So This is Love (Disney Twisted Tales) - Elizabeth Lim Page 0,11

now she was pretending—just to get herself through what was to come.

And the worst of it was that she couldn’t even fight it.

All she could do—all she had ever been able to do—was wait.

The afternoon aged into evening, and the lengthening shadows looming over Cinderella’s walls melted into the black folds of night. In the distance, the moon rose behind the king’s palace.

Cinderella paced the room, her anxiety heightened by the small space. It wasn’t like her to be so restless, but no matter where she looked, she couldn’t avoid seeing the broken bed, the ripped sheets, and the chaos that her stepmother and stepsisters had made of her room. She couldn’t avoid confronting the locked wooden door that barred her from her freedom.

She’d tried kicking the door countless times. Tried heaving her chair at it, and she’d almost had some luck picking the lock with two hairpins before one of them snapped in half between her fingers. But it would not budge. The window wasn’t an option. She was too high up, and even if she could fashion some sort of rope, it wouldn’t be long enough for her to climb down with.

Only when she’d run out of all ideas and collapsed onto her chair, exhausted, did she remember. Her shimmering ball gown, the mice turned into majestic stallions, the pumpkin coach, her glass slippers. None of it would have been possible if not for one person. . . .

“Fairy Godmother?” she called, tentatively at first. Quietly.

No answer.

She tried again. “Fairy Godmother? Please, help me.”

Maybe her fairy godmother had been a dream. Maybe all of it—the ball, the prince, the castle—had been a hopeless fantasy. Maybe when Cinderella woke up tomorrow all would be as it had been before.

But no. The prince’s kiss still tingled on her lips, and strains of the song they had danced to together still echoed in her memory. If nothing else, the shattered remains of her glass slipper, strewn across the floor, assured her it had all been real.

Cinderella looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, her cheeks stained with tears. Her hairbrush and comb still rested on her vanity, her neatly arranged hair a bitter reminder of how happy she’d been only hours before when she had been planning to meet the Grand Duke.

“What do I do?” she asked her reflection. She’d grown used to talking to herself—or the mice—all these years to keep from going mad. “How can I keep faith that things will get better when they only seem to get worse?” She buried her face in her hands. “Maybe she was right. Maybe if I had run off to the palace with the slipper, the prince wouldn’t see the girl he’d danced with. All he’d see is . . . an orphan in rags.”

She swallowed hard. “A nobody.”

“Who’s a nobody?” It was a familiar voice, serene and kind.

Behind her, a shimmering silhouette appeared against a backdrop of shadow. Slowly, gradually, a soft light bloomed in the middle of Cinderella’s room, and an elderly woman wearing a sky blue cloak materialized.

Cinderella gasped. “Fairy Godmother.”

“Please, dear, call me Lenore.”

If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Cinderella would have laughed at her matter-of-factness. “You’re here,” she said instead.

“I heard you call. . . .” The fairy’s round eyes widened as she gestured at the ramshackle attic. “What happened?”

Cinderella opened her mouth to reply, but a lump formed in her throat. It hurt to speak. “My stepmother . . .” She couldn’t finish her sentence.

“Oh, my child.” Her fairy godmother opened her arms, embracing Cinderella and gently patting her back.

When she pulled away, Cinderella noticed a frown had set on Lenore’s face. She touched the ripped mattress and pillows, and her expression darkened when she noticed the constellation of glass shards on the ground. “Your stepmother discovered that it was you at the ball.”

“Yes . . . she locked me here.”

“Oh, that woman!” Lenore stomped her foot. “I have a mind to . . . hmph, I’d best not say. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“Can you help me?” Cinderella asked urgently. “She’s going to send me away—tonight.”

“Send you where?”

“I don’t know.” Fear edged Cinderella’s voice, making it tremble no matter how she tried to keep her words even. “There’s a man coming to take me away from Aurelais. I-I-I think he’s going to sell me. Please . . .”

Her godmother clenched her jaw, and when she finally spoke her words were heavy with sadness. “I’m afraid I cannot, my child. I’d love