Page 1 of The Midnight King
1
I’m so fucking tired of doingeverything.
Fate forbid my stepsisters should break a nail scrubbing the two porcelain tubs in which they soak every night amid rainbow swirls of Madam Lentula’s Seduction Potion or Rejuvenating Foam.
Rejuvenating, my ass. Not like they need it, either. Amisa is twenty and Vashli is twenty-two, while I’ll be twenty-seven on my next birthday. In this kingdom, an unmarried woman this close to thirty is considered a reject. Unwanted goods. People cast sidelong glances at such a woman, wondering why no one has claimed her yet. Of course something must be wrong with her.
I’d be a lot happier if I could persuade myself that I don’t want to be married, have children, or run my own household. The trouble is, I want every single one of those things, and it’s beginning to look as if I will never have them.
I swish the rag around in the bucket again and slop it onto the bathroom floor. My knees hurt from the hard tiles, but I have to clean up all the spilled powders and splattered cosmetics, because if they sit there overnight, they’ll leave stains, and I’ll suffer for it.
If my stepsisters didn’t act like a pair of tornadoes in their huge bathroom, I wouldn’t have to clean it every day. But as it is, this chore has become part of my nightly routine.
My neck aches, so I pause, tilting my head aside until I hear the light pop of my bones realigning. A low headache thrums behind my right eye, threatening to bloom into agony unless I get to bed soon. I still need to go downstairs, close the drapes, turn out the lights, and make sure the doors are locked. If my stepmother Gilda rises in the night and finds anything out of place…
A shudder runs over my whole body, and I scrub more assiduously than ever.
An hour later I’ve finished all my tasks, and I can finally descend into the cellar, to the cot beside the coal bin where I snatch a few hours of sleep each night. I try not to think about the way the coal dust has probably sifted into my lungs, or the way I cough a little more each day. My nightly proximity to the coal bin is one reason why my step-family has taken to calling me “Cinders” instead of Celinda.
To me, the use of coal is yet another symptom of the dysfunction in this house. Electrical power has come to most of the cities, and we use it for lights, but my stepmother refuses to install any type of electrical heating, mostly because of the cost. Keeping my stepsisters outfitted in the latest style uses up most of the money we receive from my late father’s estate each month. Thank Fate it’s doled out to us from a trust, or my stepmother and her daughters would have decimated it by now.
It hurts that most of the vast fortune I was supposed to inherit has been squandered. If I’d been in charge of the money, Iwould have spent less on clothes and accessories, and more on repairs and modernizations for Eisling House and its grounds. I would have invested some of the monthly stipend in stable businesses, where it could steadily earn interest.
But none of that is a priority for my stepmother. She focuses on immediate control, on the rush that she gets when she exerts power over someone. Her daughters are her sole investment in the future, so she pours money into making them as noticeable and fashionable as possible. Beyond what she spends on them, her own habits must be fueled—her love of gambling and her propensity for drinking too much.
If I could leave now, I would. But the anklet on my right leg ensures that I remain trapped here. It’s the same golden band my stepmother clasped around my father’s ankle on their wedding day. A family heirloom, she said. A token of respect to the ancestors. But it turned out to be much more than that.
Gilda has never told me where she got the anklet, or who made it. Whatever its origin, the anklet has a single purpose—to bind one human being to the will of another. As the object’s master, Gilda can choose someone to wear the anklet, and once it is clasped, no one else can remove it. When she gives commands to the person wearing the anklet, those orders must be obeyed.
She cannot control thoughts, only actions and words, so my inner life remains my own. But everything else that I am belongs to her.
Once, when Gilda was drunk, which is increasingly often these days, she explained that she can only transfer the anklet to someone else on the day of a family death or the night of a family wedding.
I don’t know who wore the anklet before she ensnared my father, but he couldn’t endure it for more than a year or so. He died when I was nine—bled out after cutting off his own foot. He was so desperate to remove the anklet that he was willing to risk death. And death obligingly liberated him.
In finding his freedom, my father sealed my fate. But I don’t blame him for seeking a way out of bondage. Now that I’m older, I can imagine the horror it must have been, working himself to the bone every day for my stepmother and serving her in bed every night.
I try not to think about it. But in my worst nightmares, I watch him suffer, and I see him the way I found him—lying in the garden, pale as the white stone of the fountain, his glassy eyes fixed unseeing on the sky. Blood soaked the soil around his residual limb and glimmered on the anklet, which was still clutched in his stiff fingers.
If only I’d taken the anklet and hidden it somewhere—buried it, maybe. But I was a child. I could barely comprehend his death, let alone think about protecting myself.
By sunset, I was wearing the anklet in his place, bound to Gilda until she has the opportunity and the motive to place it on someone else.
It feels as if I’ve barely closed my eyes before my silver pocket watch jangles on the battered nightstand beside my cot. The watch is the only treasure I own, a gift from my father when I was very small. It’s Faerie-made, but simpler than their usual craftsmanship. My father told me he purchased it from a tinker shortly after I was born.
Gilda enjoys taking away everything that brings me joy, but since the watch possesses no magic except the ability to wake me at a specific time, I’ve been allowed to keep it. After all, she wouldn’t want me oversleeping. I’m the one who does all the chores.
I roll over and press the little button on top of the watch to stop the tinny music of the alarm. Flipping it over, I trace my fingertip over the words engraved on the back.
All souls crave it, but none receive more than the measure granted by Fate.
A simple enough riddle. And I suppose most people crave more time, but lately I’ve been wishing for less of it. I’ve been aching for the end of this existence.
When those thoughts surface, I push them down. I don’t want to reach the same pinnacle of agonized despair my father did. I’m still holding onto a frayed cord of hope.
But that cord is beginning to split apart. It’s only a matter of time before it breaks, and I fall into the black chasm that yawns below me.
Inserting my thumb into the slit of the pocket watch, I pop it open and inspect the pearly face. There are barely discernible letters written in a circle along the edge, just beyond the numbers.