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

by Lucy Tempest

  “Stop.”

  She goggled at me. “That’s what I almost told you earlier, that you’re a—”

  “I said stop!” A movement behind her drew my gaze, and I found Keenan grinning as he quietly shut the closet. “Do you think this is funny?”

  Thinking I was addressing her, Aneira waved her hands in denial. “I’m serious!”

  “I’m sure you are.” I downed the rest of my drink, now lukewarm, and slumped back in my chair.

  No wonder Keenan seemed amused. This had to be some sick joke. Since she was too weak to be physical like the other two, she was jerking me around mentally and emotionally.

  But she did seem to believe I wasn’t human, just a thing they used to their advantage.

  Suddenly, everything she’d said brought to my mind the times when my mother had sat below her favorite tree on the manor grounds, reading in the shade of its leaves, and telling me stories of her people in the South of Ericura. Ones that I now knew to be nearly identical to those in far-off lands of the Folkshore, what Bonnie and her cursed prince had called Campania and Orestia.

  One of those stories had made me scared half to death of Clancy, Bonnie’s friend who’d been cursed into a goat-like monster. Mum had said satyrs chased and violated young women and nymphs—fairy-like women who could turn into clouds, rocks, bushes, and trees.

  Aneira’s words now reminded me that my mother had said that the tree nymphs were the most common victims of a satyr’s unwanted attention. The only way to escape their pursuer was to turn into large trees, hard, unyielding, and firmly rooted to one spot, refusing to run anymore.

  Now, everything she’d told me, and what Aneira just said, weaved in with everything that had happened to me ever since she died. The result made some sort of macabre sense.

  My mother’s continued efforts to give my father more children had ultimately killed her. If it had been to get him a male heir, they shouldn’t have worried that much about leaving his inheritance to me. They could have just married me to an apprentice, and my father’s fortune would have eventually gone to his grandchildren.

  Unless he knew I wasn’t his.

  That would also explain why he didn’t care about me, not like Bonnie’s father cared about her. He could have just tolerated my presence while my mother was alive, but when she was gone, he didn’t know what to do with me. He married another woman to take care of me, and ended up leaving me for that beast to suck the life out of me.

  And since Dolora didn’t want other humans, and now I knew magic and fairy creatures really existed, Aneira’s words about me didn’t seem all that impossible.

  “How did she know?” I finally croaked.

  Aneira watched me, pupils dilated with worry.

  “Your mother, how did she know about me? That I’d be this rare thing you’d need to use for glamor fuel? Did she just happen to find me by accident while she was looking for some rich human to leech off?”

  Her shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t know, she just knew.”

  I got up, the urge to puke out my drink rising.

  “Ornella?”

  I shook my head, eyes too warm, bile sloshing up my throat. “Don’t call me that.”

  Aneira made a strangled noise of distress, before she rose and made a quiet exit.

  After the kitchen door closed, I stared at it, until I almost jumped out of my numb skin at a hand on my shoulder. Keenan.

  I poked him in the chest. “You knew about me all along, didn’t you?”

  He turned his hands up with a shrug. “That you were some sort of fairy creature? Yes. I just couldn’t tell what.”

  “How? I have to be human—I look just like my mother, I …”

  My words choked off as I checked the one mirror in the kitchen, right behind his head, its edges covered in rotting spots. My skin had regained its green tint, so had my eyes.

  “Shape-shifting magic,” he said nonchalantly. “I suspect that any resemblance you had to the woman who raised you was probably some unconscious mimicry.”

  “Y-you’re saying she’s not even my mother?” The worst I’d thought was that I was hers, from some other creature. He shook his head and all my breath left me in a distressed cough. “H-how could you tell?”

  He tapped his nose. “You don’t smell human at all, so you can’t be half human like Bonnie. When I noticed that your stepmother was a troll, and that she’s some runaway trafficker, I thought you were a changeling she held on to. But now I don’t think so. I think you’re a dryad, and those are the hardest to catch, and they wouldn’t willingly give up their saplings.”

  Dryads. Saplings. Creatures like trees. These did exist here.

  Where they capable of renewal like regular trees? Where they used by others for their flowers and fruit—and wood?

  That had to be why she always threatened to burn me. And why I hated heat and fire so much.

  “Then how did I end up with m-my mother? Why did she name me Ornella?”

  “My guess? She found you, thought you were a godsend, and kept you, probably named you after the tree she found you by—your real mother.”

  I was really going to be sick right now.

  “Hey, why are you crying?”

  I punched him in the arm weakly, soundless sobs wracking my body as my burning eyes flooded with tears.

  My mother had always called me her miracle, but I now remembered she’d once said finding me had been the one thing that had made her hold on to life. I thought she’d meant finding out she was pregnant and past the point of miscarrying. But it seemed she’d meant it literally. Seemed I wasn’t a miracle pregnancy.

  I was a foundling.

  She’d probably wandered into the Hornswoods one day, hoping the fairies that lurked in Man’s Reach, the border between our land and theirs, would snatch her, and found me instead.

  Whatever happened before then, or how Dolora found me after she died, was anyone’s guess.

  Etheline would know. She seemed to know everything. She probably knew about me, and that was why she’d glamored me into a melia. She’d said it was fitting. She must have been having a private joke at my expense. But I doubted she’d tell me if I asked her. She divulged nothing until it could benefit her.

  Keenan was no different.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t bear having him around. “Aren’t you going to leave?”

  “I was thinking I could stay here until tomorrow night,” he grinned, totally oblivious of my upheaval. “We could sneak out earlier so we’d have more time to scope out suspects, and not make another disastrous departure …” I pounded weakly on his arm and he only chuckled. “At least you seem better.”

  “I’m not.” I sniffed, wiping my face on my sleeve. “I want to jump into the fireplace.”

  “The phrase is ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, not ‘out of the icy water and onto the firewood’—stop hitting me, you’ll give me splinters!”

  I assailed him again, almost falling down instead. “I hate you so much.”

  He caught my wrists, steadying me. “But really, if you wanted to jump into a fiery pit, you should have just let the Horned God drag you to the underworld …” I shot him a death-glare. “… and I’ll shut up now.”

  “A miraculous achievement, I’m sure.” I sat back down, downed the remainder of his drink, which had no warmth left, and kept sneaking glances at myself in the mirror.

  As I ran my hands through my short hair to check my ear, I asked, “What was the common thing everyone reported when you interrogated them?”

  “Hmm? Oh, that.” He made a dismissive expression. “It was nothing of any use. They all said they felt like they were being watched. Of course they were being watched. People go to these events to watch each other like a child watches glass butterflies.”

  Glass butterflies, one of the few pretty features of Faerie I had yet to encounter.

  Was it possible I’d someday accept I was native to this environment? Even if any of the things Anei
ra and Keenan said about me was true, I doubted I could.

  After there was nothing else to say, Keenan and I snuck out of the kitchen.

  He disappeared to a room somewhere, determined to stay in case I developed life-threatening hay fever, or whatever plant-related illness he could sling my way. I returned to the servant’s quarters, ankle feeling burnt, body and mind totally worn out, and hit the bed like a log.

  Even that expression had now been forever spoiled.

  I was sinking into troubled sleep when I sensed something that felt like sickening, phantom fingers slithering down my back.

  Rolling over in my patch of moonlight, my every hair standing on end, I braced myself for confronting that presence, anything from redcaps to knuckelavees.

  I found nothing but a mounted mirror, tilted downwards in my direction.

  Inside it, as though peering through a window pane, was a shadowy figure with eyes that burned as if with blue-hot flames.

  In the instant it took me to sit up and gasp, the eyes were gone and I found myself looking at my reflection within in a circle of cold, condensing vapor.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I couldn’t remember when I’d ever looked at myself in the mirror for longer than seconds.

  When I hadn’t been totally under Dolora’s spell, with any sense of self suppressed, I’d hated the sight of my miserable condition and pathetic visage.

  Now I couldn’t stop looking at my reflection. That of the supposed imposter who’d been unconsciously masquerading as a human. A sapling nymph found by a woman desperate for children, then happened upon by a monster and used to fuel her own disguise.

  But I had yet to have proof of Aneira’s or Keenan’s allegations.

  Even the greenish tinge of my skin and eyes was gone, and I looked exactly as I always had. Everything they’d said could be some game they were playing, each for their own purpose. They were a troll and a fairy, after all. I wouldn’t put any form of manipulation past them.

  But what took the top spot in dubiousness wasn’t my status as a sentient tree, or my brush with Death Himself, but that I’d caught something watching me in a mirror yesterday. That was the problem with being in a magical place. I could no longer credit the evidence of my own eyes. It was nearly impossible to tell what was real and what was a deception or an illusion. Or a gag.

  Out of morbid fascination, I kept waiting for the presence to pop up again. I’d tried every mirror in the house to no avail, and now stood before the biggest one that hung over the table by the main door. Neither Dolora nor Darla had commented on the immaculate state of the entrance. I was certain they would have if they could tell whether I cleaned something by hand or not. They clearly couldn’t.

  “What’s taking you so long?” came Darla’s whiny bellow from upstairs.

  Turning away from the mirror blandly reflecting my own swollen reflection with a huff of frustration, I picked up the tea tray and headed up to her room.

  So far, this day had gone without incident, primarily because Dolora was preoccupied with planning to win some nobleman’s attention. Aneira had avoided speaking to me, had barely come out of her room today. If she had half a brain, she’d climb out of her window on a rope of bed sheets and run to find that minister she liked, foiling whatever plan her mother had for her tonight.

  Burning eyes cast downward, runny nose threatening to drip into the teacup, I held out Darla’s afternoon tea and the accompanying biscuits Keenan had procured.

  Darla snatched her things off the tray, grumbling, “…ugly elm with those crystal shoes!”

  My heart leaped into my throat, thinking she’d recognized me last night, but she seemed to be only ranting. She hustled back into her room and slammed the door in my face.

  Gulping down my fright, I went on to Aneira’s room and knocked. Just as she cracked open the door, a loud shriek made me almost drop my tray.

  Darla burst out of her room so fast she almost sailed over the railing, hand clamped over her mouth and nose. “What is that smell?”

  That was when the stench hit my half-clogged nose.

  I coughed, trying to cover my nose with my shoulder while my shaking hands rattled the remaining teacups and saucers.

  Dolora snatched open her door, was about to yell when a dog-sized black rodent with a white stripe down its back and tail scurried out Darla’s room and headed straight for Dolora’s.

  Dolora leaped to the side, barely dodging it with a howl. “Skunk!”

  Aneira and Darla slammed past me, almost knocking me down the stairs in their frantic need to reach the bottom floor. Their squeals of disgust had me wheezing, not from the gag-inducing scent but suppressed laughter.

  The fun at their expense didn’t last.

  Dolora grabbed me by the hair, biting out furiously, “How did that get in her room?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t even know what a skunk is!”

  She seemed convinced, but still swung me towards her room with a fed-up growl. “Get it out of here! It’s not enough that last night was ruined, but tonight would be as well. I could make you wash our dresses until they fall apart and that vermin’s smell still wouldn’t come off!”

  I came to a stumbling halt inside her room, the cups on my tray sloshing out half their contents. The skunk had stunk up the room, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. But I could hear a fading trail of laughter from the half-open window.

  So, this was what Keenan had been up to. This must be his idea of a lesser prank than the scorpions one.

  As Dolora’s voice echoed up while she headed to the kitchen, lamenting their ruined belongings, I heard Darla whining, “Now what?”

  “We get new things!” Aneira suggested excitedly.

  I heard a smack, gentler than what Dolora usually delivered, followed by Darla growling, “We have nothing else to trade for anything more, you idiot!”

  “You come up with a solution then, since you’re so smart!” Aneira fired back.

  “Since you’re so stupid and useless, we can sell you to the seamstress for a dress made of butterflies, or anything to keep that hideous nymph away from the king tonight.”

  “Have you thought that maybe no amount of pretty things will make you worth being around for too long?”

  I crept to the edge of the stairs and watched their spat in the entrance.

  “What did you just say?” Darla yelled, her threatening tone making me shudder.

  “You heard me,” Aneira said defiantly, chin lifted. “I had men talking to me last night, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, you had the rabble spinning around you like flies flock to trash,” Darla sneered. “If you want that so bad, then by all means, go back up and don your stinky dress. Attract yourself an ogre and go live in his swamp.”

  “Maybe I will! It beats living with you as the uppity, unwanted spinster!”

  That was new. She’d never had the nerve to put Darla in her place.

  Was she really planning on running off, after all? She must know she wouldn’t get away with this, otherwise.

  But—if she left, I’d have nothing to take her mother’s and sister’s attention off me.

  We needed to find who was after Yulian fast! I had to be free of them before that happened, free to—to …

  To do what? Follow Keenan back to his mother’s manor and be an eternal guest, forever feeling like I’m intruding and waiting for Bonnie to remember me and return? Or worse, if what he’d said about me was true, go into the forest, stick my feet in the soil and turn into a literal “orniello” tree?

  “Girls. Enough.” Dolora came back, pushing them apart, oddly calm all of a sudden. “I’ll figure something out, I always do. As for these royal men, the new plan is to not just get their attention, but as Aneira said, maintain it. The only way for you two to do that is by eliminating the competition.”

  “How will we do that?” Aneira asked.

  “I’ll figure something out when the time comes. But now we need to go and find something t
o trade fast.”

  One by one, they took their coats and hats off the rack and just like that, they were out of the house earlier than I had hoped.

  I didn’t know whether I wanted to strangle Keenan or hug him, because that skunk prank could have gone horribly wrong for me.

  Certain they weren’t about to barge back in and shatter a few things to keep me busy, I returned to the kitchen and checked the backyard. I hadn’t seen Keenan since last night, and his reindeer Angus was gone, leaving Oscar grazing on the sparse grass by himself. Seemed he’d left again after he’d planted that skunk in Darla’s room.

  When he’d be back to take us back to the castle again, I couldn’t tell. But I was thankful for any peace I could get as I stepped outside.

  I sat on the stump, pressing my bare palms against the wood, trying to even my breathing as I thought about my mother, and how my life had spiraled terribly since her passing. But I had far more vivid memories with Dolora than I did with her.

  Still, I couldn’t help wondering about my real mother, if what Keenan had said was true. A dryad who had either lost or abandoned me, possibly leaving a trail for Dolora to follow to the one thing she could use and abuse with no repercussions.

  Suddenly, I felt the bones in my hand shift and my fingers stiffen. I moved to massage some heat into my flesh and found nothing but hard wood!

  With a startled yelp, I skidded back across the stump, half my forearm a pale grey bough, my fingers twigs, a green leaf sticking out the end of what had been my index finger.

  The urge to scream was trampled by the mind-shattering force of shock. It was one thing to hear it, to even suspect it. It was another to see it, to know it was true.

  I was really a sentient tree.

  Dumbstruck, unable to move or think, my heart slowed down until I thought it would stop, and the vapor flowing from my shutdown lungs became a dense, white ribbon.

  I didn’t know how long I sat there, frozen in paralysis until the stiffness melted away and I watched the wood shift back into my flesh and bone hand.

  Dreading I was only seeing what I wished to see, I kept curling and uncurling my fingers until they ached. I didn’t notice how long I had been doing that until I found Oscar sniffing my face and attempting to chew my hair.