Cynic-rella, by Gina Harris

It had been a magical evening in every way.

To go from being the unwanted, ash-covered stepchild to dancing with the prince, charming him as much as charmed by him, because of a fairy godmother – well that was literally magical.

Better yet, when the evening ended it hadn’t really ended because the prince came looking for her. He found her! He recognized her! And then he changed his mind.

“Somehow, being here with you now, instead of in the ballroom, with that dress…”

“We can go back to the ballroom! You can buy me a dress! I’ll change!”

The fairy godmother still probably could have pulled off a save, if she had showed up. In retrospect, a fairy godmother who lets you spend years neglected and slaving away for your stepfamily is probably not the most reliable source of help.

So, that seemed to be that. She’d had her moment, which turned out to be a very brief moment, and now it was over.

It shouldn’t have been so unbearable. Her life was exactly what it had been before. Yes, it had been a miserable life, but she was used to that. Somehow, everything felt worse.

It didn’t make sense until she heard her stepsisters griping to each other.

“I thought I could be a princess, and now this!”

“Well I wanted to be a princess too!”

Then it devolved into cat-fighting, but she found her answer in that brief exchange. It was so rare for her stepsisters to say anything valuable, but that made sense. It was one thing to have a view of a better life, but she sort of had that already; the lives of her stepsisters were really pretty good, regardless of what they thought.

No, what was tearing her up inside was that hope that she could have something better. It had been so real, and then it was dashed. The misery of her daily life was old, but the sense of loss was new, and it was hurting her in spots that she hadn’t even known existed before.

The first thing she did was consult a lawyer. He was initially reluctant to get involved, as a breach of contract case without an actual contract is a tricky thing. However, as she explained more about the case, particularly that it involved the royal family, the case became more compelling. For once in her life, things started going right.

It turns out that popular opinion regarding the royal family was at an all-time low in the kingdom. That the ball had resulted not in the elevation of a fellow citizen, but a hasty marriage to a princess from a nearby and uninteresting kingdom left a sour taste in the public mouth. There was even briefly talk of a class action lawsuit for all of the disappointed eligible young women who attended the ball.

That never materialized, because clearly not all of them could have married the prince. However, his pointed interest in our heroine, his seeking her out with the stated intent to marry her, and the subsequent rejection did end up counting, and with only one claimant, the claim was huge.

And thus, fortunes were reversed. The royal popularity never recovered, and while marriages started through romance are not always happy, arranged marriages based on pride and politics aren’t the best starting point either. The prince did become a king, but he was a king with a low treasury, a disrespectful populace, a shrewish wife, and the beginnings of male pattern baldness.

She could have gloated over this. She could also have taken pleasure in a drastically different attitude on the part of her stepfamily. Instead, she decided not to care. She only wanted to get away.

Searching through real estate listings, she eventually found the perfect thing: an olive grove in the Mediterranean. She knew enough about exploitation of the disadvantage to never want to be like that, so she treated her employees well, with good wages. If those handsome young orchard workers ever decide that they want shirts or shoes, they will have no trouble affording them.

The rustic life is peaceful, but if she ever gets restless she simply takes a trip and stays at nice hotels, where at last she is treated like a queen.