After Ever After

One

Cinder ran through the halls of Artemisia palace trying to catch her cousin. Except it wasn't really her, more like herself as a child.

" Hurry Selene! The sun will rise soon!" Winter giggled running away. 

"Wait for me!" Cinder yelled her silk slippers padding along the floor. Winter turned the corner and was gone. Cinder ran headfirst into a giant skirt of Silver tulle. "Oof!"

" What do you think your doing, Selene?" A sweet voice cooed from above. She hung her head, a child being reprimanded. 

"I wanted to watch the sunrise with Winter, Mama." 

" You can't do such a thing."

" Why not?" 

"Because you my little princess are supposed to be dead"

The woman that Cinder somehow knew was her mother picked her up and cradled her walking to the sitting room. A fire crackled in the fireplace, and when she saw the coals Cinder began to cry. 

" Please Mama, please!" Cinder begged. 

" You were meant to die Selene, I'm sorry." Her mother's face morphed into Levana's and she threw her into the fire. Her skin crawled and the heat melted her very being. The coals waltzed on her arms and legs and she screamed. 

Cinder shot up, panting. The places where her cyborg appendages met her skin burned. She looked around her room. The Queen's quarters that had been emptied of Levana and redone for her. If she could cry, then she would have drowned in her own tears by now.

Heart BPM high calming in 3....2....1....

Overheating of central core. Beginning cooldown procedures

Such things as this scrolled across the bottom of her retina display, reminding her she was real.

Get it together. She thought. Her coronation was in 10 days and all of the earthen leaders would be arriving in three. More importantly Kai would be arriving and she couldn't let him see her this way.

Cinder was about to go back to sleep when Iko came crashing through the doors with Head Thaumaturge Isaac and Sara the maid in tow.

"Oh good your awake! That makes things easier" Iko chirped. Sara scurried and opened the shades and sure enough it was morning. "Up, up come on!"

Cinder rolled out of bed and there was a gasp and a flurry of white robes. Isaac.

"My Queen! Please notify if you are indecent next time!" he said flustered his back to her. He was a rare breed of Thaumaturge this one. Skilled with his gift, knowledgeable, kind, and yet tragically clumsy and odd. She was lucky to have found him, he was a prodigy, being only 13 as he was. She remembered how awkward he looked when he put on the white robes for the first time.

Cinder chuckled. She was wearing undergarments, and a white button up shirt that may or may not have once belonged to Kai. Iko screeched.

"Is that Kai's!? Where did you find that?"

Cinder just yawned and ignored her.

"What's the agenda today Isaac?"

"Um... right, you have a fitting in TC-11 today for you coronation dress this morning, and a meeting with the pack alphas this afternoon, pending a brief practice of your coronation vows before dinner." He replied red faced.

"Spectacular." Cinder drawled.

"Shush, your officially queen in 10 days! Show some excitement! If not for that then for Kai who is coming soon!" Iko reprimanded. Cinder would have blushed if she could but instead she just ducked her head slightly.