are we going to her? That’s so—”
“Quiet, you two,” Lady Tremaine said sharply. “Enough complaining.”
Cinderella steeled herself. From the sound of it, her stepmother was not in a good mood. But Cinderella wasn’t afraid—what more could she do to her? The Grand Duke had already left, and he wasn’t coming back. He was off to find another girl who’d fit the glass slipper and who would marry the prince—a girl who wasn’t her.
The footsteps were getting closer. “It’s time you saw her true colors,” Lady Tremaine said. “She expressly disobeyed my orders and stole her way to the ball.”
Cinderella froze. How did her stepmother know she had gone to the ball?
She’d gotten home well before they had, and in the morning everything had seemed normal enough, at least until she’d heard the news and—
The song she’d been humming—it was from the waltz at the ball. A chill twisted down Cinderella’s spine. Could her stepmother have heard her?
If so, Lady Tremaine would know that Cinderella was the girl with the glass slipper—the girl the prince was searching for.
Following her up to her room and locking her in the attic without any explanation—suddenly it made sense. But the Grand Duke had gone, so what would happen to her now?
I will not apologize, Cinderella told herself staunchly, not for going to the ball.
As the key clicked into the lock and the doorknob began to turn, Cinderella took a deep breath, gathering her nerves—
—and fearing that she was just as trapped as ever.
What a debacle!
Ferdinand, the Grand Duke of Malloy, leaned back against the carriage’s plush velvet cushion, wishing he were anywhere but there.
Unfortunately, according to the rolled-up list by his side, its pages slightly crumpled at the bottom corners, he still had nearly a hundred households to visit.
He closed his eyes, knowing that the moment he fell asleep they would arrive at the next house on the list. All he could hope was the next family wouldn’t be as dreadful as the last.
Simply recalling Lady Tremaine’s awful daughters made him shudder. It’d been shameful how the two young women had thrown themselves at the glass slipper.
“Why, it’s my slipper!” they had cried at each other. “It’s my glass slipper!”
If Ferdinand heard those four words again today, he would go mad. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise him if tomorrow he woke to find all his black hairs had gone gray.
The indignity of it all!
Sunlight streamed in through the folds of the carriage’s curtains, the bright light making the duke wince. He opened an eye, stealing a glimpse outside. They were about to pass the statue of his father in one of the city’s finer squares. It was his favorite part of Valors, and as a boy, Ferdinand could never get enough of boasting to his friends about how important his father was, to have such a dignified and heroic likeness in the center of the city.
“One day, I, too, will have a statue,” he’d declared.
So imagine his horror to see pigeons perched on his father’s head, the stone facade of which clearly hadn’t been scrubbed clean in weeks! And dogs were relieving themselves among the flower beds surrounding the statue!
If he hadn’t been on such a tight schedule, he would have barged out of his carriage, shooed away the pigeons, and demanded the utterly disrespectful commoners take their canine brutes elsewhere.
“Disgraceful,” muttered the duke with a scowl. And after all his family had done for Aurelais! He made a mental note to have the filth-ridden state of his father’s statue addressed as soon as possible.
How times had changed. When he was a child, people had respect for nobility. The sheer idea of the prince marrying a lesser noble would have sent tongues wagging. What’s more, a commoner of undistinguished background would have been unheard of!
His father, the previous grand duke, certainly would have advised the king against it, as Ferdinand had tried.
His father had overseen the rebuilding of Aurelais after the Seventeen Years’ War. This magnificent statue in Valors’s main square now honored him for facilitating the exile of all magical beings—namely fairies who’d held far too much sway in politics, what with that ridiculous tradition of blessing and cursing princes and princesses—from the kingdom. Ferdinand was not going to get any statue for finding Prince Charles’s so-called true love.
What had he done to deserve such a fate? To be volleyed around the kingdom like some common messenger boy? He’d spent all night and all morning reciting a silly proclamation about a glass slipper instead