Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall Read Online Free

she knew she had escaped her past, but not herself, and that, one day, she would kill Snow White.

CHAPTER THREE
Akasha
    W armer than she could recall being in some time, Cinderella still shivered inside the blanket. Legs crossed, she hunched next to Akasha in her berth,
    wondering what had become of her dress. Though it was not a particularly sensible garment, or even hers truly, it was all she had of her kingdom or of her
    mother, and she watched for its reappearance with abnormal longing.
    The kingdom she was in was called Naxos, Akasha had told her, derived long ago from an early ruler, a queen. Women were treated differently then, Akasha
    said, worshipped, but things had changed.
    The comfort of the bed beneath her and the clean water she had been brought to drink, Cinderella could not tell
    the difference. She was, however, beginning to note differences between them.
    The women around the room were the same as her, but not quite. The bend of a nose here, the curve of an eye there, the shape of their bodies inside their
    simple gowns made Cinderella start to wonder if she had gone mad after all. It could have been the doing of the prince, or of her family. In her efforts to
    attend the festival, she had deceived them all. Intoxicating her with some substance that made her see a world and people of her own delusion would be just
    punishment.
    Though, soft blanket brushing her bare legs, Cinderella thought it might have been a mistake on their parts. The accommodations were far more agreeable
    than the fractured bricks before the fireplace on which she slept in her own home, and the women of her delusion had yet to be cruel to her.
    In earlier night, as she sat amongst them on the floor of the massive room, Akasha had hidden Cinderella from view with the help of others, as two men in
    like dress came in and picked from amongst them, taking two women off to keep the company of the king. It was rare in her kingdom a soul had sought to
    protect her, and never had she been invited into the king's company.
    When the women at last settled down for the night, the room was peaceful, but with an underlying discontent Cinderella knew well. It was where gladness for
    their safety met sadness for their positions, and it dampened the spirits of the room as surely as Cinderella's home life had depleted her own. Though the
    women around her did not live like servants - they did not clean and cook and fetch and burn in the sun - servitude was clearly their lots as much as it
    had been hers.
    "Be careful, Girl," the matron said, walking past on her patrol, and Cinderella watched her go with a tickle of fear, the threat seeming to sink through
    the walls, as if they followed her from her own kingdom.
    "You will get into trouble?" she worriedly asked Akasha.
    "No," Akasha said with such haste Cinderella could hear the lie in it. "But you will. You are an intruder in the palace."
    "I do not mean to be," Cinderella replied.
    She was not even sure how she ended up in the palace. One moment, she was running from the festival, from the prince, standing at her mother's tree. The
    next, she was slipping through the solid trunk and coming up into the room full of women. She could not explain it to Akasha or to herself. There was no
    sense to be made of it. Like those of Cinderella's kingdom, Troyale, the patrons of the palace believed Naxos to be a world alone, believed there existed
    no life beyond its borders, save for that so distant they would never encounter it.
    "Yes, I gather that," Akasha said, head bowing, eyes going to the door as if expecting the guards to reappear at any time.
    "Will they kill me?" Cinderella tried to sound unworried, but the tremble in her voice pulled Akasha's eyes toward her.
    Akasha took a moment in answering, her gaze moving over Cinderella's face until Cinderella grew most anxious. "No, I suspect not." She seemed strangely sad
    about the prospect of Cinderella not being put to death. "I suspect they will keep you