Three Years Later…
*Maddy*
The floorboards have never been cleaner, and my hands have never been more raw. Soapy water soaks through my leggings as I kneel, wringing out my sponge in a bucket of water. The chalet needs work, at least my stepmother says so every chance she gets. The cracks in the ancient plaster and the stone chimneys blackened with soot were once clean and whole, and the chalet itself used to be regal and housed her family back when they had wealth and standing.
Now, it’s a testament to her less-than-ideal situation.
A situation, she says, is only exasperated by my being in the picture.
I’m another mouth to feed. Another body to clothe.
But I don’t eat anything but scraps left over from the main table and my clothes are nothing but tarnished rags after years and years of mending. Elodie eats like a queen, wears the hottest fashions, and is treated like a person, whereas I’m treated worse than dirt.
Elodie is my stepsister, and she’s the apple of my stepmother Louisa’s eye.
My back cracks as I sit up and wring out the sponge again. Sweat prickles on my brow despite the chill in the air that’s nipping at my toes through my worn out and fraying boots. Evening is closing in, another day spent scrubbing and mending and toiling while my stepmother and stepsister sit downstairs in front of the fireplace complaining about the ball three years ago.
I take a deep breath and try to push my own memories from that night away. Dwelling on the events of that night will do me no good, even if they are some of the few happy thoughts stored within the recesses of my mind.
I go back to scrubbing, but in my mind, I’m transported back to the night of the ball. It was the Prince of Crescent Falls twenty-first birthday. He’d asked me to dance, and while thinking of those few moments the two of us had spent twirling around the dance floor causes my heart to flutter and ache, ultimately, I’d paid a steep price for those few moments of attention from him.
Since that night, my life has been even more of a nightmare than it had been before. Not since my father died several years ago have I known a moment of peace and happiness, except for those few minutes dancing with the prince. But since then, well, my stepmother has been even more horrid than before.
Neither my stepmother or stepsister have forgiven me for “stealing Elodie’s thunder,” whatever in the world htat means.
My only reason for attending the ball was to serve as Elodie’s lady’s maid. My father had been a successful and well-liked merchant during his life, so I had been invited, but my stepmother iddn’t want anyone to know I was her child. I’d been dressed plainly and made to parade around with Elodie so she’d stand out more.
Smirking f as I scrub another section of the floor, I remember that horrible green dress that made her look like a lizard with feathers instead of the regal queen she assumed she looked like.
“Where is that girl?” Lousia, my stepmother, snaps somewhere downstairs. I bristle, a chill running up my spine at her sharp tone. With no money to afford maids or cooks, all of that work falls on my shoulders. I scrub harder when her footstep echo through the hallway outside the bedroom I’m cleaning, and I don’t raise my eyes to her when she trudges into the room. “You missed a spot, stupid worthless bitch” she chides, her hands on her hips as she points a toe at a smudge on the floor.
I ignore her. She’ll likely force me to scrub this entire room again tomorrow just for the hell of it.
“I need you to go to market to fetch some things,” she says sharply as she walks further into the room, purposefully kicking over the bucket of soapy water. The dirty water rushes toward me, so I scoot back, not daring to get up when she’s standing so close. She’ll just push me down again. “Tisk, tisk. Look at how clumsy you are, Madeline.”
Biting my bottom lip to keep from saying anything back, I sit there, wating as she toes around the puddle of water to hand me a list, and drops a small pouch of coins in front of me.
“You’ll escort Elodie to the seamstress. She needs four new gowns–”
I rise up to my knees, weighing the pouch of coins in my hands as I meet my stepmother's steely dark eyes. She was once a beauty, but she’s so ugly on the inside now, one could never even tell. She blames her situation on me, the poverty that I’ve brought to her and hers, of course, but in reality she spent my father’s fortune immediately after his death and was forced to return here, to her decaying familial home.
The coin bag is so heavy, I’m shocked and speak out of turn. “Where did this come from?” I ask. My cheek burns from the memory of the slaps she often gives me from asking too many questions. This time, the slap doesn’t come. Instead, she gives me a wicked smile and rolls her eyes.
“Like I said, you stupid girl, go to the seamstress, and while Elodie is there, fetch the rest of the items on the list from the market.”
I look down at the list–at the fancy wine and expensive meat. I look back up at her, suspicion settling in my stomach.
“Go on, then.” She smirks as she turns on her heel and leaves the room. I look down at my soaked leggings and blow out a deep breath.
It’s the dead of winter, and I’m about to freeze to death running errands for my witch of a stepmother and her ungrateful daughter.
My life is a mess with nothing promising in sight, but when I think of my father, I know I have to go on. He wouldn’t want me to give up or run away. I take a deep breath and follow my stepmother out of the room.
* * *
I watch Elodie’s blonde head disappear behind a curtain at the modeste as I stand outside in the blizzard blanketing the sleepy town of Mountain Spring. Mountain Hell, more like it. I wrap my arms around my middle and shiver violently as I turn and trudge through ankle deep snow, leaning against the wind that rips through the ragged jacket I’d had to mend and pack with goose down for the past five winters to keep warm.
A few wolves pass me, one of them clutching a basket in its jaw. Now, they have the right idea. Having a built in winter jacket is perfect for a day like today, but I haven’t been able to shift in years. Too thin, too weak. I try, and nothing happens. This is exactly what my stepmother wants. If I were strong enough to shift, I might actually run away, despite her warnings that the only kind of life that awaits me out there is that of a whore or breeder.
Three years ago, after the ball, when she’d beaten me so badly I could hardly stand, I cowered at the thought. I’d decided to stick it out with her, like my father had wanted.
But I am starving, and tired, and have worked myself to the bone.
When I think back to that night, I both treasure the moments I spent with the handsome prince and wish they had never happened. Ove the years, the more time I’ve spent thinking about him, the more I’ve loathed him and blamed him for everything. Had he done it just to humiliate me? What else could it have been?
Part of me likes to think that those words he uttered that I didn’t understand were complimentary, that he thought I was beautiful, alluring. But it couldn’t be anything like that. He is a prince, after all, maybe a king by now. And what am I?
I am nothing.
Shaking my head, I clear the thoughts again and enter a store, the bell chiming above my head. “Everything on the list,” I say to the owner of one of the few shops in town. Most families hunt for their meat, but since my mother and sister refuse to do something so “unladylike,” we must buy ours, which is very expensive.
The older man nods, taking the list and disappearing for a few minutes. When he returns, he fills my basket, and the coins are exchanged. As quickly as I’ve come, I walk back to the modeste to stand out in the cold and snow until Elodie is done.
I would go in with her, but it’s not allowed. The modeste wouldn’t be caught dead with someone like me within her store. Rags for clothes, skin and bone, my hair a tangled nest of lackluster red waves? No, I belong on the street with the poorest of the poor according to her–and the rest of the wealthy pack members my family tries so hard to fit in with.
An elderly woman dressed in nothing more than a shawl and thin dress staggers by, her body hunched against the cold. A gust of wind rips her shawl from her frail, gnarled frame, and I jump to catch it before it blows down the street.
Catching it in my hand, I drape it over her shoulders and turn away from the modeste to walk her back to wherever she lives, but she wraps her frozen, gnarled fingers around mine.
“Thank you, sweet girl,” she whispers, patting my hand.
“Let me walk you home–”
Her curled fingers squeeze hard as she takes a choked breath, shaking her head. Her eyes are nearly opaque as she stares deeply into mine.
“Are you all right?” My words are barely audible even to my own ear.
“Danger is coming,” she chokes, her beady black eyes meeting mine. I go to pull away, but her grip increases to a strength so at odds with her age I can’t fathom what is happening.. “Stay with your mate–”
“My mate?” Perplexed, I shake my head at her. What is she talking about? A few people snicker at us as they walk by, but I ignore them. “I don’t have a mate.” I’d given up on that childish dream of being swept off my feet and finding my mate long, long ago. The notion had disappeared with my wolf, and possibly with the last ounce of adoration I had for the prince, the only male who had ever paid me any mind.
She is persistent, leaning toward me, the scent of her breath something like garlic and decay. “Stay with him, and you will be safe.” I find myself nodding as I stare into her grief lined face.
Abruptly, she releases my hand. I take a step back, my eyes still focused on hers.
Another gust of wind rips through us, nearly knocking me over. Her shawl is outlined against the gray sky as it’s ripped from her shoulders again. I turn to grab it, suddenly moving as if in slow motion, seeing the swirl of snowflakes almost freeze in place for a moment as if someone pressed pause on the hourglass of time for a fraction of a second.
When everything falls back into place, I have the shawl in my hand and turn to her.
She’s not there.
Confused, I twirl around, searching the nearly deserted street for her form. “Wait…” My heart thundering in my chest, I continue to look for her but see no trace of her.
How is that possible?
“Where did you go?”
“I’m right here, stupid bitch.” I turn to see my stepsister stepping out of the store. Her face scrunches up as she stares at me “Madeline, what the fuck are you doing?” she snaps “Get your ass over here right now and carry my bags, you stupid, useless idiot.”
My jaw tightens as I give the area another glance before placing the old woman's shawl over a bench next to the sidewalk and walking over to Elodie. She draws her hand back and slaps me soundly across the face, scowling with fury. I’m so numb the slap doesn’t even hurt, but I know it’ll leave a red mark.
* * *
I roll over in bed, pulling the thin, ratty quilt up to my chin and trembling against the cold. My room, nothing more than a storage closet with a small, cracked window and a stray mattress on the floor, is bitter cold once again. Ice forms along the crack in the window where the blizzard is still raging outside.
Sleep won’t come, no matter how hard I try. A lingering ache from Elodie’s fierce slap bruises my cheek, and my hand where that strange woman touched me before she disappeared feels heavy.
I sit up, rubbing my eyes and blinking into the darkness. Voices drift from beneath the door. I tilt my head, glancing at the window above my head. Usually, I’m up with breakfast starting before Lousia and Elodie are even awake. Did I oversleep? Is the blizzard so severe it’s blocking out the meager sunlight we get during this time of year?
I pull a sweater over my thin nightgown and quietly sneak out of the closet, stepping into a chilly and dark hallway on the first floor. The voices grow louder as I creep down the hall and peek around the archway leading into the main sitting room. Three men stand protectively behind a smaller man who is sitting in an armchair across from my stepmother. His eyes flick to mine before I can retreat.
Lousia turns around to look at me, her eyes narrowed, but then her mouth stretches into a wicked grin.
“Ah, here she is.”
In a flash, they move toward me. I don’t even get the full phrase out as I ask, “What’s happening?”
With no response, I’m grabbed by two of the men and dragged forward, my screams cut off by my impact with the floor at the smaller man’s feet.
“She’s quite thin,” he says with a look of disgust, the toe of his boot hooking under my chin and forcing me to look upright.
“This winter has been hard on the whole pack, I’m afraid,” my stepmother says with a click of her tongue.
He shakes his head, his beady black eyes staring at me as he purses his lips. “I had a plan for her. Now I’m not so sure–”
I try to crawl away from him, to put some space between us, but I’m shoved forward again, nearly hitting my face on his shin.
Behind me, my stepmother says dismissively, “Well, you’ve already paid for her. I don’t give a fuck what you do with her now.”
I manage to turn my head and I gape up at Louisa, my throat tightening. What did she say? Is that where the money came from? She sold me?
I remember what she’d told me before, about me becoming a whore or a breeder. Had she made htat happen?
Panic sweeps through me as I scramble to get up again, but the men are too strong. Before I can even move, they have me, their fingers biting into the flesh of my upper arms.
Standing, the smaller man says, “Pick her up.” He rolls his eyes and starts for the door.
“No!” I scream as I’m lifted into the air. I kick my feet and try to free my arms, but they are too stron, and I’m thrown over one of his cronies shoulders like a sack of potatoes. I thrash and shout, but they overpower me. The other man ties my wrists together, then my feet.
“Louisa! Louisa” I plead as we head for the door. Lifting my head, I stare at my stepmother. A wicked smile pulls up her wrinkled face as she lifts her hand and waves at me.
“NO!I cry out, but my voice is sucked away by the brutal, frigid wind as I’m carried out into the night.