Ashes Before Midnight

Elara

My earliest memory is red.

Not roses.

Not ribbons.

Blood.

It stained the snow beneath my mother's body in strange blooming shapes while the adults tried desperately to shield my eyes.

Too late.

I remember my father falling to his knees beside her.

I remember the torn velvet of her cloak caught beneath frozen branches.

And I remember the silence afterward.

Not ordinary silence.

The kind that changes the air inside a house forever.

They told me wolves killed her.

A hunting accident.

A tragedy.

But for years afterward, every howl beyond the forest made my stomach twist until I could no longer breathe.

I was five when my mother died.

And my father spent the next year pretending grief was something a man could survive quietly.

He stopped sleeping properly after that.

I know because I used to hear him walking the halls at night.

Slow footsteps.

Always ending outside my bedroom door.

Sometimes he entered.

Sometimes he only stood there.

Listening.

As if reassuring himself I was still alive.

---

When Lady Vivianne Laurent entered our lives, she wore mourning black despite never knowing my mother at all.

Elegant.

Beautiful.

Cold around the edges.

Father mistook her gentleness for kindness.

I mistook it for safety.

We were both wrong.

"A child needs a mother," the neighbors kept telling Father.

And perhaps he believed if another woman stood where my mother once had, the emptiness in our home would finally shrink.

So he married Vivianne.

She arrived with her children: Rosalie and Adrian.

Rosalie smiled too sweetly even as a child.

Adrian barely spoke at all.

At first, Vivianne treated me delicately.

Like glass.

She brushed my hair herself.

Held my chin when speaking to me.

Bought me dresses I was too afraid to dirty.

"You are precious now," she would whisper.

Now.

Even then, something about that word unsettled me.

But Father smiled more after she arrived.

And when you are young, you learn very quickly that happiness is fragile.

You do not question it when it appears.

You protect it.

Even if it costs you something.

---

The famine began slowly.

Then all at once.

Father spent less time home after that. Entire villages were collapsing from sickness and starvation while the royal capital continued glittering like heaven itself.

I remember overhearing arguments through study doors late at night.

Father's voice.

Vivianne's colder one.

"The king could open the grain reserves," Father snapped once. "People are dying."

Vivianne sounded bored.

"People are always dying."

"They are starving."

"And yet the palace still stands. Curious, isn't it?"

I remember gripping the hallway railing tightly because I had never heard Father sound hateful before.

"You disgust me."

Silence followed.

Heavy silence.

Then footsteps approached the door and I ran before they could see me listening.

The next morning Vivianne smiled at breakfast like nothing had happened.

But afterward, she never touched my hair gently again.

---

Father died during the second winter of the famine.

At least, that is the version they gave us.

Two royal guards arrived before dawn carrying his satchel.

I remember the leather looked darker than usual.

Wet.

One guard would not meet my eyes.

The other kept rubbing his thumb against the royal crest sewn into his gloves as though he wished he could disappear inside it.

"What happened?" I asked.

Neither answered immediately.

"A fever," one finally muttered.

The lie sounded rehearsed.

Father had worked through plague outbreaks before. He understood disease better than most physicians in the kingdom.

He would not have died carelessly.

Not him.

Not my father.

"Did he suffer?" I whispered.

The younger guard looked physically ill.

Vivianne stepped forward before he could speak.

"Enough questions," she said sharply, taking the sealed letter from their hands.

I saw fear flicker across both guards' faces.

Fear.

Not grief.

Not pity.

Fear.

That was the moment suspicion first planted itself inside me like a thorn beneath skin.

Small.

Sharp.

Impossible to remove.

---

Everything changed after the funeral.

Vivianne stopped pretending entirely.

Rosalie followed her example eagerly.

The dresses disappeared first.

Then the tutors.

Then my bedroom.

"You have no reason to waste space upstairs anymore," Vivianne informed me calmly while servants carried my belongings toward the old storage room near the kitchens.

I stared at her.

"This was my father's house."

"And now it is mine."

Simple as that.

Like erasing a person required only paperwork.

---

Rosalie invented the nickname.

I had been cleaning ashes from the fireplace when she grabbed my chin suddenly and laughed.

"You look filthy."

Soot covered my hands and cheekbones.

"How unfortunate," she mocked loudly. "Our little Cinderella has finally become part of the fireplace."

The servants laughed carefully.

Not because it was funny.

Because surviving in that house required choosing sides.

After that, the name followed me everywhere.

Cinderella.

Ash girl.

Kitchen rat.

I learned quickly that humiliation becomes easier to survive when you stop reacting to it.

So I stopped reacting.

At least outwardly.

Inside was different.

Inside, something slowly began hardening.

---

Adrian was the only gentle thing left in that house.

He never called me Cinderella.

Not once.

When Vivianne withheld meals, he sneaked bread into my room.

When Rosalie tore one of my dresses out of spite, Adrian repaired it himself with crooked stitches and bleeding fingertips.

"You are terrible at sewing," I told him once quietly.

He smiled faintly.

"And yet you are still wearing it."

For a while, he became my shield.

Not a perfect one.

But enough.

Enough to remind me kindness still existed somewhere.

As he grew older, so did the arguments between him and Vivianne.

"You treat her like a servant," he snapped one evening.

Vivianne barely looked up from her tea.

"She is lucky I treat her at all."

Rosalie laughed.

Adrian slammed his hand against the table so hard the silverware rattled.

"She is family."

"No," Vivianne replied calmly. "She is a burden."

I remember lowering my eyes because looking at him hurt too much then.

He cared.

And caring inside that house was dangerous.

---

When Adrian turned sixteen, the military summons arrived.

Vivianne volunteered him before breakfast had even finished.

"Serving the kingdom is an honor," she declared proudly.

Adrian looked at me instead of her.

That terrified me more than the announcement itself.

Because it felt like goodbye.

The night before he left, he found me peeling potatoes in the kitchens after midnight.

Rain battered the windows softly.

Neither of us spoke for a long while.

Finally he placed something cold into my palm.

A silver knife.

"For protection," he said quietly.

I stared at it.

"Against who?"

His silence answered everything.

My throat tightened painfully.

"You'll come back?"

"Yes."

The lie sat between us immediately.

We both heard it.

---

Three months later, snow returned to the estate.

So did the loneliness.

"Cinderella!"

Rosalie's voice sliced through the hallway.

I closed my eyes briefly before climbing upstairs carrying fresh laundry.

She stood near her bedroom mirror adjusting pearl earrings.

"You missed dust beneath the bed."

"I cleaned it already."

The slap came fast enough to ring inside my skull.

I stumbled sideways into the wall.

Rosalie smiled beautifully.

"Then perhaps your memory is failing."

Vivianne appeared behind her holding a teacup.

"There is no need to bruise her face," she sighed lightly. "People may think we are cruel."

Rosalie laughed.

I tasted blood.

Vivianne's eyes settled on me lazily.

"You may sleep by the fireplace tonight. Your coughing disturbed the servants again."

The servants.

Not family.

Never family.

Outside, snow drifted softly across the darkened estate.

Inside, I lowered my head and whispered the words they wanted from me.

"Yes, Mother."

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