Princess of Midnight: A Retelling of Cinderella (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 6)

by Lucy Tempest

  “You thought I’d let you escape me?” Dolora’s hiss poured into my ear as she twisted my hair in her vicious grip. “But don’t worry—I’ll make sure this never happens again.”

  Mind fogging up with pain, I tried to struggle, to throw off my stepsister, Darla. But her hands pinned mine down, and her knee pressed into my side, making it too hard to breathe.

  “What are you waiting for?” Dolora yelled at her other daughter. “Put it on!”

  I felt Aneira’s shaking hands on my leg, and I started kicking and heaving, trying to squirm away, to ram my knee into her face. Darla only used her own to squash the air out of my chest, shoving her full weight onto my ribs.

  Choking for breath, I strained my neck, trying to shake Dolora’s grip loose, and to see what they were doing, as something hard and cold closed over my right ankle.

  “What is that?” I wheezed. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “You’ll find out.” Darla moved off me, nodding to her mother. “Now!”

  Before I could choke out another question, Dolora smashed my head against the cobblestones and my world went dark.

  Chapter Two

  I stared into the dark, turbid depths beneath me. But instead of the dirty water filling the massive pail, I saw nothing but the cruel irony of my situation.

  It was all I could think of since I’d regained consciousness hours ago. That I’d broken a magical thrall, escaped to another world, survived horrific monsters and cruel fairies—yet it had all been for nothing. I’d only ended up back where I’d started.

  In a kitchen, on my aching knees, at the feet of my slave driver, scrubbing the floor with swelling hands, until my arms felt like they’d fall off.

  “I better be able to see my reflection in that floor by the time you’re done,” Dolora snapped above me.

  It might have been the lingering defiance of my brush with freedom, or the buzzing aches running through my body, but I couldn’t help retorting, “I’m surprised you want to see your reflection with that burn on your face.”

  It was the one thing that made being recaptured by them bearable—seeing her disguise marred with that burn, and knowing it had been Bonnie who’d inflicted it on her.

  With a furious growl, Dolora swung her foot back.

  If I hadn’t been kneeling and bent over for so long, I’d have been able to dodge her kick, or roll with it, as I always did. But stiffened and sluggish as I was, I couldn’t even guard against her foot colliding with my ribs.

  I flopped hard onto the soaked, soapy floor, groaning as a blinding pain bloomed along the left side of my torso.

  She leaned over me, grinding her teeth, half reverting to her true form, the peaches-and-cream complexion of her disguise turning into the horrific slime-green tinge of the monster that she was. “At least I can glamor it away when I need to, but you can’t. Talk to me like that again, and I’ll finish what I started in Aubenaire, and maybe burn off your tongue while I’m at it, too. Understood?”

  The only response I could manage was a wheeze, with a shaking hand pressed to my throbbing side.

  She kicked its protection off my body, and I braced myself, squeezing my eyes shut in anticipation of another kick, and a broken rib this time. Instead, I felt an agonizing pressure being applied to the spot she’d kicked.

  Her foot took on more of her weight as she leaned further, practically spitting through her now elongated, brown-stained teeth. “Did you hear me?”

  Swallowing a whimper, I glared up at her.

  The pain sharpened as she pressed down harder. “I asked you a question.”

  No level of spite could rein back my cry of agony or the tears that escaped my eyes and poured down my face. It hurt. Hurt so terribly, I just wanted it to stop. I had to tell her what she wanted to hear.

  “Yes, I heard you,” I wheezed as I tried to roll away and get her off my injury. She only shoved her foot harder into my ribs. I had to give her the rest, what she’d beaten into me all these years, choked out, “I am terribly sorry for speaking out of turn, Madame—I am honored by your mercy—and eager for the chance to serve you.”

  “And don’t you forget it.” She finally stepped off me, flouncing away, and stomped out of the room.

  With her gone, I wanted to heave and sob as hard and loud as my body demanded. But I couldn’t even do that. Merely expanding my chest as I breathed accentuated the pain in my bruised ribs, forcing me to suppress the need to give in to the urge.

  Maneuvering carefully up to my knees, I slumped as I stifled sobs. My clothes were soaked and tears cascaded down my face, dripping off my chin and onto the cold, stone floor with loud, consistent drips, like a leaking faucet.

  Was this what the Fates had in store for me for the rest of my life? Was I destined to be enslaved by these monsters, and my only way out was death? Would it come when I lost the last sliver of hope I had, and threw myself into a raging fireplace? Or would it be at Dolora’s hand, if she one day overdid her punishment and landed a blow that killed me?

  Before, she’d latched onto any minor irritant as an excuse to punish me, like me sneezing as she spoke, or finding a mounted painting askew. Her punishments ranged from slaps and kicks, to hitting me with whatever she had at hand, bashing my head into the nearest wall, or throwing me to the floor by my hair.

  So far, she’d done all that since recapturing me, bruising me all over, including almost breaking a rib. Knowing her, next time I did something to displease her, she’d aim for the same spot, but with the intention of fracturing it. She’d probably take pleasure in breaking every bone I had, and forcing me to work for her even then.

  Before, she’d been careful about incapacitating me, or leaving marks on me. If she punched me in the face, or left other visible bruises or burns on me, she’d just made sure no one saw me until I’d healed. But such care was no longer required. After all I’d done, from fleeing her, to my friend scarring her, to taunting her about it, she had an actual reason for her anger. I had no doubt she’d escalate her abuse.

  How pathetic was it to wish she would, so I wouldn’t have to wait too long before she delivered that unintended fatal blow?

  But knowing her, she wouldn’t let me escape her that easily, so I couldn’t even hope for that way out.

  I also couldn’t sit there waiting for the smarting to subside. I had to keep scrubbing. Then I had to get off my creaking knees and fix them dinner—a dinner they’d all find no fault with. If I didn’t, she’d be back for another round of abuse, and I’d only be forced to do all my remaining chores with a more severe injury.

  Taking in a deep breath, gritting my teeth against the responding stab of pain, I sank my brush back into the bucket and continued scrubbing the floor, trying to numb my mind to the reality of my ordeal. I let my thoughts sink into the rhythmic motions, focused only on how clear and iridescent the soap bubbles were, and how some missed being popped by the bristles and flew into the air around me.

  They reminded me of my glass slippers, the gift I’d been given after surviving the Equinox Games at the Summer Court. They still lay at the bottom of my bag where Dolora had tossed it in a corner of the kitchen. It had been sheer luck that she hadn’t searched through it.

  If she had, Darla would have certainly confiscated them. As she had everything that I’d ever owned. Since Dolora had married my father after my mother’s death, they’d taken all of her possessions, and mine, and gave me rags to wear and junk to use. Not to mention crumbs to eat.

  The one thing I now owned was the slippers.

  Not that I hoped putting them on would transport me somewhere else with a click of my glass heels, or something. I knew they could do no such thing. They were just pretty, and though they looked sharp and fragile, they were the most comfortable and durable slippers I’d ever worn. That was the extent of their magic.

  When I finally scrubbed away the seemingly years-old layers of grime from the kitchen’s extensive floor, and saw my reflection in the brown marbl
e as ordered, I rose on stiff, shaking legs. My sore eyes turned to the stove.

  I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. I hated heat almost as much as I did my stepfamily. But I had to make them dinner.

  All those years under Dolora’s thrall, I’d been unable to even think of finding out if they had food allergies, or lacing their meals with any of the poisonous mushrooms I’d found while trudging through her constant errands. All I’d been able to do once I surfaced enough from under her spell was to run. Aimlessly, fruitlessly. But now my will was my own again. And if I could find something poisonous in this kitchen, while it wouldn’t kill the Unseelie fairies I now knew them to be, it might incapacitate them long enough for me to …

  To what? Run outside and freeze to death?

  They’d stripped off the warm clothes and sturdy boots the Autumn Court’s royal family had bestowed on me and dressed me in tatters. And though I didn’t know where they brought me after they knocked me out, I could tell from the freezing temperature and the howling wind outside we were still in the Winter Court. Even if I survived the cold, I wouldn’t know where to go. Not without Oscar. Or my friends. The friends I’d never see again.

  Despair settled in my mind and on my shoulders, feeling like a suffocating boulder that would crush me. But I didn’t have the luxury of surrendering to dejection.

  Dragging my bare, swollen feet around the edges of the damp floor, careful not to leave footprints I’d have to scrub again, or to slip and sustain more injuries, I searched the kitchen cupboards. I found a wooden tub, likely meant for washing tablecloths and dishrags, that I could use as a bin for the trash accumulated with food preparation.

  With dull knives that had no handles, it was a struggle to peel the strange fairy produce, bruising my calloused hands. The purple potatoes, bluish onions, and crimson carrots barely resembled their counterparts on earth, their peels thicker and so much tougher. Thankfully, once peeled, the vegetables themselves weren’t as hard as they looked. It took less of a toll on my aching hands to chop them before dumping them into the boiling pot.

  With the steam collecting overhead, it quickly became sweltering. It should have been a relief from the chill of this dank kitchen, but I couldn’t tolerate the heat. It overpowered me, made nausea claw at my throat, and my skin feel like it was shriveling up and choking me, despite the slippery sweat coating it.

  I opened the windows to let in the freezing wind, and lumbered back on stinging feet to stir the pot, angling awkwardly away from the flames.

  As I turned to a slab of ribs, to start slicing and marinating them, all my hairs stood on end. And it wasn’t because the trapped heat had fled out. It was because strange noises were coming in.

  Something was lurking outside. And it was coming closer—and closer.

  I was in no shape to square off with any fairy creature. I’d already taken one beating today. But whether it was after the fresh meat, or the even fresher one—me—I couldn’t let it get either.

  Bating my rattling breath, I carefully lifted the copper frying pan off its hook on the wall, and crept to the side of the window.

  The noises were so close now, clearly made by something bigger than me.

  Faster than I could blink, a massive upper body appeared through the window.

  My belated swing exploded with a scream that reignited the throbbing agony in my side. Not that it was worth it. The creature only caught my wrist and clamped its hand over my mouth.

  “Really, Cinders, trying to get that woman’s attention?”

  The urgent hiss froze me, the words making no sense. But it was the stray locks of auburn hair spilling out of a knit cap, and the sparkling grey eyes, the one thing visible over a dark scarf, that had recognition slamming into my mind, like a cold splash putting out a fire.

  Keenan Fairborn. Bonnie’s cousin. Fairy prince and eldest son of the Queen of Autumn. The pest who’d harassed me all through my time in Faerie. And the person I’d been dying to see.

  “I’m going to let you go now,” he said. “You better not start wailing or I will have to knock you out and carry you out of here.”

  At this point, it would be preferable if he did. I’d give anything to wake up in his family’s red-brick mansion and find Bonnie there, with her prince and their friends human again.

  Relief settled low in my gut, so heavy it almost buckled my legs. I nodded.

  He stepped back from the window, tugged the scarf below his chin to give me a tired grin. “You look terrible.”

  Just because I didn’t need to bludgeon him, didn’t mean I wouldn’t still thwack him with the frying pan.

  I glared at him. “Thanks to you! What took you so long? Or did you think to leave me here until they tortured me first?”

  His smirking lips curled, a hand flying to his heart in offense. “Leave you? It’s you who ran away without a look back! Do you have any idea the trouble I went to looking for you?”

  “Excuse me if it’s hard to tell with that twisted fairy sense of logic and fun of yours. It wouldn’t be the first time you left me to my fate.” We could have all died during the Equinox Games many times over, as he and the other fairies had watched and cheered!

  He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “How many times must I say that what happened in the Equinox Games was out of my control? I was a visiting diplomat, there to take my mother’s place on the judging council—which was offensive enough as it was. I could make no demands of the Summer King, especially when you were all caught trespassing.”

  “You were the one who caught us, who hauled us to the jail cells to begin with!”

  “Did you also miss the part when I said I did so, because if you were caught by someone else, you would have been thrown into the ocean? And I also did it to reunite Bonnie with her unfortunate-looking friends. Then once you all had your romp in the games, I took you home to my parents.”

  “Don’t act like you meant well the whole time! We could have died!”

  “I said I would have intervened if you were in real danger!”

  “We were in mortal danger—so many times!”

  “And you managed to save yourselves each time. I would have jumped in if I thought you couldn’t.”

  I shook my head, still not convinced he would have, or would have been able to. “You just wanted to prank your uncle.”

  He turned his hands up, in a what-can-you-do gesture. “Can you blame me? The man up and left us in the middle of the night, with a runaway princess. Then he shows up almost two decades later with my cousin, who he kept in the dark about everything. Then he doesn’t even recognize me.” He gave me a smug smile. “Of course I had to prank him.”

  Listening to him, one would think he’d filled salt shakers with sugar, not put us through an almost-lethal wringer. “Bonnie almost drowned in that first test, and that knucklehead—”

  “Knuckelavee,” he corrected with a merry snort.

  “—almost took my head off! Then that shape-shifting spirit in the snow—that was sick!”

  I stopped, unable to hold on to my anger. Misery surged back up like bile, burning my insides. That last game, Winter’s contribution to our trials, had been emotionally brutal. Just remembering it turned a skewer of never-subsiding yearning in my heart.

  The spirit in the winter landscape had worn the faces of women we’d lost, just to lure us into embraces that fed on our body heat and energy. And it had shown me my mother. The one person I wanted to see most in the world, who I needed more than anything, whose loss had spelled the dissolution of my contented life.

  Seeing that thing wear her face, just to manipulate me, after suffering years of mind control by my stepmother, had enraged me beyond anything else ever had. The pain had been so horrible, I was the one who had seen through the illusion—and I had stabbed it for its cruel transgression.

  “I didn’t pick the obstacles, and I certainly wouldn’t want you to suffer needlessly,” he said, surprisingly sincere. “I may be devious, but I’m not sadist
ic, Cinders.”

  “My name is Ornella,” I mumbled.

  He huffed with a wave of his hand. “Like that’s any better.”

  I stopped wiping at my tears and frowned. “Meaning?”

  “Pretty sure your name comes from the Campanian word orniello, which means ash tree.”

  That actually seemed likely. During our trip from the Summer Court to the Autumn Court we’d established that my mother, who came from the south of Ericura—the island I’d thought till recently was the whole world before I learned of Faerie and the Folkshore—was of Campanian descent. All the stories she used to tell me seemed to correspond with those Bonnie’s Prince Leander had heard around Campania itself.

  But since I’d never get to hear another of her stories, I could only wonder why she chose that name for me.

  I exhaled. “Even if so, that’s ash tree, not ashtray.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “Ashes, cinders, soot—all the same, and all you’ll be reeking of once again, if you don’t come with me now.”

  Two reindeer appeared over his shoulders. I recognized Oscar at once, my heart kicking in relief. The other one was Keenan’s. At least I wouldn’t need to walk out of here. Wherever here was.

  Keenan offered me his hand, but even with his help, it was so hard to climb over the sill. When I finally managed to, he supported my wobbling body as he boosted me up onto Oscar’s back. I rubbed the magnificent reindeer’s sides, choking up with happiness to see him again.

  Pulling the windows shut, he hopped up on his steed and began leading us away.

  I only looked back once, not to take in my latest prison, but to check that there were no shadows in the window, that there wouldn’t be a chase like the one that had hounded my last escape. Then I faced forward, breathing out a cloud of vapor, and with it my prior hopelessness.

  Our steeds quickly covered a lot of ground. It turned out we’d been on the outskirts of Midnight, and were now winding through its quarters, and back towards the mountains that separated this court from its neighbor. We were going to get out of here and back on the Pumpkin Path, back to the cozy-cum-creepy land of Autumn and everything would be—