The Glass Shoe

         The disappointment Feary Godimere felt was surprising. Normally, he would be angry, but Cinder was so perfect. She’s never let him down before and he never thought she would. He needed his bilkers to be at a hundred percent and most of them couldn’t seem to manage fifty. Cinder was different. Training her was the easiest job he had ever been assigned, and he’s worked with ones who had come from them at birth. Cinder didn’t join the rebellion until she was sixteen. Her father died, her stepmother threw her out and the officials of the New Kingdom did nothing when she begged for assistance to take back her land and inheritance. Within a year she was one of the best bilkers their society had. Cinder could fit into any crowd, adapt to any change and she never blew her cover. In the ten years he’s used her, Feary’s never had a problem, until now.

         The scam was simple. The New Kingdom was prospering; the rebellion—filled with those loyal to the old king and kingdom—was flailing in the water. With Prince Charm’s arranged marriage to Princess Aimee of the north, the New Kingdom would be unstoppable. Feary was informed that the prince was unhappy with a forced arrangement. So, when it came time for the Holiday Festivals, it would be as simple as sending in a woman to intrigue the prince. He needed someone with enough heart that he would be drawn in and enough mystery that he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about her. Someone he would search for, not forever, but just long enough to send a jilted Aimee—and her armed men— back north where they belonged. Cinder was the obvious choice.

         “You sent for me, sir?” Cinder asked, smiling at him from the entryway of his tower office.

         He stared for a moment, as he always did when he first saw her. “Yes, come in, have a seat.”

         She walked across his office and leaned at the front of his desk, gazing down at him.

         “There has been an issue.” He said, it was difficult not to smile at her, but he had to remember who he was. It didn’t matter that she was his favourite. He was her superior and she has let them down. “Your assignment last week. Anything you want to tell me?” He gave her a chance to come clean without meaning to. But she just raised a brow at him and shrugged. Anyone else would be on the floor in convulsions right now for daring to lie to him. These bilkers, with all of their training and fieldwork like to think they are above the authority that sit in towers to draw up plans or hunker on sacred grounds to bring forth storms and other disasters. They often forget how powerful they are. Feary Godimere could undo Cinder with a flick of his wrist. He could make her confess every misdeed she’s committed since birth, he could turn her into a feeble minded thing good only for toiling in one of their camp kitchens or even a pumpkin if he so felt like it. But, he thought, dancing his eyes over her flawless legs, what was waste that would be. So he gave her one more chance. “You’re certain, my dear, nothing at all, not even something about a shoe?”

         The skin between her eyebrows pinched together and she shrugged again. “Well, sir, I did lose a shoe, what of it?”

         “You didn’t lose just any shoe, you lost a glass shoe,” he stood, finally feeling the anger that he should. “You lost a shoe that I specifically told you not to wear!”

         She giggled and he wanted to throw her out the window. Perhaps he had always been too easy on her, she didn’t fear him like the rest. “Feary, I wouldn't take fashion advice from you.” She ran her delicate hand across the golden tie of his cloak. “These are great, really, that air of mystery can be very… sexy. But you  never wear anything else. Now—”

         “Enough!” He caught her wrist when she rested a hand on his chest. The more she joked and smiled at him, the more he felt himself softening to her and he did not want to do that. “When I tell you to do something, you do it! Remember your place or I shall be more than happy to remind you of it!”

         She wriggled her wrist free and gave him a little shove. Faery’s power was beyond physical, so his actual strength, in human terms, was lacking. “Fine! Gods!” She said as she moved around his desk and sat in one of the wooden chairs. “I loved the shoes, truly, I was grateful for the gift. But the castle service train left at midnight. How else was I supposed to slip through  the castle gate unnoticed? I was cutting it too close, the shoe slipped off my foot and fell under the stairs.” She took a breath and looked at him with big soft eyes. “Feary, you told me the most important part of my mission was the part where I disappeared without a trace. How could I have lived with myself if I let you down so?” The lower arcs of her eyes were heavy with crocodile tears. She was good.

         He shook his head and walked around, stood close so he could look down at her. “I had those shoes custom ordered. Prince Charm traced the shoe back to the maker, the shoemaker gave him your name and an address, he’ll come for you tomorrow.” 

         Her eyes narrowed as she glared up at him. “You gave the shoemaker my information? Why would you do such a careless thing?”

         “Not your real information. He has your alias, Ella of the Westwood.”

         “Oh,” She giggled again. “Problem solved, I’ll just be at the cottage when he arrives.” She stood again and placed her hand on her cheek. “I can fix this.”

         “Aye, and what of when he asks for your hand? When you reject him, he’ll go running with open arms to Aimee.”

         “Then I will not reject him.” It only took two inches to close the space between them, she brushed her lips softly into his. “We seek to weaken The New Kingdom, do we not? Ella of the Westwood, invented as she may be, is of noble birth on paper. The king can not deny his son on this.”

         On instinct, his arm moved around her waist. She was brilliant, truly brilliant. “Ah, so when he rejects Aimee for a poor noble, the North will never be reconciled to the New Kingdom, even after you leave him at the alter.” He kissed her again, longer this time.

         Her smile grew even more devilish than her eyes. “Are you not tired of these games we play? We never do any lasting damage.”

         “What are you suggesting?”

         “That I do not leave the Prince before the wedding, but rather, just afterwards. No one would dare interrupt a prince on the night of his wedding. When they find him in the morning it will be too late for poor Prince Charm.”

         There was a reason she was his favourite. “And a Kingdom without an heir…”

         “Is a kingdom doomed to failure.” She gave the tie of his cloak a playful tug. “So? Shall I make haste to the cottage to greet the Prince in the morning?”

         “You shall.”

         Her face lit up and she kissed him again, Feary could get used to this. “I will not let you down!”

         As she made her way toward the exit, Feary felt unsettled about just how perfect this little scheme worked out. Cinder was a soldier, not permitted to make plans, and yet, because of an error, she’ll end up the hero of the rebellion. He chuckled aloud. She turned back and smiled at him. “What is it?”

         “I was just thinking how the New Kingdom would be brought down all because your shoe got stuck in some mud.”

         She shrugged. “Perhaps it’s fate.” Then she went out.

         Feary Godimere knew that fate does no favours for them and was beginning to suspect that she knew it to. Cinder never said that her shoe got caught in some mud and it suddenly seems a little too convenient that Prince Charm found it instead of some servant who would have thrown it out with the rest of the party trash. He would have to watch that one, she was better than he had given her credit for, and he had given her more credit than anyone else. If he wasn’t careful, she would be ruling him someday.

          end

word count: 1,487