𝐀 𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍'𝐒 𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐁𝐘 - Cinderella AU

III - my sun will just send you to war

iii.

31st January, 1789

ISADORA TREMAINE STOOD IN front of the looking glass in her chamber, her ebony eyes fixed on the reflected form of her little boy playing on the bed in the background, engaged in an intense exchange between his wooden carved horse and a nutcracker doll Isa had found in the attic during Christmas the past December.

Her hands found her bodice as she smoothened the already precise material of her sparkling deep red gown. The stark color accentuated the black of her irises and that of her hair-which was swept up in a beautiful do at the crown of her head, pieces of loose curls cascading down at the back and in the front framing her face.

Isadora wore no jewelry except for a makeshift necklace she had forged out of a piece of discarded thick black lace and a deep maroon square shaped gem the size of a pigeon's egg, that had fallen out of one of her older dresses. She wore the invention tied around her neck, having done her best to ensure the knot at the back wouldn't be as obvious. Her finger kept touching the gem she had attached in the center absently, it matched her dress in an oddly profound way.

She had been given a few extra bit of money aside from her allowance to purchase the jewelry. Lady Tremaine had been adamant that Isadora go out to market and buy something for the dress—for the former was much too exhausted to venture out another day after the whole day it had taken before to procure the fabrics and have the dresses stitched professionally.

Isadora hadn't spent that extra money, she had silently hoarded it, safely keeping it away with the rest of the money she had been saving up for little Archie. She intended to lie to her mother when asked. Isadora was no stranger to lies, she had learned the art of it from her own family. It came as natural to her as her own breath.

The sun was still a deep orange in the French sky outside the window and over the chateau. Isa knew that as soon as it fell, drowning in its own red orange fire, the carriage rented to take the family to the palace would pull up at the chateau.

She glanced at Archie, the little boy now cross legged on the bed as he spoke the dialogues he had given to both his tiny horse and the nutcracker—a conversation that sounded to Isa a saccharine delight straight into her heart.

She was wary of having to leave him behind for the brief hours she'd be at the palace. She had debated if she could bring him at all, keep a hold on his tiny hand and have him right at her side during the event, but her protectiveness was likely to irritate him. Archie was a free spirit, the boy was seemingly made for open plains and butterflies fluttering all around him with his shoes covered in mud as a result of his excursions in the chateau gardens sometimes in the midst of the sporadic bouts of his restless distress—all unlike Isa, with her own periphery clad in the materialistic luxury of life as her spirit desperately sought the comfort in things procured by wealth.

It was Archie's misfortune perhaps, that he had gotten stuck with Isadora as his mama. A woman who was worlds different from his biological mother—a woman who would most likely never be able to completely fill out the shoes that had been left out for her.

Isa's anthracite eyes stung with tears as she blinked them away, forcing a smile on her face as she spun to approach her little boy.

"What are you playing sweetheart?"

Archie looked up at her, startled out of his game as his bright blue eyes recognized her and he smiled widely.

"Nutcracker wants to ride my horsy," Archie started, his voice thoughtful as his eyes dropped to the scene he had set out in front of him on the bed. "But horsy doesn't want anyone to ride him."