𝐀 𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍'𝐒 𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐁𝐘 - Cinderella AU

XXXII - you're barely waking

xxxii.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" KING ALEXANDER CASIMIR of Angria's baritone was hard and heavy with his fury as it thundered through the sharp cold air as soon as he regained his senses, his chocolate orbs—desperately clawing at vision amongst the whipping front bits of his hair and the powerful gale blowing—glowed with anger and desperation as he yanked his head towards the first form he saw-the fairy godmother's weakened form.

The woman was crouched down, her round and stout form visible as the blue cloak she always adorned pressed tightly against her body and threatened to rip away with the force of the blowing wind.

Alexander Casimir turned away from the old woman when she failed to answer him, his feet digging into the ground as he held himself against the strong wind.

Overhead, the sky was a dark cloudy grey, and there were green plains as far as he could see around him, with only a littering of a dark village on the horizon—a detail he could easily have missed with the wind pressured against his eardrums and his own hair whipping painfully against his forehead and veiling his vision. Even with his knowledge of his own lands, familiarity on the ground he stood upon, refused to come to him, and there was a dizzying ache in the back of his head as though he had come down upon something hard.

Anxiety clawed at him sharply then. One second he had been at the altar after having married the woman he loved and desired like he had loved and desired nothing and no one else. The woman he had yearned for, and would always continue to yearn for like she was the reason he had always needed to live.

And the next second, he was here, in a land he did not recognize, in midst of what looked like an incoming storm.

The stark realization made his fist tighten at his sides then. He was no longer in the Kingdom of Angria—that he could tell, and his wife—fuck, where was his wife?

"Where is Isadora?" He shouted then, panic engulfing his chest as he yanked his head towards the fairy godmother again, as the old woman stammered something as she was pressed against the ground, using a meek and bewildered voice that was lost in the winds.

She was having trouble getting to her feet in the strong wind, but she was no longer trying to get up, for a thick hand of hers was desperately digging amongst the surface of the grass trying to find something, her head bent into the grass in desperation as the wind blew the hood of her cloak from off her head.

Zander saw sleek grey hair tied into a small knot at the base of the woman's neck. The knot was so small, he almost didn't notice it, and as the wind continued it's wrath and the old fairy pushed against it to look for her belonging in the grass, The King of Angria saw inches of skin in between the scarce, thin and sleeked back grey hair on the woman's scalp. The scarcity of hair, and the old woman's desperate display, struck him hard—making something heavy inside of him. An old frail woman. That is what this fairy was. But was that all? Would that be all there is to her?

He approached her and dropped into a crouch right in front of her face as he impeded her search, his eyes hard on the woman's face.

The King of Angria—regardless of his sudden sympathy for the old woman—still felt as though he could impale her under the wrath of his anger, for frail as she may look, she was the reason they were here and not at his wedding ceremony anymore.

"Where is my wife?" He ground his jaw, shouting in case the old woman had trouble hearing him over the raging wind. "What the fuck have you done to my wife?"

Recollections started focusing themselves inside his mind then. The breaking glass windows, the gust of wind, the falling chandelier at church, the guests' screams, Lucinda Tremaine's scream, the fairy godmother approaching Zander and Isa in the darkness and telling them to come with her. In what order had all those things happened? Why couldn't he remember that? Where was Isa? His mother? Good Lord, where was Archie? What the fuck happened?