Though I doubt she’ll appreciate the comparison.
“Stop being a little bitch and put the shoe on or stay here,” she snaps at me.
Why did I just get hard?
Doing as I’m told, I wriggle some toes in the glass high heel. The fit pinches my foot with a strangling tightness, but I’ve got it mostly balanced in the shoe.
“Now what?” I huff, feeling blood flush my face from enduring the pain. This better be a quick trip or I’ll end up having to amputate half my foot.
Per her instructions, I’m holding a pair of my boots in the other. She even gave me ten minutes to go and drink some blood. The evidence of my father’s anger has already faded from my face.
I’m half surprised she didn’t bolt while I was gone, but I threw every argument I had at her. I need to stick with her to protect her. There are plenty of people or agents who will be unhappy with our union and may even try to stop it. If I don’t get out of this castle, I'll go crazy. I could really go for a cocktail, and I wouldn’t be any trouble at all. She wouldn’t even notice I was there.
In the end, she may have agreed simply to shut me up. Or dare I hope, she enjoys my company?
More likely, she wants to see me put on a terrifyingly small glass shoe because she’s a sadist.
She frowns, a little line forming between her brows. “I’m not sure exactly how to do this together, so uh hold my hand.”
“Can we lace fingers?” I ask hopeful, taking her pale, elegant hand in my larger one.
“Only if you want me to cut them off,” she says dryly. “Now shut up and let me focus on where we are going.” Her lids drop shut as she concentrates.
We stand there holding hands, her wearing one glass slipper while I puff air out of my cheeks to keep myself from yanking my foot out of the tiny matching shoe.
I wait for someone to pop out with the flash of a camera yelling, “Gotcha, idiots!”
Not that it would be the first time I’ve been photographed doing something strange, but could we at least be naked?
The world tilts and colors swim before my eyes.
Oh fuck.
“Step forward,” Cinder instructs. Despite being completely off-kilter, I follow her command.
The world solidifies under the step and suddenly I’m standing in a small apartment living room. It smells like mold and cinnamon baked goods.
When my vision focuses, I find the source of the delicious scent. A candle on the coffee table where a white-haired girl has her foot currently propped, nail polish posed over a big toe. It’s the same girl from the Poison Apple, Snow.
“Hey,” Cinder says casually in greeting, her face flat and expressionless.
Snow’s brows raise in surprise. “Uh hey.” Her ice-blue eyes bounce between the two of us, observing our joined hands, matching footwear, and state of dress. The question on her face is loud and impossible to ignore.
Cinder jerks her head toward me. “This is my fiancé.”
Snow looks as though someone slapped her with a wet fish. Though to her credit, all that comes out of her mouth is, “Cool.”
Apparently,Cinder hadn't told anyone where she'd been going. Or she had but hadn’t explained herself fully.
When she got to the Poison Apple with yours truly in tow, the questions came like a flood. Not from Snow, who seems content to watch us with the morbid fascination of someone observing bugs and trying to understand their mating patterns—but the blonde one sure as hell had a barrage of questions.
“I can't believe you got engaged before me,” Goldie says, throwing her hands in the air.
The Poison Apple isn't as crowded as it was when I came last time, but then again, it's a much earlier hour. I take up a post at a nearby booth where I can kick back (in my own boots now) and keep an eye on the bartenders—bartendresses?—in between deliveries of dirty gin martinis to my table.
“I didn't plan it,” Cinder says with a shrug.
“You know that makes it weirder, right?” Snow chimes in.
