Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Before entering the Royal Palace, my life was nothing like a fairy tale.

I had no fairy godmother, no pumpkin that could turn into a carriage, and no one to change my fate while I wept secretly by the fireplace.

All I had was an old mill that grew colder by the day, a stepmother named Madam Ji who was addicted to gambling, and her daughter, Cen Wenxi, who had wrapped her feet as tightly as rice dumplings while waiting for the selection banquet at the palace to begin.

After my father died, Madam Ji forced me to sleep in the kitchen. She always said I was born with a lowly life and that I only looked the part when my face was covered in soot. She wouldn’t let me wear nice clothes, wouldn’t let me comb my hair neatly, and wouldn’t even let me scrub the coal dust from under my fingernails.

“The Royal City loves a Cinderella,” she would laugh, dumping coal cinders into my arms. “The thicker the ash, the more precious your fate.”

I didn’t understand it back then.

I only learned later that the Northern Realm had suffered through ten consecutive years of harsh winters. Crops froze to death, livestock starved, and even the rivers remained frozen year-round. The only exception was the annual Winter Banquet held by the Royal Palace. Once a girl was chosen by the Glass Slippers from among the commoners, the ice and snow would begin to recede the very next day. The wheat would turn green again, and the people in the city would say that the Queen had once again entreated spring to return to the nation.

For the family of the chosen girl, there would be gold and land; they would turn their lives around overnight.

As for where the girl went afterward, no one asked. Everyone simply assumed that since it was a fairy tale, the ending must be a happy one.

The night before the Winter Banquet, Madam Ji did something rare: she let me soak in hot water. She personally trimmed my nails and scrubbed my feet, her movements so gentle they gave me goosebumps.

Cen Wenxi sat before a bronze mirror, trying on her silver shoes. She looked at me with a cold sneer. “Mother, why are you cleaning her up? Do you really think the palace would pick a girl who sleeps in a pile of ash?”

Madam Ji turned my foot over, carefully examining the arch. The smile on her face deepened.

“What do you know?” she whispered. “The shoes have never cared about a person’s face.”

In that moment, I realized for the first time that the look in their eyes wasn’t contempt-it was appraisal.

But it was already too late for me to run.

The next afternoon, a hunchbacked Old Matron arrived at the mill’s entrance. She wore a tattered black cloak and carried an old wooden chest, claiming she had been entrusted by my late mother to deliver a set of clothes to me.

When the chest was opened, inside was an old ballgown so white it felt cold. The hem was adorned with delicate silver threads that looked like a layer of frost. At the very bottom lay a pair of Glass Slippers.

They were transparent and thin, shimmering with a faint blue light in the winter sun. The moment I touched them, my fingertips flinched from a strange, searing heat.

The Old Matron stared at me, her eye sockets as deep as two wells.

“Once you are in the palace, whatever you do, do not let anyone wash away your ash,” she said. “And do not stay in front of a mirror after midnight.”

I froze. “Who are you?”

She didn’t answer. She simply closed the lid of the chest, turned around, and walked into the snow.

By the time I chased after her, there was no one outside the mill. There was only a trail of faint, wet marks on the ground, as if someone had dragged water along as they walked.