her back on Lariat. Dash had never loved his mother so much.

  “Your Majesties,” came a desperate voice from beside them. It was a thin man in fine clothes that sat awkwardly on him. Dash recognized the man — he’d met him at the ball.

  “This is Ella’s father,” he told his mother. “Father arrested her, but she’s innocent. He has to let her go.”

  Ella’s father looked at him with grateful surprise and a measure of alarm.

  His mother looked at him with curiosity. “Ella who?”

  THE guards loaded her into a detention carriage that smelled of vinegar, and they untied her hands before slamming the barred door shut and locking it. The wheels began to turn. They were really taking her to prison.

  Dash broke from his parents and bolted toward her. “Stop!” he cried, but the carriage did not stop. He leapt onto the back lip of the carriage, which was barely wide enough for the toes of his shoes to find a perch. He grabbed hold of the bars — then groaned and let go with one hand. “There’ll be a hearing,” he panted through the window. “I can’t make him listen — I’ll come to see you —”

  She grabbed his hand. The carriage thumped down hard into a ditch in the street. Dash lost his grip and stumbled back onto the cobblestones, and the carriage turned a corner, cutting him off from her view.

  Ella sank to the floor and curled up on her side, too frightened and exhausted to pretend more strength than she had. She shut her eyes. The moment she did, harrowing images jumped into her mind, and she cringed against the horrors she could not unsee. Her eyes opened again, staring through the bars of her small jail, as the carriage rattled toward the prison that awaited her beneath the halls of the Essential Assembly.

  DUSK fell, and still they had not carried every body from the stairwell.

  One hundred and seventy-one. That was the death toll. Some had burned, others had suffocated in the smoke. Several had been trampled underfoot. Many had jumped to their deaths. The rest had died in the collapse of the stairs.

  Serge had never done work so terrible as moving the bodies. He had been too young to fight against the Pink Empire, but this, he felt certain, was as grisly a scene as any from the war. As he worked, he grew accustomed to the pain that shot through him every time he moved his wing. It was small penance.

  He looked down at the body of the girl he had just carried from the stairwell. She was Ella’s age, and he recognized her face. She had been one of Lavaliere’s personal maids, but she must have lost her position and ended here. If only he had been paying attention, he could have helped her. Saved her.

  “Meet me in my carriage,” said a cold voice behind him. “Now. I’m owed an explanation.”

  Serge laid the dead young woman in the street, beside the others. He straightened her apron and brushed back her hair.

  “I’m busy,” he said.

  Lariat Jacquard gave a laugh that would have frightened him a week ago. “How long have you been undermining me?” she asked very quietly. “How long have you been serving Ella Coach?”

  So she had seen them together. She’d seen him fly to Ella’s side. She wanted dirt on Ella now. He didn’t have to be Jasper to know that.

  He went back into the workshop without giving Lariat any answer. When she left, he did not know.

  Several minutes later, Jasper joined him on the street. “She’s going to hurt you,” he said.

  “Who, Lariat?” Serge shook his head. “She’ll certainly try, but she hardly matters now.”

  Jasper pursed his lips. “I’m going to take a short trip,” he said after a moment. “I’ll be back in time for Ella’s
hearing.”

  “Why? Where are you —”

  “Just trust me?”

  Serge nodded, and Jasper lifted off. The dark sky absorbed him.

  THE fire at Jacquard was news before the Town Criers even reported it. It spread rapidly outside of Quintessential and traveled up and down the coast of the Blue Kingdom, then beyond its borders.

  Dash would answer no one’s questions but his mother’s. To her, in private, he opened up his heart. He told her of Ella and the ball, of their school project, of their feelings for each other. He told her of the terrible betrothal, and the workshop, and the fire.

  His mother listened well into the evening, attentive to every word. When he was finished, she took up the sapphire ring that Ella had returned, and she gazed at it.

  “How funny that it should be the same girl,” she murmured. “And that her godfather should be Serge.” She looked up at Dash. “You’ve known her a very short time, Dash, and the accusations against her are serious. Don’t involve yourself unless —”

  “She’s innocent,” he said. “And I —” He looked away from his mother’s watchful face. “I need to visit the prison. If you ask Father to let me, he will.”

  “I’ll speak with him.”

  But even when Queen Maud requested it, King Clement refused to allow Dash access to Ella. Furious, Dash shut himself up in his room.

  He was surprised in the middle of the night by Serge, who entered his chamber invisible in search of certain evidence. Dash was still in possession of most of the Garment Guild records, and the fairy rifled through the crates until he found whatever it was that he needed. He also promised that, when Ella’s trial came, he would be there to interfere if it was necessary.