Glass Slippers, page 1
Also in the SISTERS EVER AFTER series
Thornwood
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2022 by Leah Cypess
Cover art copyright © 2022 by Kelsey Eng
Thornwood excerpt text copyright © 2021 by Leah Cypess. Cover art copyright © 2021 by Kelsey Eng.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cypess, Leah, author.
Title: Glass slippers / Leah Cypess.
Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2022] | Series: Sisters ever after ; book 2 | Audience: Ages 9–12. | Summary: “When Tirza is accused of stealing Queen Ella’s glass slippers, she must find the true culprit before the King and Queen lose their patience”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020054100 (print) | LCCN 2020054101 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-593-17887-4 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-593-17889-8 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Sisters—Fiction. | Characters in literature—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.C9972 Gl 2022 (print) | LCC PZ7.C9972 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9780593178898
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Contents
Cover
Also in the Sisters Ever After Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Thornwood
About the Author
To Tìkva
The best of youngest sisters
PROLOGUE
I didn’t do it.
I know you don’t believe me. I can hardly blame you. So why do I even bother saying it?
I guess I’ve been saying it for so long that I’ve gotten into the habit. And I’m going to keep saying it, over and over, until I find someone who doesn’t think I’m a liar and a thief.
Of course, that would have to be someone who doesn’t know me. Who hasn’t heard the story of my family, and how they treated Cinderella, and how they were punished for it.
Who hasn’t seen the evidence and realized that every bit of it points to one conclusion: I’m the one who stole the queen’s glass slippers.
Most of you were expecting something like this from me. The third stepsister, the one not even mentioned in most of the stories. I was, after all, only a baby when my mother married Cinderella’s father, and only five years old when Cinderella went to the ball and caught the eye of the prince. Nobody could blame me for the things my family had done to her.
That was what Cinderella said when she exiled my sisters but welcomed me into the castle.
Everyone else knew better. It was inevitable, they said, that I would grow up as wicked as my two other sisters. It was a miracle I didn’t reveal my true nature until I was eleven years old.
Given what happened, I can’t exactly claim they were wrong. But they weren’t one hundred percent right either.
Let me start at the beginning and see if I can make you understand. About the glass slippers and the godmother’s plan and how everything went dreadfully wrong. Maybe you’ll forgive me; maybe not. That’s up to you.
But there’s one thing I really, really need you to believe.
I didn’t do it.
My original plan for that day was excellent. It doesn’t mean much now, but for the record, I want you to know how well things could have gone.
It was the morning of the annual parade. I planned to spend the day in the nursery playing with the royal princes. Queen Ella’s children, Prince Baro and Prince Elrin, were also not allowed to go to the parade. They had begged me to come stay with them, and I had promised.
I would never break a promise to the princes. Even that time when I told Baro that if he went to sleep, I would sing him the entire ballad of Sleeping Beauty while standing on my head. I hadn’t thought he would remember, but he had, and I’d done it. Gilma, their nursemaid, had caught me and told everyone, which had gone over really well with the court.
But the princes were the only people in the castle who trusted me, and I would never do anything to betray that trust.
So even when I got close enough to the nursery to hear the wailing, I kept walking. I slowed down a little bit, I admit. I might have winced. But I didn’t stop.
“I want to go to the parade!” That was Baro, who, at five years old, had perfected the art of the tantrum. “It’s not fair! Everyone in the whole world gets to do what they want except me!”
A thud, a crash, and another set of wails—these coming from one-year-old Elrin. I quickened my step, which made me trip on a loose section of the rug. I caught myself against the wall and kept going.
“I’m a prince! That means I can do whatever I want!”
I broke into a jog and wrenched the nursery door open, just in time to see Baro dump a bottle of purple glitter over his little brother’s head.
“Baro!” Gilma cried. “Oh, don’t do that!”
Baro grabbed a jar of glue.
“No, no, no.” Gilma wrung her hands. “That’s not how a prince should behave!”
Elrin yowled, grabbed a chunk of his older brother’s hair, and yanked. Baro shrieked.
“Stop fighting!” Gilma wailed. “What would your subjects think?”
I strode into the room, grabbed Elrin’s hand, and disentangled it from Baro’s hair. Then I held Elrin out of his brother’s reach. Glitter rained down from his clothes, covering me with purple sparkles.
“I have a great idea,” I said. “Once you stop screaming, I’ll tell you all about it.”
While I was waiting Baro out, I calmed Elrin down by giving him a sweet pop. He nuzzled into my shoulder and sucked happily, drizzling sticky saliva down the side of my neck.
“He shouldn’t be having sweets, Tirza,” Gilma said.
I gave her a look. She gave me a look right back, then held a hand out to Baro. “Do you want to help me clean up? I’ll let you hold the dustpan.”
Baro grabbed my skirt and buried his face in it. Gilma’s mouth twisted. She went and got a broom and dustpan from the corner.
I thought about offering to help. Gilma, like me, had an odd position at court: She was a village girl who had been hired long ago as a nursemaid, but she was also given gowns and her own room and allowed to attend banquets and balls when the princes were asleep. That had caused a lot of muttering at court, but eventually, everyone had concluded that it was evidence of the queen’s sweetness and good nature. After all, Queen Ella had once been a commoner, too, just like Gilma.
And like me.
So there had been a time—a brief time—when Gilma and I had been close. Cinderella had suddenly become too busy being queen to spend time with me, and Gilma had been like a replacement older sister. But she had quickly realized that it was bad enough being a commoner in fancy clothes without also having the queen’s wicked stepsister glued to her side. It hadn’t taken her long to join the noblewomen in their whispers and sneers. Then one day, when I was seven years old, she had poured green dye into my hair while two noble girls held me down. They had laughed and laughed. Even more than I remembered the humiliation of walking around with green hair, I remembered the pure delight in Gilma’s laugh.
Gilma had been banned
By the time Gilma had finished cleaning the glitter (well, most of it—there is glitter in that room to this day), Baro had calmed down. “What’s your idea?” he demanded. “Are we going to the parade?”
“Certainly not!” Gilma snapped. “Bad enough that you keep sneaking into your mother’s room. Do you know who gets in trouble when you don’t stay where you belong? I do, that’s who.”
Baro’s lower lip jutted out, and his eyes welled up with tears.
“I have something better!” I said quickly. I knelt in front of Baro—which, unfortunately, meant I put my knee down in an unnoticed patch of glitter. And this dress was almost new; the laundress was going to hate me even more than she already did. “Do you know how hot it is, standing outside in the sun to watch a parade? I would rather be here.”
Gilma snorted. “Convenient, since you’re definitely not allowed to go.”
She wasn’t wrong, but she also wasn’t helping.
“I’m sad to miss the parade too,” Gilma went on, stretching her arms above her head. “But at least I have the ball to look forward to, and that’s just three nights away. The queen gave me a new gown, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s too bad you won’t get to see it, Tirza.”
I kept my eyes on Baro, lowering my voice. “Let’s stay here and make an obstacle course.”
Tears spilled onto Baro’s chubby cheeks. “I hate obstacle courses!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Baro said. “What’s an obstacle course?”
While I explained, Gilma hopped onto the window-sill, straining to get a glimpse of the parade. Which wasn’t going to happen; the parade was on the opposite side of the castle. I chose not to explain that to her.
Half an hour later, Gilma still hadn’t caught on, but at least she stayed out of the way of our obstacle course. She kept her face pressed to the glass, contorting her body to try to see from different angles, muttering, “Why do these things never start on time?” and “Did I miss it already? It’s your fault for distracting me.”
“What,” a voice from the doorway demanded, “are you doing?”
Gilma turned so fast that she overbalanced, fell off the windowsill, and landed face-first onto the blanket hammock that Baro had been carefully setting up for the past ten minutes. He stared at his ruined construction, let out an outraged wail, then broke down and sobbed.
Elrin, who was watching me tie ropes across the top of the cradle, blinked. His lower lip trembled.
He burst into a loud, delighted laugh.
Baro grabbed a pillow and threw it at his brother. It missed and hit me instead.
Gilma glared at me as if this were my fault.
Meanwhile, the person whose fault it actually was stood in the doorway. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I guess the question should be what were you doing?”
“It’s an obstacle course.” I went to pick up Baro, stepping over a maze of wooden blocks. “Well. It was an obstacle course.”
“Whatever you say.” Aden raised his bushy eyebrows as he surveyed the room. He was wearing his court clothes, the ones he put on when he was selling cupcakes to the nobility—gray trousers that were a tiny bit too long on him and a white tunic embroidered with gold thread. I guessed that his regular clothes were being washed and that was why he wasn’t at the parade. He had only one set of nice clothes, and he couldn’t risk getting them dirty.
“It was a mess, and now it’s an even worse mess,” Gilma snapped, glaring at him.
Aden winked at me. “I’m bored. Come to the northern battlements?”
Baro was still wailing into my shoulder—which was now soaked with his tears—and Elrin looked like he was going to cry because I had abandoned him. I shook my head.
“What’s on the northern battlements?” Gilma demanded.
The answer was an actual view of the parade. Of course, Gilma couldn’t leave the princes unattended, but what if we took Baro and Elrin with us? Aden would grumble, but the children would love it. It might even make Baro stop crying about his ruined masterpiece. I opened my mouth to suggest it.
“And don’t think you can leave me with this mess,” Gilma said. “I won’t stand for it. You’re not actually of royal blood, you know. You may like to forget it, but I assure you, no one else in this castle ever does.”
I shut my mouth.
Aden looked from Gilma to me. “Er…should I help clean up?”
“Nope,” I said. I kissed Baro’s smooth cheek and put him down. Glitter scattered off my skirt and rained down on the floor. “I’m sure Gilma can handle all this. Let’s go.”
* * *
As we walked through the hallway, I felt a tiny bit guilty for leaving the children behind. But Aden’s presence at my side was worth the discomfort. I hadn’t seen him for two weeks. And though it wasn’t unusual for him to disappear without telling me why, it still made me panic every time. I had spent the past fourteen days wondering if I had done something to make him hate me, or if someone had told him something terrible about me, or if he had just realized that nobody else in the castle understood why he spent so much time with me.
If he had finally realized I wasn’t worth it.
I couldn’t have blamed him if he had. When Aden wasn’t around, it was glaringly obvious how much everyone else in the castle disliked me. Nobody was outright mean to me, not since Gilma’s punishment after the hair incident. But they didn’t meet my eyes; they spoke to me only as much as was strictly necessary; and they certainly never, ever invited me to do anything with them.
I knew I was supposed to be grateful that Gilma had been punished—like I was supposed to be grateful for everything the queen did for me. But it had made my life a million times harder. The other girls didn’t dare touch me anymore, but they made up for it with sly jeers and caustic laughs, a hundred tiny cuts a day. They never let up, and they never would.
If Queen Ella had asked for my advice back then, I would have told her to leave Gilma alone. But she hadn’t asked. Gilma’s punishment, after all, had impressed everyone with how fair and gracious the queen was. So what if it made everything worse for me?
Everyone in the castle liked Aden, though. The commoners joked and laughed with him, and the nobles eagerly purchased the cupcakes he brought in from the village. He was always welcome to join any group in the castle…as long as he didn’t drag me along.
Every once in a while he took a break from being friends with me. Every time, I was terrified that he had finally given up on me, and every time, I accepted his return gratefully. But this morning, I had come to realize that I was being selfish.
“You know,” I said, and my voice caught. I cleared my throat and started again. “You don’t have to be my friend.”
“Of course I don’t have to,” Aden said. He was a few steps ahead of me, and he didn’t slow down. “I like you.”
“Then why have you been ignoring me?”
He hesitated—just for a second, but I knew him well enough to catch it. “I haven’t been….”
I rushed to catch up with him, got my feet tangled together, and caught myself against the wall. Aden turned, held out a hand as if to help me, but then dropped it to his side.
“I was feeling guilty,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”
“Guilty for what?”
“For nothing,” he said forcefully. “I don’t have anything to feel guilty about. I just got confused.” He turned away. “Come on. If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the parade.”
He took off at a near run.
Looking back…If only I had stopped him. If only I had pressed him and forced him to explain.
