Chapter 2 Glass and Gilded Lies

Paige

I read the sentence twice.

Desire denied did not die. It sharpened.

My pulse gave a small, uninvited skip.

That was definitely not how the Cinderella of my childhood had spoken.

I shifted against the pillows and pulled the blue book higher in my lap. The first pages followed the familiar shape of the story closely enough. A young woman reduced to servant in her own home. Cruel stepsisters. A father too weak to intervene.

But this Cinderella was different.

She wasn’t meek or waiting sweetly for someone to rescue her. There was wit in her observations and restraint in her silence, the kind that suggested she was watching everyone around her and deciding how much of herself they deserved to see.

The archivist in me started paying attention to the language. Some phrasing felt older than the binding, richer and stranger than any modern retelling should have been. Other passages carried an intimacy that made me increasingly aware Andy hadn’t been teasing when he’d warned me these weren’t children’s stories.

Cinderella endured her stepsisters’ demands with outward patience, but something restless moved beneath the words. She wasn’t waiting for salvation. She was waiting for an opening.

I understood that more than I wanted to.

By the time her godmother appeared, I had stopped checking the clock.

There were no glittering wings or cheerful bursts of nonsense. She stepped from silver moonlight as though darkness itself had opened to admit her. Her magic transformed pumpkins, mice, and worn fabric with serene authority, more sorceress than benevolent fairy.

As I read, my apartment became too quiet. The refrigerator stopped humming. Traffic from the street below faded. Even the occasional footsteps from upstairs disappeared.

I lowered the book and listened.

Nothing.

“That isn’t creepy at all,” I whispered.

I should probably have closed the book, but Cinderella was standing before her godmother while midnight silk was drawn around her body, and curiosity had already gotten me this far.

The description was so vivid I could almost feel the ribbons tightening along my own back. Jeweled combs slid into Cinderella’s hair, and my hand rose absently toward the loose strands escaping my bun.

Then the godmother knelt and placed a glass slipper against Cinderella’s foot.

The page shimmered.

I blinked and leaned closer.

For one disorienting second, the ink seemed to loosen from the paper. Letters curved and stretched until the words looked less like print and more like dark water disturbed by an unseen hand.

“What the hell?”

Warm heaviness settled over me before I could move. The book remained steady in my hands while the room blurred around its edges.

I knew I should put it down.

Instead, I read the next sentence.

The carriage rolled beneath a moonless sky, gilded wheels flashing beneath lantern light.

Tick.

My gaze lifted to the clock beside my bed.

Tick.

The sound came again, louder than it should have.

I looked back at the page.

Only now it wasn’t coming from my nightstand. It was coming from somewhere beyond the words.

The bedroom tilted beneath me. I grabbed for the mattress, but my fingers closed around nothing. For one impossible heartbeat, the page seemed to open beneath me.

Then the world dropped away.

Hands were tightening something around my waist.

I gasped and twisted toward the touch.

Two women dressed in silver gauze stood behind me, pulling ribbons through the back of a midnight-blue gown while a third arranged my hair. A towering gold-framed mirror reflected the room and someone who looked enough like me to steal my breath.

My honey-strawberry hair fell in polished waves threaded with crystal pins. The gown molded itself to every curve I usually softened beneath loose sweaters and cardigans, its bodice lifting my breasts while a high slit exposed most of one leg whenever I moved.

Apparently enchanted Cinderella had never received the memo about modesty.

“What is this?”

One of the women smiled as she tightened the final ribbon.

“The prince has been waiting.”

I looked toward the open doorway, then back at the gown.

Ball. Carriage. Glass slippers.

Cinderella.

Understanding arrived all at once, but the room was too detailed for my mind to accept it. I could smell beeswax from the candles, feel cool marble beneath my feet, hear fabric whisper when I breathed.

This wasn’t reading.

Someone dabbed perfume against my wrists while another woman slipped a glass shoe onto my foot. It should have been rigid and uncomfortable. Instead it fit as though made from the shape of me.

The godmother appeared behind my reflection, silver eyes meeting mine.

“Remember,” she said, “at midnight, all enchantments become choices.”

Before I could ask what that meant, the room changed.

One moment I stood before the mirror. The next, I was descending a sweeping marble staircase toward a ballroom blazing with candlelight.

Music filled the space below. Mirrors scattered hundreds of flames across silk gowns, jeweled throats, embroidered coats, and polished floors.

Then a man across the ballroom turned toward me.

Everything else became irrelevant.

The prince wore black velvet with gold threaded along the cuffs, broad shoulders filling the tailored coat with insulting perfection. His face was beautiful enough to justify staring, but it was his eyes that held me.

Blue.

Nothing like Andy’s amber.

The thought came from nowhere.

Before I could wonder why I’d compared them, the prince started toward me. People moved aside without being asked, and he crossed the ballroom with the confidence of a man who had never questioned whether the world would make room.

He stopped before me and bowed over my hand, his mouth hovering above my knuckles just long enough to turn courtesy into something else.

“I was beginning to think beauty had grown too vain to attend my court.”

The arrogance should have annoyed me.

Instead, I smiled. “Or perhaps your reputation discouraged me.”

His eyes brightened. “Good. I dislike women too easily impressed.”

He offered his hand.

I looked at it, fully aware I could refuse.

I didn’t.

The moment my fingers settled into his, he drew me into the dance. His hand rested properly at my waist before slipping lower, close enough to the curve of my ass that I became acutely aware of every inch between us.

“You look,” he murmured near my ear, “as though you were made for trouble.”

“And you sound very practiced at delivering it.”

“Only when inspired.”

His smile told me he knew exactly what his proximity was doing to me.

When the music ended, he didn’t release my hand.

Beyond the ballroom windows, moonlight silvered a maze of gardens and fountains.

“Walk with me.”

There was invitation beneath the confidence, an opening left for refusal.

Every sensible instinct I possessed suggested I should remain beneath the chandeliers.

I tightened my fingers around his.

“Yes.”

His smile changed.

And somewhere above the ballroom, the clock began to chime.