Cinderella Is Dead(75)

“You’ve brought me here to bully me? You’re pathetic.” Anger wells up like water behind a dam. He’s repellent, and I can’t stand to be so near to him. He angles himself in front of me, my back to the wall.

“You say you know what I am and yet …” He leans in close, staring me in the eye. “I think you have no idea.”

I push away the fear that has crept in, and I stare back at him, which seems to catch him off guard. He blinks repeatedly as if I’ve startled him. He’s probably never had someone detest him as openly as I do.

“Cinderella didn’t love you the way you wanted her to,” I say. “She rejected you, and you’ve spent all this time punishing every woman who reminds you of her? How very pathetic.”

He leers at me and leans forward, pressing his forehead into mine so forcefully it hurts. His jaw clenches up as he balls his fists. He hisses air between his teeth and then relaxes, leaning back. “I am going to hold you up as a shining example of how no one should ever think they can disobey me without consequence. Your name will be scrawled in the history books as the girl who tried to defy me and was destroyed.”

He would use my fight to end him as fodder for another book of lies. I think of people whispering my name as a curse, fearing to walk in my footsteps. I can’t let that happen.

My heart crashes in my chest. I take a deep breath. I straighten up and plant my feet. I reach into the folds of my dress and grasp my dagger. In one quick move, I plunge it into his neck. I twist the blade the way Constance showed me. He blinks. Standing upright, he staggers, clutching at his throat. I jump back, pulling the blade out. I smile at him. I’ve done it. I’ve ended him.

Constance said that if I killed him, he would probably collapse in a heap.

King Manford doesn’t move.

She told me blood would rush from the wound.

Manford does not bleed.

Constance said when people die, sometimes they groan and sputter.

Manford does neither.

The sound echoing off the walls is something I hadn’t expected to hear, something that makes my blood run cold, something that makes me realize I’ve made a terrible mistake.

A laugh.





34





I stumble back as Manford laughs himself into a fit. He snatches my knife away.

“That was your plan?”

The hole in his neck is gaping. I didn’t miss, and yet he is still alive, taunting me.

“Take her away,” he says.

A flurry of activity erupts on my right. Palace guards appear from out of nowhere and drop a hood over my head. Someone yanks my arm so hard it feels like my shoulder might come out of its socket. Pain shoots into my fingertips. My hands are bound in front of me, and I am pushed down the hallway. Someone grabs my elbow.

“Get off me!” I scream. I swing my arm up as far as I can before thrusting it backward, hitting the soft flesh of what I picture is somewhere in the person’s midsection. A yelp rewards my effort. Laughter and a snide remark from the others let me know I’ve hit the guard in a far more sensitive place.

The cloth covering my face shifts so I can see the floor. The guards lift me as we descend a set of stairs, and the ground below transforms from polished wood to gravel and dirt. I struggle against the hands that hold me but can’t make contact again. A door clicks open, and a guard drops me onto a cold, damp floor. My hands still roped together, I pull the hood from my head as the door clangs shut. I throw my entire weight against it, only to lose my balance and fall to the floor again.

“Let me out!” I scream. I hear the murmur of voices.

“Be patient,” the king’s voice hisses through the door. “You’ll have me all to yourself soon enough.”

Bells toll in the distance. It’s eleven o’clock.

“See you at the stroke of midnight,” the king whispers.

A swell of anger courses through me as I drive my foot back into the door as hard as I can. He laughs before his footsteps recede down the hall.

The room I’m in is no bigger than a pantry. Stone walls, no windows, and the ceiling slopes low enough that I can touch it with my outstretched arms. A steady drip of water leaks from one of the creases where the wall meets the ceiling. The stub of a candle sits on a rock in the corner, along with flint and a thin, twisted piece of linen. I use the rock to ignite the flint, and a shower of sparks briefly lights up the room. It takes me several strikes with my bound hands to finally set the linen aflame to light the candle with it. It casts shadows all around me, making the space feel even smaller.

I can’t believe what I’ve witnessed. My dagger went straight into his neck and still he lives. Amina told me he was not a normal man. We assumed he couldn’t die, but we hadn’t considered that he couldn’t be killed. Now I’m unsure if he can be stopped at all, but I know for certain he’ll be back for me soon and I need to find a way to escape.

Gathering my resolve, I set to work wriggling my hands out of the restraints. The rope digs into my wrists, causing a deep gash. Pain shoots up my arm with every tug. The pain becomes too much to bear, and I search for something to cut the rope with. The bricks and stones that make up the wall are uneven and jagged, and some of them have cracked clean in half. I find a piece of one that looks sharp enough and twist my hands around, sawing at the rope until, after several minutes and several more cuts to my hands, the rope frays and I wriggle out.