Your Leash - A Cinderella Phenomenon Fanfiction

Epilogue

Lucette

And so it was that Angielle fell into a time of unprecedented peace. Once Mother had fallen, under Waltz and Delora's tutorship, I was able to lift the fairytale curses within a few months. I was also able to wake up my Father, which was an enormous blessing because Angielle needed its king. The many residents at the Marchen never left, even after the curse was lifted, and the establishment became a simple inn rather than the sanctuary it had once been required to be. Delora and Parfait stayed on as the proprietors there, and while Parfait never fully recovered from the strain of her duties over the previous 2 decades, together they were able to more than make do.

Rumpel, on recalling his memories, decided to seek higher education outside the kingdom and learn medicine from other places to broaden his knowledge. He often wrote to me, care of the Marchen, but the person he wrote the most to was Annice. Apparently whilst I had been otherwise occupied, the shy, kind barmaid had somehow stolen the heart of the rogueish physician. Even in his travels, he thought of her often and she blushed every time she received a letter.

Karma returned home a better man and set about proving himself worthy to rule a kingdom. It took a lot of time and patience, but slowly his family grew to trust in his changed behavior. When his father passed, Karma became a beloved king and married a princess from a faraway land named, appropriately, Rose. While the marriage was political, it is said that the royal couple grew to love one another deeply and their story became the stuff of myth.

Waltz, having been returned to full power, became the court enchanter to the crown. Superior to Mythros in every way, not the least of which in his unfailing kindness, Waltz was able to win over the people to adore him through a combination of perseverance and his signature puppet shows. Waltz worked diligently to remove the stigma that magic still carried and over time, his efforts bore fruit, especially in the younger generations who had not suffered as their parents had.

Father, Ophelia, Emelaigne, and Rod returned to the castle. I made amends with my step-family and oddly enough, Rod and I became very close friends. We remained in correspondence for the rest of our years. While I grew to love my step-mother and step-sister, I never fully forgot the pain of my father abandoning me to the hands of a woman who he knew was wicked. I wanted to simply leave it in the past, but it was not something I was ready to do. Over time, I forgave him, but I never forgot the darkness of my childhood.

I realized over time that I dreaded everything to do with the castle. I felt like an outsider in my childhood home, somehow even more than I had before, and before long I made a drastic decision. I renounced my claim to the crown. Varg was someone who would always be displeased to live in polite society, and after everything, I found that I simply didn't want to.

So without much of anything to do, we did EVERYTHING.

For a time, we settled in the woodlands and I studied plants and their medicinal properties. I stopped wearing dresses and started wearing breeches and much looser corsets, plaiting my hair down my back to keep it out of the way. We traveled together and climbed the highest peak in all of Angielle simply to see the heart-stopping view. Varg taught me swordplay and together we learned archery. We raced horses and slept under the stars. In the next few years that followed Hildyr's defeat, I laughed thrice as much as I had in 18 years previous.

Together with Varg, I left behind Lucette, Crown Princess of Angielle, Ice Princess, Daughter of Hildyr. Instead, I became Lucy, and Lucy was not troubled with the trappings of royalty nor anything else not to her liking. The constant in our many years together remained each other. Varg was mine and I was his. Over time, we learned that to us that was the only thing that mattered.

We fought, we loved, we lived, and one day, we died. And, as in all good fairytales, we lived Happily Ever After.

***End***