Cinderella's Fate | 🤍 seongjoong 🤍

Chapter 23

Seonghwa's POV 

    It was a small cabinet, in which it could barely fit a book, however inside there was a wooden box in red, with gold outlines and a gold lock.

     It resembled the box that contained the mask my mother gave me at her funeral. There wasn't a mention of the mask in the diary entries, in fact, the last entry was when she was able to set out for the ball like her parents requested her.

    She didn't mention a fairy godmother or her stepsisters coming in the way, as the next few pages were blank. The last entry's words were 'dress', related to the dress that stepmother had given to my mother.

    At the time, her relationship with my dad had been a secret, not due to status, as my dad was the son of a well-known marquee. He lived an ordinary life since his father didn't want to subject him to the life of a noble. However, my mother's side already had plans to marry off my mother to the prince, to gain a status above their own title of duke.

I guess that was what greediness did to people.

    All the noble houses got abolished a while ago, an opportunity for my mother to flee from her house and family to live in another city, far away from her parents. My father followed in tow due to the love they had for each other.

    That was one step that she did that signalled the weakening of the curse that disturbed her family.

With my hand, I tapped the inside of the cabinet, to search for anything that could open it.

But there was no sign of a key.

   Strange, I thought to myself, as so far in this journey my mother had provided all the materials in one place. I looked at the wooden box with curiosity.

What was the box holding ?

    Searching through my bag, I got to the source of all my answers. I did not hesitate to flip through my mother's diary to get an entry where she started to suspect that her mother was trying to search for something. That was the entry speaking of the first time she had been at the tree house, and in between these entries she had drawn a few pictures of the interior, but nothing mentioned the cabinet.

    I carefully inspected the entry, and read the next one, however , there was nothing leading to where the key might have been hidden.

    Then I came across a note, where through the messy writing style, I could sense the panic my mother was experiencing. The note was talking about the finding of the witch who lessened the original curse.

    She went to the library to find books about historical figures. Usually featuring the founder of the city , who had fallen involved with the fairy, the witch was a previous advisor to the ruler , before she dedicated to live an anonymous life. The reason as to why she decided a career change is not disclosed in the history book, more likely in the palace archives.

    At the time of retirement the ruler of the kingdom had, after the ruler, Martha had been able to defeat the enemies who were threatening to kill all that she loved, her people and lover Patricia. She did this by polluting the lake and rivers with magic so that it would not be drinkable.

    A great war happened near the river, but the fairy was able to gather more magical beings and defeat them , showing the great love the two lovers had. However, it was the witch who made it possible. She was in charge of mating the peace among all creatures due to negotiations, so she was able to help the fairy speak to the magical being about the horrors of the war.