Anastasia Tremaine's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Anastasia Tremaine wanted one thing her mother would approve of: a husband with a title. That morning she was pinning ribbon samples to a board in the sitting room, deciding which color a nobleman might favor, when a footman knocked at the manor door and changed the whole household. Her mother took the letter first. Lady Tremaine broke the wax seal with her thumb, read it, and set her cane against the chair. She did not smile. She rarely did. "The palace is holding a ball," she said. "Every eligible young woman is invited. The Prince will choose." Anastasia stood. The ribbons slid off her lap. A ball meant a chance to marry into the royal family, exactly what her mother had spent years demanding of her. It also meant her sister wanted the same thing. Drizella crossed the room in three steps and pulled the letter from their mother's hand. She read it once and dropped her fan on the table. "Then it's decided," Drizella said. "I'll take the Prince. You find a duke." "You don't decide that," Anastasia said. "Someone has to." Drizella did not look up. "Only one of us gets him. It won't be both." Anastasia felt her face heat. She knew how to stay quiet in a room full of important people. She had learned it young. But this was her own sister carving up the one future their mother approved of, before Anastasia had said a single word. Lady Tremaine lifted her cane and rapped it once on the floor. Both daughters went silent. "Enough," she said. "You will both attend. You will both be presented. I did not raise two girls to fight over scraps in my sitting room." She walked to the window that looked over the garden. Trimmed hedges. Straight beds of roses. Everything in that garden had been shaped by someone's hand to look expensive. "The Tremaine name opens the door," Lady Tremaine said. "After that, you earn the match yourselves. I will not carry either of you across the ballroom." Anastasia understood then. Her mother would not choose between them. She would let them compete and keep whichever daughter won. Drizella picked her fan back up and smiled, sure of herself. "I only need a gown better than hers." "Then order two," Lady Tremaine said. "The seamstress comes tomorrow. Whoever is measured first wears the first choice of silk." Drizella turned for the stairs at once. Anastasia knew what that meant. First measured, first fitted, first advantage. She gathered her scattered ribbons off the floor and pressed them flat in her hands. The invitation had given her exactly what she wanted. It had also turned her sister into her rival and her mother into a judge who would keep only the winner. Anastasia went after Drizella toward the stairs. She would reach the seamstress first, or she would lose before the ball even began.