The Glass Queen (The Forest of Good and Evil #2) - Gena Showalter Page 0,28

chastise me, so I relaxed. Had they been ordered to leave the maid alone?

My gain, Saxon’s loss. His greed to hoard my misery for himself would cost him. I discarded more glass...the remains of a chair...a cracked pot.

As I righted a trunk, a family of spidorpions darted away from it and me, and I yelped. The spider/scorpion hybrids produced a terrible venom I’d rather not deal with today. A bite always resulted in fever, aches and pains, and sometimes vomiting.

Once my heartbeat slowed down, I returned to my cleaning. Ohhh. What did we have here? One...three...six solid gold nails. As sneakily as possible, I buried each one, along with a few of the sturdiest sticks. Nothing to see here, Prince Saxon. Later, I could make spiked daggers.

All right. Back to work.

By the end of the first hour, I was soaked in sweat and panting up a storm. My feet ached, but miracle of miracles, I hadn’t collapsed.

During the second hour, the panting turned to wheezing. Even still, I continued to make progress. Having cleared an area for the bed, I sat down to untie the knots in the furs, sneaking a rest now and then. When I finished, I stood—

Nope. My legs refused to support my weight. I tried again, only to crash back into the furs.

Frustrated, I gazed about and mentally cataloged the remaining chores. Ugh. So many. Repotting the plethora of plants. Scrubbing mud from the walls. Arranging the usable furniture—a round table, a single chair and a privacy screen. Discarding everything else.

I wasn’t going to be halfway finished when Saxon returned, was I? My best wasn’t going to be good enough.

No. Every problem had a solution. Especially my problems, considering I had my own personal prophecy and the accompanying fairy tale, “The Little Cinder Girl,” to act as my guide.

Woe is she. Woe is she. The Glass Princess, born twice in one day. Two heads, one heart. To purge or merge? One heart, two heads. To merge or purge? One brings a blessing. One brings a curse. Only she can choose. Only she can fight. The ball. The shoe. Diiiing. Diiiiing. Diiiiiiiiing. At the stroke of midnight, all is revealed. Who will live and who will die when past, present, and future collide? Let the fire rage—let the flame purify. Let the world burn, burn, burn.

My prophecy was spoken the day of my birth, and it was the reason my parents had known I was the living incarnation of a character in “The Little Cinder Girl”...they just didn’t know which one.

Sometimes, as I’d wiled away my days at the Temple, I’d begun to hope I was the star, the motherless Cinder, forced to wear rags and clean for the ungrateful. And now, knowing my father had married a woman with two daughters of her own, I shared an even greater connection to the cinder girl. But, honestly, similar pasts didn’t always matter. As I’d heard my father mumble a time or twenty, story details were almost always symbolic. Death could represent a new beginning. A birth could represent the start of something.

What’s more, the fairy tale claimed Cinder was “Strong of heart and fast as wind. A warrior set apart, unwilling to bend.”

I was the opposite of strong of heart, and I was as fast as a snail. I definitely wasn’t a warrior. Try fragile sickling.

The story claimed a prince would be her friend and a foe. Like everything else, the title of prince could be literal or symbolic. I wasn’t sure friend could be interpreted any other way, though, and I had no friends. I had no enemies, either. Well, other than Saxon. For all I knew, I represented Cinder’s slipper—the thing upon which she tread. I was the Glass Princess, after all.

Unlike me, Cinder had fairy godmothers. But I had grit and determination—and the ability to be my own fairy godmother.

That’s it. When a fairy godmother issued an order, she expected compliance. I could force the avian soldiers to aid me, without violating Saxon’s wishes. I wouldn’t be shouting for help; I would be demanding it.

Thanks to the spell that stopped the escape of sound, the soldiers hadn’t overheard my conversation with their crown prince, so they didn’t know what I’d been ordered to do. Could I approach the soldiers, though, without being pelted with stones?

Only one way to find out...

I gathered what remained of my strength, my grit and determination helping me stand at last. On trembly legs I staggered to the open door.