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.

Anastasia won the seamstress. She was measured first, and the first silk was hers. Now, on the night of the ball, she sat before her mirror and faced the part she could not order from a seamstress. Her hair would not hold. She had pinned it three times. Three times it fell. Her mother's rule was plain. Whoever looked best earned the match. Drizella had a maid dressing her down the hall. Anastasia had no one. She stared at the loose pins in her lap and thought of the only person in the house who could fix this. Ella scrubbed the floors of the manor that Anastasia's mother had taken. She wore rags. She ate last. And she could shape a bun better than any paid hand, because she had done it a hundred times for people who never thanked her. Anastasia found her at the bottom of the stairs with a bucket. "I need your help," she said. "With my hair. Please." Ella looked up. Her hands were red from the water. "Please," she repeated, like the word was strange in this house. "That's new." "I know how they treat you." Anastasia's face went hot. "I don't ask right. But I'm asking now." Ella dried her hands on her apron. "Sit." Back at the mirror, Ella worked fast. She gathered the hair high and twisted it into a smooth crown. Her fingers moved without pause. She pinned the volume up and set two curls loose at the sides, soft and gold. It was better than anything the maid down the hall could manage. "You've done this before," Anastasia said. "For your sister. She never sat still." Ella pushed in the last pin. "You do." Anastasia stared at herself. She looked like a girl who could stand in a palace and be chosen. "Why help me? After everything." Ella met her eyes in the glass. "Because you asked. Nobody here does." She stepped back. "You're the only one who ever notices I'm a person." The words landed hard. Anastasia had spent years staying quiet while her mother worked this girl to the bone. She had watched and said nothing. That silence felt like a stone now. A cane rapped the doorframe. Lady Tremaine stood there in purple, her own hair coiled tight. Her eyes went from Anastasia's crown to Ella's raw hands. "So the cinder girl made you presentable," she said. "Good. Use what you have." She turned to Ella. "You are not finished downstairs. Go." Ella left without a word. Anastasia opened her mouth to thank her. The door was already shut. Anastasia rose in her gown, hair perfect, ready for the ball. She had what she needed to compete. But she had gotten it from the one girl she had failed to defend, and she could not stop seeing Ella's red hands on the stairs.

Anastasia stood in the manor's front hall with her hair perfect and her stomach empty. She had a worse fear than falling pins. She had never learned to charm a room of nobles. Her mother's rule was simple. One clumsy word tonight could ruin the whole match. So she slipped into the kitchen for a bite of bread and cheese, hoping food might steady her nerves. She chewed by the cold hearth and rehearsed lines under her breath. A curtsy. A compliment. A soft laugh at the right moment. Each one sounded fake. Her mother wanted a daughter who could work a crowded ballroom. Anastasia only knew how to stay quiet and hope no one noticed her. Drizella found her there, half a roll still in her hand. She wore green silk and carried a purple fan. She snapped it open with one flick. "Eating," Drizella said. "Before the ball." "I was hungry." Anastasia set the bread down. "You're scared." Drizella did not soften it. "You always freeze when men of rank speak to you. I've watched it happen." Anastasia's face burned. "I know how to behave." "Behaving isn't charming." Drizella stepped closer. "Mother said we compete equal. So here's the truth. You can't do it. You never could." She fanned herself once. "Give up the Prince. Take a quiet baron who won't ask you to speak." The words stung because they were true. Anastasia had frozen before. She had let silence do her talking her whole life. But something in Drizella's flat certainty made her spine go straight. "No," Anastasia said. "I'll try tonight. Really try." Drizella shrugged. "Then embarrass yourself. It helps me." She turned for the door. Anastasia followed her out to the carriage. She would not give up the Prince to please her sister. But she also would not lie to herself. She practiced in the swaying carriage, whispering greetings, and each attempt still came out stiff. At the palace, the ballroom roared with music and voices. Anastasia entered on shaking legs. A gray-haired lord of rank turned toward her and asked her name. Anastasia opened her mouth. Nothing charming came. Her rehearsed line vanished. So she said the plain truth. "I'm nervous, my lord. This is my first grand ball, and I don't wish to say the wrong thing." The lord laughed, warm and surprised. "Honesty. How rare in this room." He offered his arm. "Come. I'll introduce you kindly." It worked. Not the charm her mother wanted, but honesty. The lord walked her toward a circle of nobles and spoke her name with respect. Across the floor, Drizella watched, fan frozen mid-air. Her sister had not frozen. Her sister had won a lord's favor in one breath. Anastasia smiled at the nobles. But the lord on her arm was old, titled, and clearly taken with her. Her mother wanted a prince. Now Anastasia had a suitor already, and the Prince had not yet even seen her.