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

by Lucy Tempest

  But when she banned this foul Keenan and his whole family from her Court, it only started banging the drums of war—prematurely. It was what forced her to retreat for the time being, to broker that inferior marriage for him with another revolting creature of that accursed Court. Meanwhile, her conquest plans would continue undeterred.

  But Yulian had to be reined in, had to take his place in those plans. He had to be forged into her weapon. Her brother and his wife were no help, so it was up to her to force him to acknowledge that he belonged to her, and she would tear him apart and reshape him in her image…

  “Stop,” I said with great difficulty.

  “Isolda, release her,” Yulian growled ominously. “I’m warning you.”

  “Or you’ll what? Stab her?” My struggle ended as she suppressed me further, stole my will and voice to continue her rant, both in and outside my head. “By all means, do it. At least then you won’t disappoint me any further by planting this vile creature in my quarters. A dryad, a slave to a hideous troll, worse than a maid, and far worse than that reckless, boyish Belaina I was forced to arrange for you to marry.”

  Incensed realization brought his darkening brows together. “It was you. You’re what made Belaina run away.”

  “I only meant to borrow her body,” she hissed through my lips. “My power was weak, so I needed her to rid this realm of you, and free me. But she escaped instead. I still knew the breaking of your bond would eventually kill you, but it would take too long. And you retreated into solitude so I couldn’t get to you through another woman again, not until recently. And no matter what I tried, you still wouldn’t die!” I felt myself move, hands shifting against my will into sharp, wooden points with the demanding urge to run him through. “Now I’m finally walking the realm again, and will take matters into my own hands—or rather the hands of your wretched beloved. It will make it all the sweeter as I finally kill you!”

  No. NO! I had been robbed of control over my body and my will for far too long. I’d rather become firewood than live like this again, than be used as a weapon against him.

  Directing all my resistance into stiffening my legs, I turned her attack into a stalled lurch, making myself stumble, my arms falling short of reaching him. Her spirit screamed in retaliation, almost splitting my ears and mind open.

  Her thoughts delved violently into my own, but so did mine into hers. We dueled in a dizzying, dissonant mixture of minds and memories.

  Suddenly, all the mirrors in the room began showing a different room, clearly a monarch’s quarters, and all of us were caught in the eerie display transmitted from her memories.

  A man and a woman were arguing, both with the same milky white skin, blue eyes, and straw-yellow hair. The room started filling with a miniature blizzard as wind blasted around them, and the man dropped to his knees before the woman.

  It was Isolda. And the man had to be her brother, Yulian’s father, Timofey.

  “You have to stop this madness, Isolda,” he implored. “You can’t keep doing this, making everyone an enemy, making everyone fear you.”

  “They should fear and revere me,” she bellowed, her hair flying around her, her veins prominent and blue against her skin. “I am the most powerful monarch Faerie has ever seen.”

  “And you think that gives you the right to conquer it?”

  “Yes!” she shrieked. “The humans across the ocean get to conquer other lands, and create empires, while we have to be content with our quarter of the continent?”

  “We were given our allotted land to reign over, Isolda! We belong to this environment and no place else.”

  “Timofey, you moron, that is why I will equalize the land, make it as cold as our northernmost regions. Having our borders be eternal spring and summer is unnatural and disgusting! This whole land belongs to the cold—to me. And I will claim it!”

  “You think the other monarchs would just tolerate your overarching winter? They’ll send someone to kill you, to kill us all. At best, your ‘empire’ would crumble upon your death.”

  “Then I’ll live forever. That way I’ll make sure your delusional son never succeeds me.”

  “Don’t you dare talk about him that way!”

  She backhanded him hard and, as if in response to her cold fury, the room grew colder, snow coating every surface, delicate glass ornaments cracking, and half the flames lighting the chandeliers blowing out.

  “Your son is a worse version of our father, who brought nothing but degradation and weakness to our house. I tried training that inclination out of him, tried shaping him into an heir I could leave this kingdom to, but there’s no use. He is of no use. Not only wouldn’t he wield his powers to be my general in my conquest, I have no doubt he’d one day ally Winter with a half-human mongrel and make some maid his queen. He would destroy our Court. So I’ll see him dead first!”

  Timofey sat up, staring defiant eyes up at her as a bruise bloomed on his cheek. “Then you leave me with no other choice.”

  Thrown off by his steely comment, Isolda didn’t ward him off as he sprang up and pushed her back against the mirror, a snowflake-shaped object in his hand that glowed green as he chanted in a low, reverberating voice.

  It happened instantaneously. One second Isolda had her back to the mirror, and the next she’d sunk into it, and her outstretched hands were disappearing behind the glass.

  Timofey sneered down at the infuriated reflection of his sister as she banged and screamed soundlessly on the other side of the glass. “You were always a monster, but I’ve long tried to make excuses for you. Now that I no longer could, I had to stop you before you became uncontainable and destroyed all of Faerie. I thought I should kill you, as that’s what heroes do with mad despots, but I couldn’t do it. At least this way, you’ll never hurt anyone again.”

  With an enraged screech, Isolda clawed deeper into my mind.

  But it seemed being under Dolora’s thrall for so long, and finally shattering it, had given me the ability to withstand her invasion, to push back. I slashed across her consciousness with all the shredding force of my wooden power.

  And the view in the mirrors suddenly faded into another room, clearly in the same castle.

  It was the middle of the night in a bedroom lit by silver moonlight. A low hum permeated the darkness as a woman twisted and turned in her bed. A harsh whisper cut through the monotonous buzz, and the woman sat upright, turned sharply, then rose towards an oval-shaped mirror in the corner. She stood before it, transfixed, her hand held out to her reflection.

  Abruptly, she turned back to the bed, picked up her pillow and crawled over to where her husband lay sleeping.

  She forced the pillow over his face, smothering him ruthlessly as he lurched awake and started thrashing, his hands pushing feebly at her firm shoulders and blank face, his cries muffled.

  Minutes passed with the man’s struggle waning until he went perfectly still.

  Sitting back on her heels, the woman stared blankly ahead. Then with a gasp and a hard jerk, she fell sideways over her husband’s still body.

  Pointlessly, pitiably, she shook her husband, crying, “Timofey! Timofey, wake up!”

  He just laid there, dead, and she finally staggered off the bed, pacing before it, sobbing and shaking and pulling at her hair. The low hum grew louder and the woman settled back into a wide-eyed, stiff-backed posture, ending up before the mirror again.

  After a moment, she made a sharp turn towards the balcony doors. Pushing them open, she strode straight ahead until her middle collided with the balustrade and she rolled over the edge.

  She screamed all the way down.

  Yulian dropped his weapon, and it shattered, mingling with the glass fragments at our feet. The images in the mirrors faded as Isolda wrenched control back from me.

  “And you know how he fell sick in the first place?” Isolda cackled using my own vocal cords, making my very soul heave in revulsion and impotent outrage. “How he became so weak she could so easily sm
other him? I made her poison him, the only one he loved and trusted implicitly. Slowly, relentlessly.”

  Heaving, muscles shaking, face flushing with red-hot fury, Yulian rounded back on me—on Isolda inside me. I felt her gleeful, sadistic thoughts goading him into attacking me in a fit of blind rage, just to get at this hideous creature inhabiting me.

  For a moment, I braced myself for that reaction, almost anticipating feeling his hands around my neck, like I’d felt Dolora’s so many times.

  But I felt his power instead, lashing out to envelop the massive hall.

  The brighter and bluer his eyes became, the lower the temperature dropped, until it became unbearably cold, even for me, when I now knew I had a lot of a tree’s resistance to cold, even in flesh form. Blood almost solidified in my veins as ice spread like a tidal wave to cover every surface and person.

  Yulian then raised his arms and clenched his fists. And every mirror and glass panel in the room shattered in a medley of thundering cracks, their fragments a storm bombarding everything and everyone. Within the protective layer of ice Yulian had formed around me, like that of a ghost apple, I could hear the distant shattering of glass coming from every direction outside, too.

  A muted chorus of screams, all Isolda’s voice, seemed to fill the whole castle, the whole world, blaring in my head.

  Just as I felt she would burst it apart, branches sprouted out of my arms and back, shattering the ice around me, then her presence was wrenched out of me.

  With another wave of Yulian’s hands, the cold was abruptly cut off. Temperature rose so fast, melting the ice surrounding everyone at once. He’d preserved us all as he’d destroyed Isolda’s hideaways

  As everyone revived, and staggered to huddle together, all tension left my body with her expulsion. Loose-limbed and weak, I crumpled to the floor, broken glass crunching beneath me.

  Fractured wisps of light and ghostly tendrils rose from every shard, floating in from the windows and doors, coalescing in the center of the room into the figure of Isolda. This time, the thousands of cracks all over her body were sealing until she almost looked fully solid.

  Yulian finally uncurled his fists as the temperature stabilized, breathing heavily, glowering at her with enough heat to fuel every furnace in this land. “I shattered every mirror in Midnight. Now you have nowhere to go.”

  Examining her arms, Isolda rolled her wrists, watching in satisfaction as sparkling blue light danced between her fingers. She was close to returning to her corporeal form.

  “You think this will defeat me, you moron?” she taunted. “I knew you were pathetic, but this is truly pitiful. Boy, you only freed me!” And she flung the ball of blinding light at him.

  It hit him square in the chest, making him stumble back.

  All I could think was his heart had just thawed. And I was not letting her damage it again.

  Finding the strength somehow, I jumped up, hooked my arm around her neck.

  She was solid now; all the pieces of her trapped in the mirrors had reassembled themselves, restoring her body.

  That meant she could be killed!

  This had to be why Yulian had freed her.

  It was a gamble, freeing such a malevolent, powerful creature. But as long as she was imprisoned in every reflective surface, no one was safe.

  She thought him a moron who hadn’t thought his strategy through. But he’d thought like a monarch, weighing the benefits against the dangers of a momentous decision. One that could have terrible repercussions, yet had to be ventured for a higher purpose.

  He had to free her, so we could defeat her.

  But as he charged her, and before I could turn my arms into inescapable wood, Isolda knocked him back with a more powerful blast, and I found my world turning upside down as she flipped me over her head.

  As he crashed into the wall with a sickening crunch, she advanced on me as I lay on the ground, hands crackling with blue lightning. “You can’t even access your powers at will. It’s no wonder you spent your entire pathetic life serving that hideous troll. That was the least you deserved for being so weak!”

  I scrambled backwards, feeling glass fragments cut into my palms, trying my hardest to remain in the moment. But it was almost impossible not to be sucked into the memory of Dolora’s and Darla’s abuse among the wreckage the first night of the ball.

  “You deserved a lot worse than being imprisoned behind a mirror,” I choked, struggling against the conditioning of years of submission and terror. “You wouldn’t last a day in the torture both Yulian and I endured at the hands of sadists like you.”

  Isolda swooped down, lightning quick, and wrapped her hand around my throat. Her choking grip was so tight, I could barely draw breath, my plan to spear her with my branching hands scattering like autumn leaves in the wind.

  “I am the queen, beyond reproach, and it’s my sovereign right to mold and control my people, starting with my heir, as I see fit!” she gritted through clenched teeth as she waved her hand, and a violent gust of wind swept Yulian off his feet and slammed him at hers.

  She now had us both at her non-existent mercy.

  I met Yulian’s now vivid blue eyes and saw the same crippling memories of the abused child in them.

  She grinned down at him, her face regaining the glow of life, and looking all the more terrible for it. “See, boy? This is why you were never fit to rule, never fit to be my heir. You’re too soft, can’t get over your fears and hang-ups to be the ruler this land needs. You now cower before me, as you always did—and will. Yes, now I’m free, I’ve changed my mind about killing you. I own this castle, this realm, and everyone in it, starting with you. I will delight in controlling you again, will show you and your piece of rotting wood and all of Faerie what true agony is—”

  Her tirade was cut off by a harsh exhalation, then Yulian’s hand was wrapping around hers, and removing it forcefully off my throat. Her eyes widened as her slackening jaw made room for the dark, congealed blood that came oozing out her mouth.

  It took me a moment to realize what had happened.

  Yulian had stabbed her with a long shard of glass.

  I lay there stunned as he rose to his feet, twisting the shard in her chest, shredding his own hand as he did her heart, his face grim as he faced his lifelong tormentor.

  “You don’t own anyone,” he rumbled, voice so dark and powerful, the whole chamber vibrated with it. “And you can’t control me anymore.”

  Eyes wide and dark with murderous indignation, Isolda held his steely gaze for one last moment before she collapsed at his feet, venomous gaze flitting back and forth between us.

  As life left her in a final breath, her face froze in a permanent expression of offense and incredulity. A reaction for each of us.

  Chapter Thirty

  Still clutching the large shard of bloodied mirror-glass, cutting deeper into his bleeding fist, Yulian extended the other hand to me, and pulled me up to my feet.

  Shaken, every inch of me feeling bruised, I leaned into him, put a tentative hand on his shoulder, trying to get him to break his staring contest with Isolda’s lifeless eyes.

  He only continued glaring daggers down at his aunt’s defeated form, breathing harshly.

  “Yulian?” I choked.

  Snapping his head in my direction, a measure of the tension gripping him loosened and he wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me close, hard.

  Carefully, I stroked the hand still clutching the shard, and he inhaled sharply and released it, letting it clutter to the ground.

  I then completed his hug, mirroring him, an arm tightening around his middle, meeting his tilting face halfway so our foreheads touched.

  As I exhaled a breath I felt I’d been holding all my life, I sensed the movement around us. Now they felt safe again, some of our onlookers were approaching their king tentatively.

  Worried muttering surrounded us, then Simeon was strong-arming his way to the front of the assembling crowd, an unsteady Sorcha pres
sed to his side.

  “Your Majesty, your hand!” Simeon exclaimed, aghast. Yulian only waved his concern away, and covered his own hand in a glaze of ice that stemmed his bleeding. Simeon turned his outrage to Isolda’s dead form. “Has she been in there this whole time?”

  “It seems so,” Sorcha said quietly. “Now I know I saw her the night I punched the mirror in the East Tower, and—oh—oh, no.” She stared at her bandaged hand as realization sunk in. “I must have set part of her free, and it got into me. I—barely remember things now …” Blanching, she gaped at Yulian. “It was me all along. I tried to kill you that first day down in Midnight!”

  Simeon gawked at her in horror. Till this moment, it seemed he thought Isolda had only taken over her tonight.

  “Tried to kill me, too,” I added. “But just so you know, I don’t blame you.”

  Eyes watering, Sorcha covered her mouth with her bandaged hand. “How can you not? I tried to kill you both!”

  “This week just keeps getting better and better,” Simeon muttered, looking away from all of us.

  Yulian pulled back, looked down at me with a grim smile playing on his lips. “I think what we learned here today is that nothing, and no one, is ever as they seem.”

  “You’re right, it isn’t!” a shrill voice shouted. “She isn’t.”

  I groaned inwardly. Dolora. I’d forgotten she was here.

  She burst to the front of the crowd, dragging Aneira and—me.

  It was one thing to hear about it, another to see it. Darla had used my energy, my shifting dryad magic, to glamor herself as me. The me I really was. Not the human guise I’d slipped back into. At the sight of her—me—I felt myself shifting back into my true dryad form again.

  Dolora pointed at me accusingly. “See this? She is a shape-shifting imposter! She attacked my stepdaughter last night when she realized the king had chosen her, and assumed her identity—then she attacked the king!”

  Ever the opportunist. She couldn’t wait ten minutes after this major showdown to make a bid for her social climbing, could she?