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

by Lucy Tempest

  Swift as lightning, Dolora smacked her daughter upside the head, then gripped a handful of her hair.

  “Ow!” Aneira squealed. “What did I do?”

  “Opened your big mouth, which has gotten us in trouble enough times in the past.” Dolora twisted Aneira’s hair in her grip viciously, disregarding her sniveling as she hissed, “But even if I can bewitch him, they’re asking for maidens—which means the task falls to you two to win the king for us.”

  Darla gasped, delighted, holding the letter to her heart. “You think we can?”

  “‘Can’ isn’t an option this time,” Dolora growled at her. “It’s a ‘must.’ One of you better ensnare the king, and the other one will not secure anything less than a duke.” She then turned her glower at the daughter squirming in her grip. “And you—if you don’t watch your mouth among these people, I will rip your tongue out of your head. Am I clear?”

  Aneira nodded, sniffling.

  Dolora released her with a shove, throwing her own hair off the scarred side of her face. “This is our last chance to be set for life, and to be forever out of reach of the hands of the law.”

  “Wouldn’t marrying a royal and being in the public eye just expose us more?” Aneira asked, before leaping away out of the reach of their hands, in case either decided to physically express their displeasure at her question.

  “No, for then we’ll have royal immunity from retribution for any previous crimes.” Dolora shot me a withering glare before turning eyes brimming with calculating cruelty and excitement to her daughters. “The ball is tomorrow night, so we better find you something that will dazzle all attendees and ensure you a dance with all the right people. Get dressed and get your glamor in order. We’re heading to the shops immediately.”

  I had to go with them to that ball. I needed to speak with that king!

  But there was no way asking outright would work. I had to maneuver myself into accompanying them.

  I waited until they were ready to leave before approaching Dolora, injecting my voice with hope as I asked, “You’re leaving me here, right?”

  That got the desired effect as Dolora rounded on me with a vicious gleam in her eyes. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? So you’d just go to sleep like the slothful slob that you are. I should take you with us. Nothing better than waiting on our every demand all through that ball to remedy your obnoxious laziness and attitude.”

  Dolora shoved me out the door ahead of her, and I was greeted by the freezing air and the open road. For moments, the urge to sprint and disappear among the snow-caked pine trees that marked the end of the settlement almost overwhelmed me. My ankle warmed just at the thought.

  But though I knew I couldn’t run, I’d at least started manipulating my way into being taken along to the ball. If she was considering it, this meant the anklet wouldn’t act up with them in the vicinity. Which would give me the chance to seek out the Winter King without risking losing my foot.

  Only when those two parts of my impromptu plan were accomplished could I work on a final escape.

  Chapter Five

  Despite feeling as stiff as a wooden chair, and having my joints creak like waterlogged floorboards, the trip into Midnight in the rickety carriage was actually pleasant.

  Dolora had opted for the cheapest ride, saving her money for the one that would take us to the ball. It made the smooth, paved streets that led out of the housing area feel teeth-rattlingly bumpy. But delving deeper into the most luxurious shopping district I’d ever seen took my mind off any aches or discomfort.

  I watched the shops flying by, alternating between single-level blocks of silver stone, or multi-level rectangular buildings of iridescent rock, with their sloping, ornately-rimmed roofs looking like baked goods, liberally covered in icing sugar.

  The best part of the trip was that they forgot about me for most of it, plotting amongst themselves. They made plans within plans of what they would do at the ball, how they’d get the king’s attention, win over his inner circle, and charm other nobles in case he chose some other highborn lady or princess.

  That was when I remembered that Keenan’s sister was here as a diplomat from the Autumn Court, and lived at the king’s court. If I remembered correctly, she was married to a high-ranking Winter nobleman. If I managed to get to that glassy castle on top of the mountain, that was something I might be able to use in my favor!

  I was so excited about the new possibility I didn’t even mind when Dolora shoved me back viciously, ordering me to remain at the door when we entered the most expensive-looking dress shop. Actually, from my position, I had a better view of the stunning interior.

  The shop was expansive and circular, with curtained dressing rooms and life-like mannequins posing all around, wearing the most sumptuous selection of gowns I never imagined could even be made. One appeared to be welded from thin sheets of silver, another covered in small black and blue pearls, and another made of delicate, interlocking icy-blue strands overlaid with faceted crystals in the webbing gaps.

  “Ice-spider silk,” the seamstress, a Ludmila of—something, introduced that last gown to my stepfamily with a flourish, as if she was announcing royalty. “With blue diamonds—our finest piece.”

  “I want it!” Darla demanded.

  “No,” Dolora snapped. “We need you to stand out, and most Winter folks will be wearing similar colors. Don’t you have anything more eye-catching? Yellow? Pink?”

  Ludmila, a willowy, icy-blonde, with upturned blue-grey eyes and a sharp, pointed chin, merely gave the three of them a once-over. “We do, but that might be beyond your means.”

  Dolora encroached on her avidly. “How much could it cost? A childhood memory? A secret? A lock of hair?”

  “All your hair combined wouldn’t cover a rental fee. But your ability to cast that powerful glamor you’re wearing would certainly pay for it.” She leaned in closer to Dolora, inspecting her now perfect-again face. The face I’d always thought she’d seduced my father with, just with the Seelie additions of pointed ears and ethereal cast. “This is one you’ve been clearly wearing a long time. How have you maintained it this long without your magic burning out? If it’s a talisman, I would take that.”

  All three of them froze up, but only Aneira gave me a worried glance.

  “There’s no talisman,” Dolora finally answered tersely. “We siphon the ability from an inexhaustible source.”

  Could…could she mean—me?

  Keenan had said that it didn’t make sense for a trafficker to hold onto a human, especially one as difficult as me. Was I said “inexhaustible source”? I wasn’t only their slave, but their—fuel? Their food? Were they somehow siphoning my life force to maintain their glamors? Had they been doing it all along?

  That suspicion was strengthened when the seamstress tilted her head towards me, intrigued. “Is that what I think it is?”

  As she spun to face me, I noticed that this was the first time I had ever seen my stepmother appear alarmed. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” Ludmila ignored her as she strode over to me, making me flinch as she gripped my chin and turned my face side to side, examining me as if I were one of her gowns, watching me as if she could see something fascinating.

  She traded examining my face for my hands, and her brows rose when she saw their state. Rough, calloused, one palm with a thick burn-scar from the second time I had attempted to run away.

  Bewitched again easily once caught, my punishment had been to cook and serve dinner with no oven mitts or towels. Scalded by the hot clay pot I had to carry bare-handed, I’d dropped it, and the punishment had been escalated. Dolora had dragged me to the grill and stuck my hand in a bed of red-hot coals.

  Just the memory of the severe sensations and the smell of my burning flesh, even remembered through the cloak of muddled awareness, made me feel sick enough to sway.

  Ludmila finally nodded, as if coming to a decision. “I’ll take her, in exchange for three of my rarest designs.
I could use another pair of hands around here. It’s been hard to find help since people started to leave the Winter Court.”

  “No!” Dolora shouted, sounding nervous of all things. “Pick something else.”

  “You pick something else—something you can afford.” Ludmila shrugged, sizing me up again. “Where did you find this one anyway?”

  “The edge of the Folkshore.” Dolora looked ready to rip the fairy woman off me.

  Ludmila frowned. “Which edge? The one across from the Spring Court?”

  “Summer.”

  “That’s strange. What’s one of these doing so far away from the rest of the d—”

  “Look…” Dolora cut her off, her face shining with a fine layer of moisture. She was actually sweating! “…whatever you want, you can have it. Just not her, not this week.”

  Never had I seen her this distraught, not when society women scrutinized her origins, not when my father questioned her spending habits, nor even when Mr. Fairborn came to my rescue and attacked her with an iron poker.

  It had to be because I was essential to the enchantment they cast to pass themselves off as human, and now as Seelie fey. Without me, they couldn’t stay among humans, and they couldn’t go to the fairy ball. This had to be why they couldn’t let me escape. Why they’d left behind the life she’d worked hard to gain off my father, back on Ericura.

  But if “one of these” as Ludmila had said, no doubt meaning any human, could have worked, why insist on me, as Keenan had said?

  Could there be something about me that was specifically valuable? What could that be?

  “What’s the difference, tonight from next week?” Ludmila prodded.

  “I don’t have time to capture another one to replace her,” she said urgently through gritted teeth. But I knew her well enough to know she was lying. “If you give us the dresses, we’ll deliver her to you after the king chooses his bride.”

  The sweltering, sickening feeling intensified, the nausea at odds with my shriveled, empty stomach. Although being bartered would guarantee my separation from them, it wasn’t a pleasant alternative. It just hammered another nail into my coffin, solidifying my existence as an object, something to be sold and bought and used—and discarded when it was used up.

  I bet Dolora thought she owned me, and considered the Fairborns taking me to Faerie “stealing.”

  Ludmila hummed thoughtfully. “I’ll need a downpayment first.”

  She took out a pair of cloth scissors from her apron. I wanted to jump back but Dolora gripped my shoulder, steadying me as the seamstress quickly snipped off my ponytail.

  One minute the familiar weight of my hair was there, and the next it was gone.

  Tears filled my eyes as I reached to feel the back of my head, and I couldn’t hold back the sobs that accompanied their slide down my aching face. Most of my hair was gone, leaving nothing but a scatter of irregular locks, the longest brushing my jaw.

  I didn’t know why it hit me this hard. This wasn’t the worst thing they’d done to me, not even close. But while before it was intangible things like my will, my awareness, my freedom, and possibly my life energy that they stole, now the theft had a weight, was palpable. An actual part of my body was in another cruel fairy’s uncaring hands.

  Another part of me, insignificant, unless it served their self-serving whims.

  The only thought that pathetically calmed my outburst was that with my hair now this short, it would make it hard for them to grab me by it, and if they did, it wouldn’t hurt as much.

  “Now I have a part of her, I can always track her,” Ludmila said. “So if you don’t bring her to me the morning after the ball ends, I will come collect her myself—and you won’t like the late penalty.”

  Though she looked like she’d rather rip the woman’s head off, Dolora agreed and hustled her daughters to pick the most eye-catching gowns in the shop.

  When they were out of earshot, I whispered to Ludmila, “Is my hair—and well, all of me, paid for now, or can we buy another dress?”

  She blinked at me. “Why would you need one?”

  “The invitation said all unmarried young women,” I said as I wiped away my tears. “It didn’t specify fairy creatures.”

  That made her give me the same bewildered look as the messenger, like what I said made no sense.

  Then, her expression changed into one of pity. “I suppose I can lend you one worth your hair, and future services.” She beckoned me towards the one made of spider-silk and icy diamonds. “Come. I might as well start teaching you about the different materials.”

  As I followed her, I held back the tears over my lost hair and future.

  I had to hold everything off, put up with anything. Only holding on to my last sliver of hope, of making it to that castle and finding the Winter King again mattered.

  Chapter Six

  After a few more stops to buy or barter for accessories, leaving me standing by coat racks or outside, shivering in my flimsy rags and going numb with cold, we headed back to the house. Dolora had chosen it on the edge of Midnight, before the forest reclaimed the land.

  The congested traffic seemed to be mainly fairies returning from similar trips, with girls excited about the historic opportunity of becoming queen of their court. From the back window where I was buried among the shopping bags, I heard pedestrians or passengers of other carriages discussing the ball and the assassination attempt I’d foiled, and complaining about the escalating cold. From a distance and in the dimness of the main road, with their pointed ears hidden beneath thick fur hats or caps, I could have mistaken most of them for human families. That only had my resentment towards them all taking on a sadder tinge.

  Before my mother’s death, I couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been miserable or ill. She’d tried for years to expand our family, to give my father more children, or even one more child, a son. Every failure had wrecked her body further and burned holes into her soul.

  Only ever having miscarriages before and after me, she’d frequently told me that I was her miracle, that when she’d been close to giving up on being a mother—on life itself—I had come into her life.

  But I was clearly not enough. Because what ripped her from me were the complications from her final attempt to have another child.

  I wasn’t enough for my father, either. I couldn’t tell which had upset him the most at my mother’s death—her loss, the loss of his longed-for son who’d been stillborn, or that I was all he had left.

  All I was certain of was that he’d been at a loss about what to do with me. He wouldn’t consider my plea to accompany him on his trips, or my insistence that I could mind myself in his constant absences. Without my mother around, I felt I’d only become a burden to him, a source of constant worry. I always believed it was a major reason why he’d rushed to marry again, thinking he would transfer my responsibility to a new wife.

  My mother’s family had been even worse. They lived in the south of the island, where she came from. When they’d showed up for her funeral, I’d prayed they would take me with them. It would have been so easy for any of them to raise me among their children, to give me a family. But none of them had even offered.

  And why should they? If I hadn’t been of much use to my own parents, what use could I be to any of them? I’d long learned that any action taken regarding me was always about what anyone could get from me.

  Bonnie had claimed that rescuing me had been for a selfless reason, but a better explanation was that she’d just wanted a companion, a temporary replacement until she found Adelaide, the friend she wanted to rescue out of love. Keenan had said that he’d come after me only because he’d promised his cousin, not because he’d worried about me. This seamstress had loaned me a dress so I wouldn’t just be owned by her, but be indebted to her. And now I knew Dolora and her daughters had always been using me as some kind of energy source.

  I should be used to being exploited by now.

  Once back insid
e the house, I shook off my dark thoughts. I rushed to stow away the borrowed gown I’d hidden at the bottom of the bag that held Aneira’s pink dress. After I made sure Dolora would take me with them, I’d let them see it only at the last moment before we left for the ball. It would be too late then for either girl to demand I swap with her. They’d have to stick with their mother’s garish choices.

  Speaking of Dolora, she strangely only gave me a few minor demands, seemingly still tense from her haggling with Ludmila.

  Close to collapsing, I was now delivering her last request of the day quietly, avoiding her eyes, just in case she could see the scheming spark in them.

  Sitting up in her spacious, silk-spread bed, she was examining her scar in a handheld mirror. It made me worry that anger over it would make her hit me again, or at least, like Darla, smack the tray out of my hands.

  Instead, she set the mirror down and took the teacup and saucer. I stood there, waiting to be dismissed as she blew the fumes gently, before taking the slowest sip.

  I was about to risk asking if she’d let me go already when she turned her yellowing eyes on me. “Just so you know, I have no intention of handing you over to that dressmaker.”

  If so, I hoped that when that woman came to collect me, her aforementioned penalty would turn into an arrest. An execution would be preferable.

  “Anything else, Madame?” I murmured, bowing my head.

  She shooed me with limp fingers. “No. Be up early. The girls are to spend the whole day preparing for the ball.”

  This was my chance to push her towards my objective again. “You won’t really take me with you, will you? Your glamor doesn’t sputter, or whatever it does, if I’m too far away, does it? If not, can I please take the night off?”

  I knew from experience that they didn’t need to have me close by all the time for the glamor to work. As long as they had daily exposure to me, it seemed to go on uninterrupted.

  But I hoped I’d planted the seed of worry in her mind, that she couldn’t risk it “sputtering” during those nights of all nights, and it would make her take me along.