Page 15 of Venom & Vanity

“Is that true?” Grumpy presses, voice flat, testing.

Gus exhales and drags a hand down his face like the truth costs him something. “Yeah. We're who she says we are.”

Grumpy, Daddy, and Sir trade a look over my head, quick and loaded, a whole conversation happening in the space of half a second that I'm not invited to. It shouldn't bother me. I tell myself that. It bothers me anyway.

“Inside. Now.” Daddy's voice snaps like a whip, his arm bands around my waist and hauls me back toward the sad little shack they call home. I don't fight him. I let him drag me because I need to know how the princes ended up rotting on this rock? How did Cinder get here? And under all of it, quieter, uglier⁠—

Why the fuck am I here?

I thought I knew. I thought it was simple. The Evil Queen hated me enough to want me gone, wanted my crown bad enough to ship me off the edge of the world to get it.

But standing here now, something feels wrong in a way that has nothing to do with her.

Like this was never just about me.

I don't look at the room when Daddy stops. I pull free of him instead, and turn straight to Cinder, tucked into Gus's side like she belongs there, like she's always belonged there.

“You're not just some commoner. Are you?”

The question lands like a slap. All four of them go still in the doorway. The three men trade a look. Cinder doesn't. She keeps her eyes locked on mine, and I feel Daddy, Sir, and Grumpy close ranks around me like they think I need protecting.

I bite down the urge to laugh. These three idiots have no idea I could put a grown man on his back in under ten seconds.

“What gives you that impression?” Cinder's tone is bored, easy, the kind of careless that's supposed to fool people.

It doesn't fool me. I was bred for this. Trained to read a room before I ever learned to read a book, to take a person apart with nothing but the tilt of their chin and the set of their shoulders. The Crown heir of Frostvale doesn't get to be soft. Doesn't get to be stupid.

I feel all three of them tense around me, and I hate that they're here for this. I don't want them to know exactly how sharp I actually am. It's the one card I've still got left to hide.

“These three treat you like an equal.” Jaq opens his mouth to argue and I talk right over him. “Not because you belong to them. Because you're something just as important as they are—maybe more, and they're all working very hard to make sure nobody notices that. You knew I was royalty the second you looked at me, and you never once dropped your eyes. Most people flinch. You didn't. Your whole body's carrying weight it shouldn't be carrying if you're really nobody.” I let the silence sit a beat before I finish her off. “You're somebody, Cinder Charming. I just haven't worked out who yet.”

Cinder's mouth curves, slow and sharp, nothing like the soft, nonchalant look she wore a second ago. “Careful, Snow. Keep talking like that and someone's going to think you actually paid attention in all those diplomacy lessons your father paid a fortune for.”

“Answer the question.”

The silence that follows has teeth in it. Jaq's jaw ticks. Duke won't look at either of us, which tells me more than anything he could say out loud. Gus is the one who finally breaks, tightening his arm around her like he's bracing for what's about to leave her mouth.

“My name isn't just Cinder Charming.” She lifts her chin, and for the first time since we clasped hands like idiots in the yard, I see it, the thing she's been hiding under all that careful, commoner nothing. Spine straight. Shoulders back. The exact posture they drilled into me from the time I could walk. “I'm the great-granddaughter of Lucious Prince. My father tried to take the throne of Ashcroft two years ago.”

The floor tilts under me.

“He failed?” I breathe it out, already knowing the answer lives in the wreckage standing in front of me.

“He failed. And King Octavious made sure the whole world believed it was my father's greed and nothing else. Ruined him. Buried him in debt and shame until there was nothing left to bury.” Her voice doesn't shake, but something underneath it does, old grief scraped raw and painted over so many times it almost passes for steady. “My stepmother used his death to move herself and her daughters straight into the palace he tried to take. She has no idea who I really am.”

“And you three—” I look between Jaq, Gus, Duke, “—your father shipped you here to keep you from ever meeting her.”

“The suitors' ball.” Jaq's voice comes out like gravel dragged over stone. “Every eligible girl on the six islands summoned to one room. Including her.” He tips his chin at Cinder without looking at her, like even now it costs him something. “We would've met. We would've put it together in an hour, maybe less. So instead we disappeared three days before the ball, and every kingdom got told the missing heirs of Ashcroft had run off or been taken. No one ever said which.”

“Here she is isolated. Contained.” Duke's voice is flint. “Unable to go after his throne.”

I feel Daddy's arm lock tighter around my waist, and this time it's not a warning. It's the same thing crawling up my own spine, the cold, sick understanding that this isn't a coincidence. This isn't just my stepmother's cruelty finally catching up with me.

Someone is collecting us.

“That's why I'm here.” The words come out of me quieter than I mean them to. “Isn't it. It was never just her.” I look at Cinder, then past her to the three men wound around her like a cage built out of devotion instead of hate. “Someone wanted every one of us gone before we ever found each other.”

No one answers. But nobody has to.