We Kept Her in the Cellar, page 24
Credence groans nearby, and I tear my gaze away from the window to rush to his side. He’s collapsed, one hand covering the open wound of his missing eye, but he is alive. For right now, that is enough.
“Is she gone?” he asks, leaning into my hands. I pat him down, trying to see if she’s damaged him in some other way. To my relief, it seems to be only his eye that she has taken.
“She’s gone,” I reply, and Credence’s face breaks into a beautiful smile, despite the blood in his mouth. I am helpless but to smile back. It turns out I am still capable of some positive emotion after all.
Credence’s hand creeps into mine. Mr. Father struggles up from where he’d been knocked clean to the ground and comes over to us. Together we wake Mother, who rouses easily now that Cinderella is gone, the noxious substance slipping away from her face. We sit in the ruin of the great hall, laughing and crying together, clinging to one another as we contemplate a life without Cinderella. Although I put on a good show for Credence and my family, her last words ring in my mind:
“We are entwined.”
I push the words aside and work with Mother and Mr. Father to lift Credence from the floor. He sways and clutches at his eye, but we manage between the three of us to haul him to his feet. We take a wide berth around the corpse of King Reymond. I’m not sure it’s safe to bury him—I’ll have to make sure his body is burned, even if it means doing it myself.
Slowly, we hobble out of the hall. Mother and Mr. Father take turns supporting Credence on the left and I support his right, the side now missing an eye. I try not to look at the gaping hole where it once was, but it’s hard.
We make our way to the edge of the hall and finally encounter another living being. A man in sumptuous, official-looking robes greets us. He looks about ready to clap all of us in irons, but a word from Credence stops him.
“See that they’re taken care of,” Credence commands and then promptly passes out. The official gives him a startled look, but then nods at us before hurrying off, seemingly following orders.
We continue to usher Credence along the hall until we’re met with a flight of physicians, who must have been summoned by some forward-thinking servant. We pass Credence off to them. Mother and Mr. Father and I are then left alone in the hallway of the palace. The empty spaces where Hortense and Cinderella should be are huge and painful. I stare at my parents, wondering how on earth we are ever going to fill them.
CHAPTER
29
Epilogue
I AWAKE IN A cold sweat, my dreams haunted with swirling tentacles and grotesque gray-green wings. I swing my legs out of bed, ready to run downstairs and intervene with whatever Cinderella is doing but stop as soon as my eyes fully open. I am not at home. Cinderella is not in the cellar. I’m in my new bedroom in the palace, which is on the third floor, with large open windows on three sides that let the light spill in. There is a fire stoked high in the hearth, making the room warm and cheerful.
I flop back onto the bed, staring up at the canopy. Soon, someone will be in with my breakfast and to replace the flowers on the bedside table. No matter how often they are replenished they always seem to smell of rot. The servants in the palace are either used to replacing things frequently or they are well trained enough not to notice that the flowers in my room always seem a bit off, no matter the weather.
It’s been two months since Cinderella’s wedding day. I’ve spent almost all of that time at the palace. Mother and Mr. Father have moved back into my childhood home, but I couldn’t bear to do it myself. The memories—of Hortense, of Cinderella, of everything—are too strong. After the wedding, Credence was out of his mind with pain and infection, unable to give directions of any kind, but the captain of the guard, a shrewd man who knew which way the wind was blowing, offered me rooms in the palace in exchange for information on Cinderella. I gladly accepted.
The palace physicians were able to get Credence’s blood loss and infection under control, although there was no saving his eye. He wears an eyepatch now, and it makes him look much more severe and brooding than he really is. I can’t help but think it’s a good thing, now that he’s king. It might make other heads of state take him more seriously. He’s adjusting to being king and grieving his father. Their relationship was a difficult one, but Credence only had one father and now he’s gone.
My feelings toward Credence are complicated. There’s been no time to muse on our little connection, but for now, I am content to wait. Once he’s had time to grieve his father, and I’ve more fully grieved Hortense, perhaps we can explore something between us. Or perhaps not. I’ve met very few people my own age and I might like to see a bit more of the world. I’m not sure I want to be queen. Or that I should be.
Breakfast arrives, interrupting my musings. It’s brought by a young girl I don’t know and she reminds me of Lilia. I haven’t told Mr. Father of Lilia’s connection to our family for fear he’ll want to fire her as he did Mr. Calton. She just needed a job and knew that our family would pay handsomely for discretion. I will not betray her secret, not after she protected me as best she could.
Today’s breakfast is eggs, fluffy and hot, and fine white toast with butter and jam, alongside a fragrant pot of tea with cream and honey. I take a little bit of everything, moving the food around on my plate to make it seem like I’ve eaten more than I have. I know that the food is delicious, of finer quality even than Mr. Father provided in our house growing up, but it doesn’t satisfy. I’m still hungry.
I get dressed quickly, glancing at the tall grandfather clock that I had brought from home. I still have forty minutes before my meeting with the captain of the guard. I update him on any Cinderella news I have, so that the kingdom can be prepared. If I close my eyes and focus, I get the impression of forests and cold winds. I think she’s near the base of some mountains, with a stream running nearby. The royal cartographers and soldiers take my impressions and try to plot them onto a map. Cinderella is probably near our eastern border at the moment, in an uninhabited stretch of land. I have no idea what she’s doing there.
I pad through the castle with a hood up, hiding my face as best I can. Most people are polite enough not to ask what I’m doing, and while many people know of me as the girl with the monstrous sister, few of them recognize my face. The deep hood still gives me comfort, however, and makes me feel less exposed.
I make it out of the palace easily enough and continue on to the back of the gardens. No one comes here if they can avoid it. It’s where the waste water and kitchen scraps get tossed, left to rot and turn into compost.
The smell is horrific, putrid and with hints of rot. I breathe deep and feel myself relax. Moving quickly, aware that I do not want to be caught here, I sink down to the ground, heedless of the wetness seeping through my clothes. I reach into the pile of scraps and I pull a big handful up to my face: a rotting orange, half a dozen slippery onion skins, and two chicken bones.
I pluck out the orange first, examining it. The rot is spreading out from a single point, a large green circle rimmed with white. I close my eyes and then take a big bite, directly from the center of the mold. It squishes in my mouth, foul juices filling my throat. I swallow and then take another bite, and another, devouring the rest of the orange before moving on to the onion skins, which I allow to slide down my throat with relish. Then it’s the chicken bones. I suck off any remaining rotted meat, then crush the bones between my teeth, slurping marrow from the centers.
I hear a movement nearby and I startle, getting to my feet quickly. My skirt is wet, and I hide it with my cloak. But it’s just a bird, flitting from one tree to another, doing the same thing I am, hoping to find some food scraps. I smile and slip away. The bird can have its fill. My hunger is sated. For now. I know that first thing tomorrow morning I’ll be back.
Cinderella was serious when she said that our connection ran both ways—the price I pay for being healed, for her protection that night, is that she shared some of her nature with me. So far, the only ways it manifests is this hunger, this desire in the pit of my stomach that can only be satisfied by that which is dead and dying. And of course the flowers that begin to wilt and die as soon as they enter my room.
I’m monitoring myself closely, to see if any other signs of Cinderella make themselves known. For now, there’s nothing that makes me think that I am a danger to others. But if that changes, I have a plan. I’m relatively certain I can use my connection to Cinderella to track her down and follow her to her hiding place. If my symptoms worsen, and I feel myself slipping, I’ll chase that connection to its end. And then we’ll see how Cinderella likes a re-do. This time with one of her own kind.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WANT TO START by thanking the team at Crooked Lane for seeing Cinderella, for helping her realize her full potential, and for helping me to realize it. Thank you to Dulce Botello, Mikaela Bender, Mia Bertrand, Stephanie Manova, Megan Matti, Rebecca Nelson, Thaisheemarie Fantauzzi Pérez, Doug White, and Matt Martz. Thank you to my wonderful agent, Emily Keyes, for championing this book, and supporting me the whole way. I know this would not be possible without her. Thank you to Matt Burgess for being a wonderful professor at Macalester, and not only teaching me how to improve my craft but how to take writing seriously. Thank you to Electric Boogaloo for celebrating my successes, and to Writer’s Inc, who were sure of my success before I was, and who provided amazing feedback (and a plethora of foot emojis) as I went through my drafts, editing, and more drafts, and more editing. Thank you in particular to my readers: Darlene, for 2 AM reads to get this manuscript ready; to Venom and Kathy, for being crucial early voices who loved Cinderella; and to Sam and Nicole, who volunteered to read their junior-high friend’s work of unknown quality. Thank you to Kelley and Kevin for being the best writing retreat buddies a girl could ask for, and for talking me through Cinderella while I drank one million cans of sparkling water. Thank you to my mother for supporting me and being my number one fan, to my father for instilling my love of reading and writing, and to my partner, Tom, who has done so much in our daily lives to make sure that my writing habit could flourish. And thank you, dear reader, for getting this far and reading through my acknowledgements.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
W. R. Gorman attended Macalester College and Hamline University, where she studied Linguistics and Hispanic Studies, and Teaching Spanish, respectively. Her hobbies include cooking, snuggling cats, and reading absolutely everything she can get her hands on. She now resides in Saint Paul with her partner, child, and three extremely mischievous cats.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Wendy Gorman
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-63910-914-2
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-63910-915-9
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First Edition: November 2024
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W. R. Gorman, We Kept Her in the Cellar
