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

by Lucy Tempest

  Before I could turn to him, he reached for my hand, raised it, and placed the figure in my palm. As if he was putting his fate there.

  My hand convulsed over it, the sheer gravity of his peril and hope, a fist crushing my heart.

  He exhaled heavily. “The problem is, our magic is never that simple. For all those years, I failed to find another bride. I couldn’t just pick any girl willing to be Winter Queen and bind myself to her. She had to have something no one else had, or do something no one else would.”

  My heart hammered so hard it shook me. “Like what?”

  His eyes bored into mine in our reflection. “Pick me. Not my crown, not the title, nor the kingdom—me.”

  A smile trembled on my painfully dry lips. “I find it hard to believe any girl wouldn’t pick you—for you.”

  His lip curled in displeasure. “If that’s the case, then why was it none of them ever tried to hold an actual conversation with me? Talk to me about anything but becoming queen or prattle on about their own virtues, or ply me with insincere compliments? None of them ever asked me a personal question—because I am not a person to them at all.”

  That resonated with me so fiercely, it nearly knocked me over.

  His austere expression suddenly melted as he smiled into my reflected eyes. “But you—the second I saw you, I knew you weren’t here to be queen. You looked like you’d rather be anywhere else, and yet, when we first met, you were interested enough in me to ask me questions, none of which were about my title or what I could potentially do for you. I think it’s because you see me—even see yourself in me, and recognition seems to be the first step of connection…” He suddenly frowned. “I’m not making any sense.”

  “No—yes, you are!” I exclaimed. “To others, you are just the personification of the status, riches, and power they want. While to everyone, I am also only a means to an end.”

  His eyes flashed bluer in our reflection. “Exactly. You know what it’s like in a way I didn’t think anyone I’d meet here could ever know.”

  I could say the exact same thing about him.

  How strange when I now remembered I one day thought the worst of the unknown King of Winter.

  When Bonnie’s father had related the part where Bonnie’s late mother Belaina had left Yulian, he’d only said she’d wanted to escape Faerie at all costs. An escape that had cost her life eventually, which Yulian clearly didn’t know. All Queen Rowena knew of her cousin’s abandonment of Yulian was that it had been sudden. No one had known why his runaway princess had done such a thing.

  But as someone who always wanted to run away from the monsters who tormented me, I assumed it had been on account of something terrible Yulian had done.

  But after everything we’d been through together during the past two nights, a time filled with a lifetime’s worth of revealing experiences, I couldn’t believe he could have been cruel to Belaina. So what could it have been?

  Before I could think it through, I found myself asking, “About Belaina—do you think you did something to upset her?”

  He shook his head, looking still bewildered after all these years. “I thought I must have done something, unintentionally, but I couldn’t figure out what, or that it could have been that bad, since her family holds no ill will towards me.”

  “Sounds like she only got cold feet, then,” I joked feebly, trying to lighten his suddenly austere mood.

  I failed to do so, as his answer was stiff, his gaze glacial. “Getting cold feet usually doesn’t involve fleeing the continent with another man, and dooming both parties involved.”

  As bitter as those words were, there was absolutely no emotion behind them. He’d reverted to his initial frozen state before my eyes. And now I’d seen what he was like underneath that veneer of ice, the regression alarmed me.

  Seeing him shift back so fast upset me almost as much as my thwarted escapes had. Witnessing a captive creature inching towards freedom’s threshold, only to be kicked back into its cage was horrifying to me.

  But I had to remember this wasn’t what I was here for. I wasn’t here for his freedom, but his survival. I wasn’t truly here to be his bride, to break his curse.

  I couldn’t possibly be the one to do it!

  But apart from the monumental responsibility this placed on me if it was possible I was the one, I had one more question about the women who initiated this mess.

  Inching out of my near panic, I said, “Did Belaina know breaking an engagement bond would harm you both?”

  “Yes.”

  Something about this situation didn’t add up. Just like my importance to a trio of trolls had made no sense until Aneira mindlessly blabbed the truth to me.

  There was a missing element to Belaina’s abandonment and to Yulian’s curse.

  I shook my head. “Then why would she take that risk? As we agreed, risk needs to have a possible payoff. What was that for a fairy princess running off with a human smith?”

  His eyes rose, slowly, met mine in our reflection. They were totally closed off, but his face was set with a disturbing darkness. “I never said he was a smith.”

  Stunned silent, I avoided his eyes for my own. But what looked back at me in the clear circle still untouched by his frost wasn’t my face, but that of a slim, blonde woman. And she had blazing-blue eyes.

  A low humming filled my head, a persistent noise that blocked out all other sounds, lulling me into uncharacteristic calmness as the woman reached her hand out towards me.

  Moving of its own accord, my palm rose to place itself over hers, my dry, unblinking eyes unable to leave hers as the humming grew to a crescendo as hushed whispers joined it.

  The whispering grew louder, clearer, urgent with repetition, over and over and over.

  All I could think of anymore was how I should have let that assassin shoot Yulian. Of grabbing him by the hair and smashing his face into the mirror. Of getting the sharpest knife from the table and testing how thick his rigid skin was as I plunged it into his frozen heart.

  Rage burned through me as the rasping whispers merged into a screeching chorus telling me to kill him, kill him—

  “Ella!”

  The violent urges shattered at the touch of his freezing hand on my elbow.

  Overwhelmed and horrified, I tore my eyes away from the woman in the mirror, my tongue too heavy in my mouth, the murderous urges receding like a drowning tide.

  “Did you hear me?” He released my elbow, the numbing imprints of his fingertips burning on my skin. “How did you know he was a smith?”

  Too shaken by my inexplicable, terrible thoughts to look him in the eye, to lie to him again, I did the only thing I could think of.

  I ran.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I flew down the spiraling stairs, heart booming in panic and dread.

  Yulian suspected me now, with good cause. His calls would alert a brigade of guards like last time. But I wouldn’t even hear their pursuit over the din of drunken mirth and music echoing in the stairwell, or the chaos of my heartbeats and breathing.

  Having no use for discretion anymore, I yelled at the top of my voice, calling Keenan, hoping his fairy ears would pick up my distress. It was close to midnight, and he knew I needed to get back before the anklet acted up. He had to be on standby. Hopefully, already at the entrance, even in the carriage.

  Once we were out of here, I needed to tell him about what I’d just experienced. Problem was, the memories were already tangling, dulling, as if my mind wanted to erase them.

  Not that this was even a concern now. My anklet was starting to burn, and I was at risk of stumbling down whole flights with every frantic step. Sweat was pouring off me in rivulets, sliding my grip on the bannister and almost twisting my feet out of my slippers.

  When I finally reached the ground floor, the anklet’s burn was ratcheting. Stifling sobs of pain, I stumbled towards the entrance hall. The main doors were within sight when a dark figure bolted out of a side corridor and cau
ght me.

  The same one I’d stopped from shooting Yulian!

  Giving me no chance to dodge or shout, my attacker tossed me deeper into the corridor, slammed me into the wall, a vicious-looking blade held high in one hand. With a strangled yelp, I barely ducked out of the lethal stab’s path, only to lose my balance and belly-flop at my attacker’s feet.

  Swooping down at me, the hand holding the blade descended again, aiming for my heart. I threw my hands up in defensive terror—and they transformed into wood!

  Within a heartbeat, what used to be my hands were stout, curling branches, growing around the attacking hand. It ripped a pained yell from the hooded figure as the hand wrenched back, tearing something on my rough bark and dropping the knife.

  Using the murderous being’s momentary imbalance, I wrapped my branching hands over the arms reaching for me, yanked down and slammed my forehead against the hooded face with a furious grunt. A muffled crack of breaking bone echoed within our labored panting, and I could smell blood even before it dripped over my face.

  A broken nose was the least suffering this assassin deserved for coming after Yulian. I intended to cause as much damage as I could until someone showed up and arrested him.

  Next second, my righteous rage was burned off when I realized what was hanging off my wooden extremities. Bandages. My attacker’s hand had already been injured.

  Without any further thought, I lashed out a branching hand, tore off the hood—and bared the face of Princess Sorcha!

  Shock turned my forearms back to flesh, weakening my hold on her. It let her shove off me, get back on her feet, her furious blue eyes bulging, and blood from her nose flooding the bottom half of her face

  “Sorcha—wh-what are you doing?” I gasped as I struggled to my elbows.

  Her response was to lunge at me, knocking me back down with a knee in my chest, pressing on my injured rib, while her good hand leaned her full weight around my throat, aiming to crush my windpipe.

  I stared up at her dazedly as the world dimmed around me, and my whole life spooled before my eyes. I had suffered years under Dolora’s thrall, braved the sadistic games of a fairy king, gotten lost in a frozen kingdom, had been recaptured by my oppressor, had nearly drowned in a frozen lake, been strong-armed into manipulating a tortured man in exchange for my freedom, and to protect him from—this. From the very person who’d claimed to be protecting him and trying to arrest whoever wanted him dead.

  I hadn’t survived all my ordeals—hadn’t escaped the clutches of the Horned God himself—just to die at the hands of Keenan’s sister!

  The burn of rage overtook the darkness of thinning blood in my head. It gave me the strength to pull at the hand on my throat while struggling to reach for my foot. In one agonizing contortion, I pulled my slipper off by its heel. Twisting beneath her, I yanked it up and slammed it against her head. The moment her grip loosened on me, I heaved up and hit her again, channeling all the strength I could into the blow.

  As she slumped to the ground, my anklet chose that moment to burn red-hot, making my blood run cold. The city’s clock tower far beneath the castle chimed fifteen minutes to midnight.

  I couldn’t stick around to see what would be done about Sorcha, if she had accomplices, if Yulian was safe. I had to get back to the house before Dolora’s anklet burned my foot off.

  Pain blaring all over my body, I jumped up and limped out of the main doors.

  This time, strangely, every guard I passed barely spared me a look as I hobbled by. Maybe because they’d already gone through the trouble of pursuing me last night, only for their king to welcome me again tonight, as if nothing had happened.

  My white pumpkin carriage was in the parking area at the bottom of the castle, and Keenan was nowhere in sight. I couldn’t even wonder where he was, or if he’d known about Sorcha. I couldn’t wait for him anyway. My burning ankle made that clear, and that I didn’t have time to learn how to drive the carriage.

  Trembling with still discharging panic and intensifying pain, I unbound Oscar from his reins and scrambled up onto his back.

  Gritting my teeth through the burn, I petted his neck. “You know the way back, right?”

  His response was to launch into a gallop that threatened to unseat me. I gripped onto his antlers, digging my knees into his sides and prayed furiously that we’d reach the house in time.

  Frantic minutes passed as we hurtled down the mountain, and I almost flew off Oscar more times than I could count. I lost all sense of time until we were halfway through the shopping district of Midnight and the clock tower chimed again, so much nearer. My hair was already shrinking, along with the magic that spun my dress. The burning grew more intense and I squirmed and curled my toes—only to realize my foot was bare.

  I’d left the slipper by Sorcha!

  My first frantic impulse was to turn back and retrieve it. But that was out of the question.

  All I could do now was continue on my path, and hope I could return to get it tomorrow.

  The anklet was close to sizzling my skin off by the time Oscar made a large leap over a fence and landed hard in a frozen backyard. He’d gotten me back to the house—just in time.

  I almost fell off his back and onto the hard, snow-covered ground. The cold bit into my bare foot as I hobbled straight into the kitchen.

  The fire was still on, but the house was dead silent. I was safe.

  Now that I was, all I could think of was Yulian. I hoped he was finally safe as well, now that whatever crazy court politics-motivated murder Sorcha had in mind had been halted …

  My breath hitched as a terrible thought struck me—

  If she woke up before anyone found her, no one would know what she’d been planning. She’d be free to commit another attempt on his life. If my stepfamily came back without the news of her arrest, I had to go back tomorrow night and expose her!

  If only I’d asked for one of those magical hand mirrors! I could have kept an eye on him, or better yet, warned him! All I could do now was go crazy wondering what was happening to him.

  Helplessness intensified my anguish as the rush of my fight with Sorcha and flight from the castle fled, and exhaustion sank into my bones.

  Suddenly, I felt the kind of chill that hooks into the marrow, that of apprehension. I felt like I was being watched…

  “I suspected it was you.”

  Before I could turn my head towards the voice, I was struck hard across the face.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Unbalanced by the brutal force of the blow, I slammed into the wall, hands barely coming up in time to keep me from cracking my temple.

  My worst fear had come true. I hadn’t beaten them back here in time.

  Dolora had been waiting for me in the dark.

  “You thought green skin could fool me?” Dolora seethed. “If anything it was the worst disguise for something like you.”

  Swallowing the lump of panic, I edged away from her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Really? Then why weren’t you here when we returned?”

  I reached for the closest thing by the wall—a broom. “I was taking a walk.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” She moved to strike again and I lifted the broom up sideways in time to block her. What collided with the wood wasn’t her hand, but metal.

  A brass poker.

  Scrambling back, I kept the broom between us, anticipating a maiming blow. Dolora advanced on me, fists clenched, shoulders hunched, jaw working with barely restrained rage.

  “How did you do it? How did you access your magic after all these years?”

  “I told you I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered as I judged the distance to the door. I had to make a break for it now.

  “I’m talking about you sneaking out, going to the ball, and charming the king with your nymph wiles.”

  Pent-up rage made me forget everything but finally letting it out. “You knew I was a dryad this wh
ole time—just what you needed to drain, to create and maintain your disguise. Was it a happy accident that you duped my father into marrying you?”

  Dolora laughed cruelly, tapping the poker into her open palm as she approached in slow steps designed to break me down with dread. “The Fates are rarely so kind, but they did make up for losing your mother.”

  “My…my mother?”

  “Yes, the thing that birthed you, not the miserable human that picked you up off the forest floor and took you away before I found out about you.” She swung at me and I barely brought up the broom. Metal collided with wood with a sickening crack. The broom wouldn’t take much more of that before it splintered. “That nymph had me chasing her from Spring to Summer. It seems you inherited her flair for escaping me.”

  That must be why fairies had wanted her arrested, why she’d escaped to the human world. She hadn’t just been peddling kidnapped babies, she’d been committing one of the few unforgivable crimes in Faerie—trafficking other fairy creatures. Like my birth mother.

  Too mad to think, I swung at her, desperate to break her jaw to shut her up permanently. The handle barely came close to her face when the anklet flared to life, burning white-hot.

  The severe pain blanked my mind, shut me down. Next moment, I found myself on my knees.

  Dolora was howling with laughter as she grabbed a handful of my ruined hair and twisted. “Forgot about that, didn’t you? Got some attention from a prince and a king in that disguise, and fooled yourself into forgetting who you are?”

  How could I have forgotten? I couldn’t fight her, and I certainly couldn’t fight through this agony to cause her any damage. I should have made a break for it when I had the chance.

  But what good would have that done? I couldn’t go too far, and come next midnight, a new day would have dragged me back to this prison she’d fashioned for me.

  “What did you do to my mother?” I sobbed, pulling at my hair to lessen her brutal tugging. “Where is she?”