Sinful Cinderella

Nothing happens for a whole week. Everything feels the same: I do my chores; Stepmother barely speaks to me; Loony rages about how ugly I looked at the ball. This, I know, comes from jealously. Even though the prince turned out to be a weasel, she’s still furious he wanted me and not her. Stupid pig. I wish he wanted her!

I check the mirror often but my beauty doesn’t fade. I wish I had white magic to change something, make myself fat and pimpled, at least for a while. But the decanter is empty, locked back in my cupboard upstairs. And my nerves have made me snappish, if my chores earned any white magic all, I lost it right away.

And I won’t call on Godnutter, absolutely not. She’s a sneaking traitor. Wasn’t the white magic supposed to make my life better? She’s probably cackling somewhere in a cloud of smoke. If I ever see her again I’ll shove that pipe through her ears.

It is Moody, finally, that drops the axe. I’m scrubbing a muddy footprint out of that wretched white carpet in the sitting room while she lounges on the couch, pretending to read a book. She flips a page and speaks without looking at me.

“He’s looking for you, you know.”

I stop scrubbing because my arms just turned to lead. “H-how – how do you know?”

“It’s all over the kingdom.” She turns her dull eyes and there’s no pity there, not a drop. But the fact she’s telling me at all must mean she feels something.

“Word’s gone out that the prince is madly in love with the mysterious woman from the ball. He won’t rest until he finds her. He is personally visiting every house in the kingdom and making all the young maidens try on that glass shoe. It’s nuts.”

“It was a crystal slipper,” I murmur. My hand is still clamped around the scrubbing brush, my fingers wet. This can’t be happening.

“He thinks the shoe will help him find her. It is uncommonly small.”

Curse you, white magic. Curse you Godnutter for giving it to me. And curse myself for being so stupid. I’m about to become the prince’s prisoner because of my freaking feet!

“Been going on for several days now.” Moody turns back to her book.

I stand up, drying my hand on my skirt. “Thank you,” is all I can say. I need to get to the attic, do some hard thinking. Maybe I can leave for a while, run off to another kingdom. I don’t have any relatives to stay with but I could work in a tavern somewhere. Taverns always seem to want pretty girls.

I reach the door and look back. “Do you know where Stepmother is? I need to speak to her for a minute.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Moody says dryly. “She’s trying to help him find you.”