"Yes, Your Highness," Lemi returned, withholding tears, and Queen Ino walked past her to the door.
"Are you in order?" King Kardon asked, turning around at the queen's hand on his back. "My, those colors do bring out your beauty."
"Thank you, Darling," Queen Ino purred. "They always do."
Hand tucked into the crook of her husband's arm, Queen Ino moved with him down the corridor, emerging at the railing above the grand hall, cheers greeting
them from below. From her vantage point, looking down upon everyone, Queen Ino noted the kingdom's high citizens, and some of the lower upon whom the king
took pity or owed favor.
"Presenting Your Highnesses, King Kardon and Queen Ino," the page announced, and Queen Ino released her husband to walk down the curved staircase at one
side of the hall as the king descended the other, meeting him again at the head of the table.
It was always a show for the masses, an act of wealth and regality. All eyes upon her, Queen Ino felt a fright in the dress, but the eyes of the people
showed only worship.
"And, the guest of honor..." King Kardon turned to the balcony to introduce his daughter himself. "Princess Snow White Kardon."
Eyes following the king's to the landing, Queen Ino watched Snow White appear, the kind of innocent beauty well-matched to the bright shade of the dress,
where the queen felt her own clash so harshly against it. With uproarious applause, the villagers looked on Snow White with such adoration, Queen Ino could
feel their affection as much as see it, and the king watched his daughter with open joy, seeing the two people whom he loved most in the world, his
daughter and her dear, dead mother.
Before the queen could turn again to try to see what they all saw in the girl, she was overtaken by embrace, arms gentle around her, because Snow White
never had seemed to accept that they were not friends.
Pressed back by small hands on her shoulders, Queen Ino felt strange in the world, suddenly unfitted to her surroundings. "You look as beautiful as I knew
you would," Snow White smiled brightly, but Queen Ino could not see her.
Where there was pink before her, she saw crimson, bright and vibrant. The color of blood. Blood everywhere. It filled the queen's senses, until she could
hear it, feel it.
"Are you all right?" Snow White asked, concern genuine on the girl's face.
"My Darling?" King Kardon queried, and, feeling his hand on her elbow, the queen realized she was making a scene.
"I am quite fine," she said, blinking the red from her vision, though she could not clear it from her mind. "You, My Love, are a sight to behold," she
breathed, taking Snow White's cheeks in her hands and placing a kiss at the corner of the girl's mouth.
It was always a show for the masses, as it was then. Lips pressed to Snow White's skin, Queen Ino fought the desire to reach for the dagger. Blood pounding
to the surface, she knew she had escaped her past, but not herself, and that, one day, she would kill Snow White.
W
armer than she could recall being in some time, Cinderella still shivered inside the blanket. Legs crossed, she hunched next to Akasha in her berth,
wondering what had become of her dress. Though it was not a particularly sensible garment, or even hers truly, it was all she had of her kingdom or of her
mother, and she watched for its reappearance with abnormal longing.
The kingdom she was in was called Naxos, Akasha had told her, derived long ago from an early ruler, a queen. Women were treated differently then, Akasha
said, worshipped, but things had changed.
The comfort of the bed beneath her and the clean water she had been brought to drink, Cinderella could not tell
the difference. She was, however, beginning to note differences between them.
The women around the room were the same as her, but not quite. The bend of a nose here, the curve of an eye there, the shape of their bodies inside their
simple gowns made Cinderella start to wonder if she had gone mad after all. It could have been the doing of the prince, or of her family. In her efforts to
attend the festival, she had deceived them all. Intoxicating her with some substance that made her see a world and people of her own delusion would be just
punishment.
Though, soft blanket brushing her bare legs, Cinderella thought it might have been a mistake on their parts. The accommodations were far more agreeable
than the fractured bricks before the fireplace on which she slept in her own home, and the women of her delusion had yet to be cruel to her.
In earlier night, as she sat amongst them on the floor of the massive room, Akasha had hidden Cinderella from view with the help of others, as two men in
like dress came in and picked from amongst them, taking two women off to keep the company of the king. It was rare in her kingdom a soul had sought to
protect her, and never had she been invited into the king's company.
When the women at last settled down for the night, the room was peaceful, but with an underlying discontent Cinderella knew well. It was where gladness for
their safety met sadness for their positions, and it dampened the spirits of the room as surely as Cinderella's home life had depleted her own. Though the
women around her did not live like servants - they did not clean and cook and fetch and burn in the sun - servitude was clearly their lots as much as it
had been hers.
"Be careful, Girl," the matron said, walking past on her patrol, and Cinderella watched her go with a tickle of fear, the threat seeming to sink through
the walls, as if they followed her from her own kingdom.
"You will get into trouble?" she worriedly asked Akasha.
"No," Akasha said with such haste Cinderella could hear the lie in it. "But you will. You are an intruder in the palace."
"I do not mean to be," Cinderella replied.
She was not even sure how she ended up in the palace. One moment, she was running from the festival, from the prince, standing at her mother's tree. The
next, she was slipping through the solid trunk and coming up into the room full of women. She could not explain it to Akasha or to herself. There was no
sense to be made of it. Like those of Cinderella's kingdom, Troyale, the patrons of the palace believed Naxos to be a world alone, believed there existed
no life beyond its borders, save for that so distant they would never encounter it.
"Yes, I gather that," Akasha said, head bowing, eyes going to the door as if expecting the guards to reappear at any time.
"Will they kill me?" Cinderella tried to sound unworried, but the tremble in her voice pulled Akasha's eyes toward her.
Akasha took a moment in answering, her gaze moving over Cinderella's face until Cinderella grew most anxious. "No, I suspect not." She seemed strangely sad
about the prospect of Cinderella not being put to death. "I suspect they will keep you here with us."
"I could stay here?" Cinderella asked in surprise. "At the palace?"
A sad smile pushing past her lips, Akasha's dark eyes held her own. "Not as a guest," she said softly, and Cinderella felt an unfamiliar fear roll through
her, a foreboding of something she did not truly understand.
"Keeping the king company?" she questioned.
"Yes," Akasha nodded.
"How does one do that?"
A tempered laugh passing her lips, Akasha lowered her gaze, looking up at Cinderella through long lashes. "You are truly not from around here, are you?"
With a suppressed shiver, Cinderella pulled the blanket tighter around her as she shook her head, and Akasha nodded, taking a deep breath.
"Do you know how babies are made?"
"Yes, of course. I..." Cinderella began, stopping to blush furiously. One could not walk into a pasture without witnessing how new creatures came to be,
and her stepsisters had always delighted in telling her the horrors humans could inflict with their bestial urges. "Oh," she breathed quietly, remembering
all she had seen and heard in vivid detail. "And do you like doing that?"
"As an act, or with the king?" Akasha surprised her by asking.
"Are the answers different?" she questioned.
"Yes, I should say they are," Akasha stated, hand slipping beneath the edge of Cinderella's blanket. Nervously watching it go, Cinderella jumped slightly
as it brushed her knee. "The touch of another can be either good or bad, Cinderella," Akasha said gently. "You do know that, don't you?"
The hand sliding above her knee to rest beneath the fabric of her chemise, it felt as if it meant Cinderella no harm. The hand did not hold her captive or
leave a mark. It felt uncommonly gentle, the touch, the kind she had seen given to others, but had not received herself in many years.
"Of course." This time it was she who lied, and she was sure Akasha knew it when she smiled sadly in response.
"You must be very tired," she said. "You should try to sleep."
Akasha's hand retracting from beneath the blanket, Cinderella found the soft touch hurt just as much, if for a very different reason. Feeling tears push
against her eyes, she settled back against the mattress, grateful when Akasha pretended not to notice.
For a time, there was silence, but not sleep. Cinderella was not sure if she was keeping Akasha up, or if it was Akasha who kept her awake, but she knew by
the breathing next to her the other woman was not asleep.
"If you do not like the king, why are you here?" she found the nerve to ask. "Why do you choose this life?"
"I did not choose this life." Akasha's voice came from the darkness. "This life chose me."
"Does that not bother you?" Cinderella questioned.
"I do not think about it," Akasha returned. "My mother, she was glad, I think, that I found somewhere to go."
"But you could go anywhere," Cinderella said at once. "You could be an apprentice. Or a wife. Or whatever else there is in this kingdom."
Feeling the soft movement as Akasha sighed beside her, Cinderella knew it was the shake of Akasha's head.
"Why not?" she asked.
"I have a taint on me," Akasha stated, and Cinderella felt the tears press with greater force, the statement one she herself could make. Though she had
spent the last three nights in Troyale at a ball in a gown that made her look like wealth, and, though she knew those of Naxos could not see it, she could
still feel what remained of the hearth she had slept on, the ash and grit that clung to her. The taint on her had always shown clearly until the nights of
the festival, though, and the magic that turned her clean and gave her the fine dress.
"I do not see it," Cinderella whispered.
"It is not on the outside," Akasha explained hesitantly. "When I was a girl, I played with the children of my father's friends in the wood that lives
inside the town walls. One friend, his father was a butcher, still is, and we would watch him work.
"One day, his son had the idea that we should play butcher. I would be the cook, my friend Salle the assistant, and the butcher's son and a boy Chezz would
be the butchers. Salle's little brother Toam, he would play the pig. He was so excited to be included, sprawling upon the ground with his eyes closed."
Lost in bittersweet memory, a pained smile flashed over Akasha's face, barely visible. "It was so funny," she said. "Then, the butcher's son slit Toam's
throat. It was a real knife. We did not understand, you see, that you cannot play at that."
As she stopped talking, Akasha's words weighed down the darkness. Feeling it sinking against her chest, Cinderella sucked at shallow breaths, unable to
imagine such a thing. "What happened next?" she breathed.
"Some passing hunters seized us, and took us to the officials. In the chambers, they laid Toam limp on the floor. We thought he was still playing." When
Akasha's voice broke, Cinderella felt safe enough to let the tears roll at last down her cheeks. "They offered the butcher's son the choice of an apple or
a gold piece for the meat he had carved. When he chose the apple, they knew he did not understand what he had done. Now..." Akasha lifted her head, looking
across the room, and there was just light enough for Cinderella to make out the shapes as she followed Akasha's gaze to the eunuch, who slept upright in
his chair, vigilant even in sleep.
"He will not even run his father's trade," Akasha continued, dropping her head back down next to Cinderella's. "We did not understand. Then, one day, we
did."
"You cannot believe you deserve to be punished for that," Cinderella returned.
"I cannot believe that I do not," Akasha countered. "But," she sighed, "enough talk of past sorrow. Tell me something interesting. How did you end up
here?"
Glancing to her in the darkness, Cinderella could see only a swath of Akasha's face turned toward her, eyes focused as she awaited her story, but, if
Akasha did not want to hear of past sorrow, Cinderella did not know what story she could tell.
"I do not know exactly," she said at last, beginning at the end. "There was a ball."
"A ball?"
"Do you know of them?"
"Yes," Akasha said wistfully. "Though we are never in attendance."
"But you live at the palace," Cinderella said.
"That does not mean we are welcome at its festivities," Akasha stated, and Cinderella did not understand.
"The entire village was invited," she continued. "The prince, it was rumored, was looking for a wife. It was going to be the grandest festival Troyale had
ever seen, but I... I could not go."
"Why not?" Akasha prompted with a smile. "More important things to do?"
Surprised at her own laughter, Cinderella clapped her hand to her mouth to keep from waking the others. "No, it was my family. They did not want me to
attend," she responded simply, sparing Akasha the sadness as per her request. "But I went to the tree where my mother was buried, and a dress came down."
"From the tree?" Akasha eyed her curiously.
"I know it is hard to believe." Cinderella cast her eyes to the blanket.
"I know there is magic," Akasha replied gently. "It has just never come to me."