Chapter 2 - THE PROMISE INSIDE THE GLASS
For twelve days, noble daughters and merchants’ heirs entered the throne room to try the slipper. It rejected them without ceremony. The glass remained cold, and no foot could pass its narrow rim.
Adrian disliked the spectacle. The woman he sought had spoken of being judged by her clothes; now the court had transformed her absence into entertainment.
On the thirteenth morning, he dismissed the crowd and took the slipper to Master Orren, the blind craftsman who maintained the royal relics.
Orren did not touch it. “It is carrying a promise.”
“What promise?”
“One spoken freely before midnight. Glass remembers truth, Highness, but it cannot tell you whether truth has been stolen.”
Adrian remembered the final dance. He had leaned close enough to make the mysterious woman smile and whispered words no one else could have heard. He refused to repeat them, even to Orren.
That evening, a messenger arrived from the western district. A young woman had been found unconscious beside a dead ash tree. She wore the other glass slipper.
Her name, the magistrate’s letter said, was Ella.
Adrian rode through the night. He found her in a cottage bed, dark hair across her pale face, the second slipper glowing beside her. When she woke, tears filled her eyes as if she recognized him from a dream.
“You came,” she whispered.
He held the recovered slipper near the one from the stair. Both shone brighter.
Ella looked exactly like the woman from the ball.
May you like
But behind the cottage, half buried in frost, Adrian found another golden feather.
This one was still warm.
