Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep.

It was the poet Rumi. A smile came to my face, but I quickly squashed it.

Grayson was sending me love notes, even if we weren’t acknowledging that’s what they were…they were love notes. Like the ones my favorite poets used to send. My heart thumped, just as the door to my room burst open.

I pulled my sheet up to my chest, as one by one, servants dressed in black tore into my closet, ripping out my clothes, following each other out of my room like a line of ants.

My questions died on my lips. At first, I thought the servants had officially snapped and given up hiding their hatred for me. Then West came into the room.

“What’s going on?” I asked, still watching the servants carry my things out of the room.

“Apparently this wing is being fumigated.”

The way he spoke alluded to his disbelief.

“Fumigated? Just this one?”

“I’m being moved to the north, and you’re being moved to the south.”

I pushed my cheek with my tongue. “That’s… interesting.”

A servant came out of my closet, carrying the one dress I’d picked myself. Forgetting modesty, I dropped my sheets and dashed after him. I snatched it out of his hands.

“I need something to wear today.”

He eyed me coldly and kept walking.

Hours after Grayson left, the sun had risen, and I still sat in my pajamas, thinking. Grayson had poked at so many of my wounds.

A soft knock on the door had me lifting my head. I mumbled something about coming in, and West appeared, fully dressed for the day. I had some kind of appointment with the du Lacs and the Crownes, a tea date at the most exclusive tearoom in Crowne Point, probably in the East Coast.

Seeing me in my pajamas, he raised a brow.

“I’ve been thinking…I don’t want to go,” I said. “All this press isn’t a good idea. It doesn’t feel right.”

I want to eventually go back to who I was.

Blending in among everyone.

Just me, Story, not Cinderella, not anyone.

This was never supposed to be part of it.

West frowned. “Angel, have you not looked online?”

Not since I saw the last trend, a person who discovered how my mother had died. Everyone was having a field day with that. Cinderella’s mother was supposed to die silently, peacefully, with roses atop her grave.

Not with track marks in her arm.

I felt exposed. Violated. I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening.

“Not recently,” was all I said.

He loosed a deep exhale that settled like lead in my gut, then came to sit beside me. He pulled out his phone, and all he did was search my name.

I stared at the results in dismay.

The STORY of How the Slutty Stepsister Stole Cinderella’s Spot