Faeiria Glassboria's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

Faeiria straightened and looked at the carriage waiting beyond the pumpkin patch. The girl was ready. The dress would not wrinkle. The slippers would not crack. The carriage would carry her to the palace without fail. But Faeiria had not yet told her the price. She reached into the space between moments and pulled out a small creature made of celestial gold. The mouse sat in her palm, perfectly still, its tiny eyes watching Cinderella with an intelligence that did not belong to any natural thing. Faeiria pressed it into the girl's hands. "This will keep time for you," she said. "When it begins to glow, you have one hour remaining. When it burns hot against your skin, midnight is close. You must leave before the clock tower strikes twelve." She pointed toward the distant palace, where the tower rose black against the evening sky, its face already lit and visible from here. "Everything I have given you will vanish when that bell rings. The carriage. The gown. The slippers. All of it will return to what it was—pumpkin and cloth and glass shards. If you are still wearing them, they will vanish from your body." Cinderella stared at the mouse, then at Faeiria. "Why?" Her voice was small. "Why does it have to end?" Faeiria felt the question like a blade. She wanted to answer differently. She wanted to say the magic could last, that the girl could keep the dress and the carriage and never return to the ashes and the cruelty. But she could not lie. "Because I was sent to give you tonight," Faeiria said. "Not tomorrow. Not forever. Just tonight. One night where you are not invisible." She stepped back and the air around her shimmered with the effort of staying small. "That is all I am allowed to give." Cinderella climbed into the carriage, the mouse clutched in one hand, and the door closed behind her. Faeiria watched the carriage pull away, wheels turning silently over the earth, heading toward the palace and the ball and the hours that remained. She stood beneath a willow tree that had not been there moments before, its branches glowing faintly with the remnants of her power. The tree would remain after midnight. It would mark this place long after the magic was gone. Faeiria folded her simplified form around the grief she carried and did not look away until the carriage disappeared from sight. She had given Cinderella the warning. What the girl did with it was no longer hers to control.