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When she was young, Ella had a cat.

It was before Henrietta and Thisbe and Aloise came, before she had learned just how much she could give up, when she was young enough that a bit of selfishness was expected. Back when she could afford to have something that was only hers, and that she could feel justified in wishing to keep.

He was white with brown patches, long-haired and silky soft, as gentle and patient as her vague memories of Mama, who he first belonged to. His name was Gustave, and he had been old by the time Mama passed.

She was seven when Gustave died. As soon as she found him lying still and cold under her wardrobe, she understood he was gone. She raced into Papa’s office, sobbing and wailing so hard her head span, and buried herself in his arms for hours. He rubbed her back and asked an attendant to bring her water as he finished the work that couldn’t wait, and then carried her back to his room to soothe her. She fell asleep in his arms that night, leaving wet patches on his shirt. They had a funeral for Gustave the next day, burying him under Mama’s tree in the garden.

A few weeks later, Papa had asked if she wanted to consider getting a new cat to keep her company. Ella had burst into tears again. The idea of falling in love with a new cat only to lose them again was too painful.

She never had another pet.

After her stepfamily moved into their home, when it became clear that Papa had chosen that horrible, selfish woman as queen and the daughters who took after her as Ella’s fellow princesses, Ella quickly learned a number of small griefs. Each of them was far pettier than the loss of her mother, but nonetheless every time stung her like another bee in a swarm.

Her favorite book of folktales, the one with the gilded edges and beautiful illustrations and sapphire silk ribbon, went missing for months. She eventually found it in Thisbe’s room, pages torn and cover water-stained. She took it back. Papa took her side when Thisbe threw a tantrum over it, but Ella did not show him the state the book was in. She did not ask for it to be replaced. Not when her stepmother Henrietta had already called her selfish for wanting a book she was too old to be reading anyway.

Papa did his best to keep the peace between Ella and his new wife and stepdaughters, but she was acutely aware that Papa was no longer entirely hers, and she had to mourn that, too. He didn’t want to take sides or favor anyone. Everything was a compromise, a negotiation, a trade-off. He tried to make everyone happy. Each compromise cost Ella.

Thisbe and Aloise came along on outings with him that had before been for him and Ella alone. Any prominent family portraits with Mama were moved into storage and replaced with ones of the five of them. Ella reluctantly allowed Aloise to spend time with her and her few friends, despite the fact that Aloise was two years younger and demanded they always do what she wanted. When she dared to complain, Henrietta reprimanded her for not welcoming them into her family, and Papa pleaded with her to just try to help them weather the transition period.

One night a few months after the wedding, Ella woke from a nightmare and tiptoed out of bed, padding the familiar path to Mama and Papa’s room. She was perhaps getting a bit old to curl up in her parents’ bed like a small child, but Papa never begrudged her the comfort.

She froze at the door when she heard Papa’s laugh instead of the quiet she was used to. Ella pushed the door open to see Papa and Henrietta on the ottoman at the foot of the bed, both smiling in a quiet conversation. They were in pajamas, and Henrietta was curled into Papa’s side, his arm around her. Papa brushed her forehead with a gentle kiss.

Ella stood there, chest feeling like it might burst with horror and disgust. She wanted to vomit. Henrietta wasn’t Mama. Papa shouldn’t look like that with her. Ella’s eyes burned as she squeezed them shut. Some invisible barrier separated her from the room, and she was unable to bring herself to step inside, to interrupt this moment. They looked happy. How could Papa look happy with her?

She backed away and eased the door silently shut. This wasn’t Mama and Papa’s room anymore. It belonged to Henrietta now.

The only thing that was truly Ella’s was her singing tutor, Mara, and this was more due to Mara putting her foot down and only accepting one student than any mercy on her stepfamily’s part. Her voice lessons were her only reprieve, and often the thought of them was the only thing that let her grit her teeth and make it through another game where her stepsisters cheated or lecture from Henrietta to be patient, Ella, they’re younger than you.

She’d always known her duty was to put the needs of her people before her own wants. She was a princess, and the comfort and privilege she enjoyed was only to allow her to perform her responsibilities. Royalty must be prepared to give everything for those who put their trust in them– their time, their desires, their pride. More and more Papa kept giving to the people of Perrault as the ever-present threat of the Cole Dominion loomed larger beyond their skies. Ella was too young to do political work, but she still had her role for her people. Keeping the peace with her stepfamily seemed, in some way, a smaller stage to perform it on.

Still, she soon grew tired of the endless give and take, where it felt like she did little but give. Eventually, when Ella was twelve, she confronted Papa in his office. It was bright and airy like most of the palace, reinforced glass windows letting the midday sun shine through and making the Perraultian blue drapery all the more vivid. Papa sat at his desk, looking between three different datapads and using a stylus to move something. His crown sat on a side table nearby, like he’d just been in a hologram meeting and not put it away yet.

“I can’t do this anymore!” She shut the door behind her, harder and louder than she meant to.

Papa jumped, but his face softened as he looked up and took in her tension. “Ella, love, I can’t talk right now. Can I find you tonight?”

“No, because tonight Henrietta will have something important to talk about or do that will take until bedtime.” The words came out in a rush. “Every time you try to spend time with me, she pulls you away, and I need to talk to you.”

He glanced down at his tablets and papers, then sighed slightly and stood. He crossed the room to her and put his hands gently on her shoulders, attention now entirely on her. “I’m sorry. I know this hasn’t been easy–”

“But it will get better eventually? When we all get used to being a family?” she finished the sentence for him, tears filling her eyes. “You’ve been saying that for two years, and it’s only gotten worse. Henrietta hates me. She wishes I didn’t exist.” She wrapped her arms around herself, chest feeling like a void.

“That’s not true, Ella.” He cupped her chin, tilted her face up to him so he could look her in the eye. His face was open. Ella could tell he believed it when he added, “She loves you.”

“Then why does she always make sure Thisbe and Aloise get everything they want, and make me give things up? Why does she call me selfish? Why doesn’t she let us spend time together?”

“She calls you selfish?” His brow creased with concern.

“Yes.” Had he really never noticed? Did he really have no idea how awful she was right under his nose? All the little criticisms of Ella, all the things she gave to Thisbe and Aloise instead– how could he be so clueless?

Papa’s shoulders fell as he took a deep breath, several emotions crossing his face. “I’ll speak to her about that,” he said carefully. “She shouldn’t have called you that. And I’ll discuss compromises with her.”

“That doesn’t help!” she exclaimed. “Every time you talk to her, she just pretends to be nice for a few days and then things go back to how they were.”

Papa moved a hand to Ella’s back and guided her to the velvet couch at the side of the room. “I’m sorry it’s been so hard, Ella. I’m sorry you don’t get along. It isn’t easy, to be a stepmother or to be queen. Especially now.” He sighed and closed his eyes a moment, weariness wearing on his face. “It’s a hard situation for all of us. I promise, we’ll work it out.”

Ella looked away, curling into herself. “Mama wouldn’t have wanted this,” she mumbled.

She felt Papa physically flinch next to her. “Ella–” he said, strangled. He took a breath and pulled her tight into his arms. Despite everything, his embrace was warm, enveloping her in the familiar woody scent of his cologne. “You know I’ll always love your mother, don’t you?”

“Then why did you marry her?” she asked, small.

“Perrault needed a queen.” He spoke into her hair, almost sounding pleading. “Please understand. Our people need more than just me to lead them. Your stepmother is a good leader. She’ll help keep us safe from the Empire.”

“No, she won’t. She only cares about herself.” Ella pulled back, cheeks flushing with frustration. Why did he always talk about Henrietta like she was a completely different woman with the same name? “You always tell me a ruler’s responsibility is to her people. That she isn’t more important than them just because of her job. Henrietta acts like she deserves whatever she wants.”

Papa’s face went tight, like he was trying not to wince. “She believes a little differently than your mother did. That doesn’t make her a bad queen. She’s still what’s best for our people.” He wiped a tear from her cheek, tender. “Ruling with her is a compromise like any of the others we make. I know it’s a lot to ask of you. But can you trust me, and trust her, for our people?”

Ella paused. Then, her shoulders fell. Not meeting Papa’s eyes, she nodded. What else could she do?

“Thank you, Ella. I love you.” He sniffled. She realized with a rush of something like horror that he was close to crying, too. That that tightness around his eyes was him holding back his own tears. After a moment, he squeezed her hand and added, “You’re right that we haven’t had enough time together. I’ll try to make time for just us, all right?”

He did, to his credit. For the next three years, he set aside one evening a month for the two of them to spend together. Henrietta didn’t like it, but Ella didn’t care as long as she had her father. Things weren’t good. Aloise and Thisbe still demanded everything Ella had, Henrietta still echoed those demands, and Papa still couldn’t see how awful they all were. But for a time, they were better.

Ever since witnessing the first missile strike of the war, Ella had nightmares about the stars falling out of the sky and turning on the planet they’d twinkled over for so long. Papa got busier when the war began. So did Henrietta. And, though Papa made some obligatory effort to stop her from taking on too much, so did Ella.

He couldn’t refuse her help for long when their planet was under attack. They were a royal family at war, and that meant they all had to protect their people. The first duties she took on were humanitarian. She sang at charity benefits, organized aid for displaced citizens, and, when she could, traveled to survey for herself what her people needed and show them that their princess cared for them.

Ella didn’t dare stop for too long– if she did, the fear and helplessness of the situation threatened to overwhelm her, like there was a mass of thorns growing in her lungs and choking out her breath. The Empire had always been a looming threat, powerful as a storm and just as implacable. Her best hope had been that it would not take notice of Perrault in her lifetime. Now that their king had set his eyes on them, there was no chance of emerging unscathed.

She saw the devastation, though Papa tried to keep the worst of it from her. She saw the scars on Perrault’s soldiers and the footage of burning, twisted wreckage of what once had been cities. She heard how many thousands and thousands of acres of farmland had been burnt and poisoned to never provide again. Often she swore she could smell the distant smoke. She met orphans and widows and grieving parents, and she wept, both with them and long after she parted ways from them.

Within a year, it was obvious they were losing. It was only a matter of when the Empire would finally crush them.

Grief was an early lesson for Ella. Mama got sick suddenly– one day, she was braiding a squirming Ella’s hair and singing to her, promising that if she sat nicely for the family portrait they could stay up late to go outside the city and see the stars. A few weeks later, she was still and cold in her bed, and Papa had tears running down his face as he haltingly explained that Mama was never coming back.

She hadn’t quite grasped it. Never was a little beyond a four-year-old, and she had to learn day-by-day that the word meant she could not have Mama today any more than she could yesterday. She was used to spending the day with nurses and tutors while Mama and Papa attended to their duties, but she would often scream and cry when the evening came and Mama still wasn’t there. She thought they were playing a trick on her, that Mama was hiding, and Ella would shout with all of her tiny might that it wasn’t funny. Papa spent many nights holding her until she’d spent her rage enough to fall asleep in his arms, cheeks still streaked with tears.

Sometimes she woke up when he put her into her bed. When that happened, she’d cling to him and beg him not to leave. Mama wasn’t there– what if he never came back, either? What if both of them left her alone?

Papa took to keeping a basket of knitting in her room. He’d let her curl into him as he worked, lulling her back to sleep with the comforting rhythmic movements before finally stealing away to get some rest of his own.

It was around this time that Mara came into her life. She’d been a friend of Mama’s. In adulthood, Ella would come to suspect that Papa invited her to stay with them in the hopes she might be able, in some small way, to offer a connection to her.

Mara wasn’t her mother and never tried to be. What she was was an anchor, a friend, a confidante. It was her who suggested that Ella be taught to sing properly, that her love of the family tradition of music and her penchant for singing made-up songs might be cultivated into an outlet and a gift. It was her who began teaching her to sing as beautifully as her mother once did.

When she and her father spent time together during the war, it was to discuss what the planet needed. Papa still wouldn’t hear criticism of Henrietta, but he would take Ella’s own suggestions under advisement . Speaking to him became the best way to sway him back toward the ideals she knew he still held, the ones he shared with Mama. Most of these meetings were shared with Henrietta, the three of them trying to find or make some advantage for Perrault. But some precious nights, Ella got Papa all to herself.

As the war went on and Ella grew older, their relationship shifted. Where once her suggestions were a little girl’s simplistic ideas, to be indulged, nurtured as seeds, and pruned into something actionable, now she bloomed. By the time she was eighteen, their political conversations had become those of near-equals. A few times, she even managed to genuinely impress Papa with her insight. She still treasures the memory of the startled look on his face the first time she pointed out a funding source he’d overlooked, and the warm smile as he realized it would let them fight another day.

Whatever Ella could give, she gave. Whatever she could spare, she donated or sold or traded for something that would help her people. A few things of Mama’s, few enough to fit in a painted wooden box she could hold in her hands, she kept sacred. The rest was a sacrifice she had to be willing to make.

Henrietta, Aloise, and Thisbe felt differently, of course. Of course. What was the good of all their billions of people compared to their own vanity? As Ella worked to prop up the ever-faltering war effort, she had no choice but to work with Henrietta. As queen, she technically should have been Ella’s mentor. She was only ever a hindrance.

At seventeen, Ella had to let Mara go to cut costs. She managed to talk Thisbe and Aloise into giving something up with her this time, and each of them had promised to find something to sacrifice for the war effort.

Losing Mara cut more deeply than anything she’d yet given up willingly. Ella made sure her tutor had a generous final paycheck and a glowing recommendation to find another job, and Mara made it clear that though she was no longer her tutor, she’d always be her friend. Still, Ella nearly lost her resolve when they said goodbye.

“I’m so sorry,” she told Mara for the tenth time in the white stone foyer of the palace. A few years earlier, she’d have walked her out to the steps. Now such a thing was too dangerous without security. Even with all Couronne's defenses, there could be traitors within the city. It wasn't likely, but it wasn't a risk they could afford.

She couldn’t bear the thought of being watched even if only by guards while doing this. Already she felt as if she’d shatter at the slightest touch.

Mara embraced her. “Don’t be. I understand.” As Ella buried her head in Mara’s shoulder, Mara added softly, “It’s what your mother would have done. She would be proud of you.”

Ella’s composure crumbled at that, and she started weeping. Mara rubbed her back soothingly.

“Truth be told,” Mara continued as if telling a secret, “I’ve been wondering myself if it’s time to move on. Our people need us both.” She squeezed her. “We’ll fight off Cole, and then we’ll be together again. I’ll come back as soon as the war is done. I swear it.”

Through her tears, Ella managed to breathe, “What if we don’t win?”

Just saying it felt like a bad omen, but her logical mind knew that their chances were slim whether or not she admitted it.

“We will. I believe in Perrault. We’ll hold them off.” Mara pulled back and looked into Ella’s face, smiling gently. “I believe in you, too. You’re already a force to be reckoned with. You’ll lead us to victory and heal our wounds when it’s over. I can’t wait to call you my queen.”

It wasn’t likely. Every livre they spent only pushed their defeat off another few hours. But for that moment, with Mara looking at her like she was already queen, Ella could almost believe it. Maybe they could defy the odds. Maybe she and Mara would meet again.

Later that day she learned that for her part of the agreement, Aloise had given up a few necklaces she’d been gifted for the harvest right before the war– necklaces she’d complained for days about, because according to her they were cheap and ugly. Thisbe only sold a book of poetry a boy she’d been seeing had given her before they broke up. The money they saved might have covered a single day of Mara’s salary. The sentimental value was less than nothing. Ella cried herself to sleep that night, seething through her sobs.

Once there had been a willow tree in the courtyard garden. It was tucked away into a quiet area, surrounded by delicate white flowers and soft grass, its boughs the perfect length to create a canopy to hide away in. Mama planted it when she first moved into the palace shortly before her and Papa’s wedding, and Papa always told Ella it had been her favorite spot in the garden. Because of this, it was Ella’s favorite, too. She spent what must have been a quarter of her childhood nestled at its roots reading or studying or gazing up into it. She always felt held in its branches, like Mama was reaching from beyond her grave to comfort and shelter her.

Henrietta always disliked the tree, hated how much of the garden it took up. Papa never let her cut it down just for that. But when Ella was thirteen, the head gardener informed them that the tree had been damaged by insects. The gardener thought she could possibly save it, but it would be time-consuming whether it worked or not.

Armed now with an excuse, Henrietta ordered the willow tree removed and had a special cultivar of blue roses planted in its place. Papa had some of the wood preserved and carved into a tinier likeness of the tree for Ella. The little sculpture went into her box of Mama’s things, but it was never the same.

Ella didn’t spend much time in the courtyard garden after that. The absence of Mama’s tree cut her too deeply, and the roses always felt like they were mocking her.

When she was brought to the prison, Cole told her that he still hoped to spare her. He was a merciful king, he said, and had no desire to harm a girl raised without knowledge of a better way. She would always have the opportunity to swear fealty to him. When she did– when, he said, not if– she would be freed, provided for, given a place in the Empire just as her planet was. That’s when she’d finally gathered the courage to spit in his face.

He murdered her father, burned huge swathes of her planet, stripped her people of their sovereignty, and kept her as a captive. She could not stop him, and when she first saw him in person she’d been too frozen with horror to show him the disrespect he deserved. But she could stop him from taking her integrity. She would never submit to him, and she’d make sure he knew it.

She was denied food that night for assaulting His Majesty’s person. She only regretted she’d been unable to do worse.

While Perrault fought Cole, Ella fought Henrietta. They spent several hours together several days a week, hours during which Ella was meant to be learning from her how to be queen. In practice, Henrietta did whatever she liked and told Ella to follow, while Ella’s suggestions were entirely ignored. Ella felt more like a puppy nipping at Henrietta’s heels than a student of any kind.

Every proposal she made, her stepmother dismissed, for years. One or two Henrietta later suggested to Papa as her own idea and implemented, but none of them were ones that meant she lost a damn thing. Anything that would require her to give up an ounce of luxury she treated like a waste of her time.

“Ella, dear,” she sighed one day after Ella put forth a proposal to cut the family’s personal budget to buy more munitions. They were across from each other in the sitting room, the small, private one that faced the gardens. In midwinter, the view was a bit desolate, but the artificial hearth displayed a roaring fire. The two of them had been working separately on their datapads, but Ella was quite sure she’d caught Henrietta browsing the galactic cortex before she brought up her plan. “You must let go of these romantic notions you have. Your father has already cut all he can from our budget.”

Ella tried not to glare and zoomed in on a line in her plan. “Look at how much we’re spending on new clothing. We have plenty; we don’t need–”

“New clothing signals wealth and power,” Henrietta interrupted with an exhausted air. “Our allies and rivals alike need to see our strength. This is no time to let them wonder if our resources are dwindling.”

“Our resources are dwindling. We won’t be able to hide that forever. Wouldn’t it be better to put them toward something that will allow us to drive off the Empire?”

The look on Henrietta’s face was one Ella knew well. It asked without asking when Ella would grow up, give up, and forget Mama’s ideals. “If we show weakness now, the Empire won’t be the only threat. Part of my duty– your duty, someday– is to entertain. It’s how a large portion of my work is done. It’s the stage for diplomacy. I’ve given all I can in that part of the budget. I will not cut more.”

“What about switching to only Perraultian-grown food? It would reduce costs and show support for our–”

“No,” she said, an edge of irritation coming through the gentleness she was clearly attempting to play at. “We cannot show weakness, Ella. Hopefully you will come to understand that one day.”

The people began asking Ella why the royal family continued to live in luxury while they went without, and Ella couldn't answer them. She took a lesson from Henrietta and sold off as many of her fine dresses as she could get away with. It ensured she was seen in the same plain clothes over and over. If clothing sent a message, Ella would signal that she understood. That she was willing to sacrifice as much as she asked her people to.

Ella was sixteen the first time she fell in love. Lucille was the daughter of a count in the Souris province, which was being heavily hit by Cole at the time. Count Souris and his family traveled to the capitol to discuss the war effort with Papa and Henrietta, and Ella was put in charge of hosting his children. Lucille was her age and the most beautiful girl Ella had ever seen– shining dark eyes, a striking nose, a little shorter than Ella and far more athletic. She was clever and funny and bright despite everything happening in her home. Best of all, she seemed as taken with Ella as Ella was with her.

They’d had to be careful. Neither of their families knew their romantic inclinations, and this was hardly the time to raise such an issue. But after Lucille’s younger brothers went to bed, she would steal away to the quiet places of the palace where Ella could meet her.

It was an awkward teenage love, one of whispered giggles and clumsy kisses that tasted of lip balm and sweet promises neither of them could ever have kept. When Lucille had to leave after a few weeks, they swore to keep in touch and find their way back to one another.

They tried for a while, but both of them had responsibilities far beyond themselves, and it only got harder and harder to find times to talk to one another, especially with the time difference across the planet. Ella’s eyelids were usually already heavy by the time they could reach each other late at night, and she sometimes fell asleep only a few minutes into their conversations or worse, on one occasion, before Lucille even called.

Despite this, Ella didn’t expect it when Lucille broke things off after four months. After they hung up for the last time, she was left staring at her comms, feeling a whole new kind of loss. There was no one she could tell– even Mara hadn’t known, and besides that she was probably asleep now. Ella couldn’t wake her for this, couldn’t explain everything through the physical ache in her chest. There was nothing she could do except cry herself to sleep with all the misery of a first broken heart.

Cole’s prisons brought new heartaches. She knew enough Constantine to understand and be understood, but no one here spoke any of her own Perraultian. The food she was given didn’t taste like what she’d ever eaten before– even when it seemed like a familiar dish, the flavor of it was wrong– and there was rarely enough of it. She had none of her own things. Clothes, soap, blankets, all her necessities were provided by the prison wardens, and were ill-fitting or smelled strange or were too thin and scratchy. She wasn’t allowed a cellmate, as she was deemed too important to risk one. In the first months after Papa’s murder and Perrault’s fall, she spent much of her time grieving alone.

Another prisoner became something of a friend to her. He was a man about ten years Ella’s senior, the brother of a planetary governor who had stolen tax money from the Empire. His name was Arthur, and he explained to her he was being held here until his brother paid back what was owed.

For a few months, they’d walk laps around the barren concrete courtyard together when the prisoners were let out of their cells for exercise and sit together at their dismal meals. When she first arrived, he warned her which wardens liked to abuse their power and which guards wouldn’t tolerate anything but meek obedience from their prisoners. He taught her how to tell the better ones no in a way that wouldn’t make them angry, and, when it didn’t work for her and they got angry anyway, called them “fucking bastards” and helped her work out what would work for a foreign princess.

He was good at drawing Ella out of the deepest fogs of her depression, good at knowing when a story from home or a kind word or a joke would be best. He held her when her grief overwhelmed her and let her teach him Perraultian words and phrases when she missed home. The first time she laughed after Perrault’s fall was when he butchered the phrase “I want to get out of here” to sound like “I want a pigeon,” and then kept repeating it in an increasingly demanding tone. The guards had come over to investigate to find tears of laughter streaming down Ella’s face.

Arthur was a lifeline, but a few months into her imprisonment, he disappeared. She didn’t see him for days, and it took her nearly two weeks to learn that his brother had paid his debt and he had been released and sent home. This was good. He deserved better than to be here. Ella was happy for him.

And yet, as she sat alone in the mess or avoided the eyes of the other prisoners, she felt as if she might tear herself out of her skin just for the fleeting illusion of the same chance. It wasn’t fair. He, born a citizen of the empire and loyal enough to Cole, could leave. He could go home and reunite with his family and feel grass under his feet, wind in his hair. He had a way out of this hell.

Ella would never have that chance. She’d already proved no price would have saved her.

No matter how much she gave during the war, it wasn’t enough against the power they faced. Cole’s armies kept creeping across the planet like a rot. More and more cities fell; three of Perrault’s nine provinces were entirely under the Empire’s control and another was more or less razed to the ground. There was nothing she could do for the people of those regions except ensure the free provinces were open and as ready as possible for whatever refugees could escape. It was only a matter of time before the planet fell, unless they could do something drastic. Something to increase their resources enough to drive off the beast once and for all. As Ella turned the problem over in her mind again and again, she came to a conclusion.

When Ella was very young, Papa played piano. She remembered sitting on his lap, his strong arms around her as he pulled beautiful music from the glossy white keys and her mother stood at his side singing. Her voice always echoed beautifully off the high vaulted ceiling. Sometimes Ella just liked to listen, but often she sang, too, loudly and gracelessly and joyfully the way only a toddler can. Many a night was passed like this, in what felt to the tiny Ella like a bubble of light and warmth.

She couldn’t remember now the last time Papa even entered the piano room, but late that night she found him there, playing one of the folk songs Mama loved so much from her childhood. It was a mournful arrangement of a usually cheerful Harvest song. Ella shivered to hear it. It sounded like a funeral dirge for their home.

“Papa?” she asked, hands shaking a bit. She couldn’t decide what she was most afraid of. Him agreeing to her plan? Him saying no? Rejecting her one condition?

Papa startled and turned around, relaxing when he saw it was her. “I thought you’d be asleep. You should be; you’ll need your rest for tomorrow.”

“I’ll be all right. I’ve run plenty of benefits tired before.” Ella sat down next to him on the bench. “Besides, I couldn’t sleep.”

He sighed and rubbed his temple. The dark circles under his eyes were clear. When had his hair gone so gray? “Neither could I.”

“The war’s going badly.” There was no reason to soften the statement. They both knew.

“We’ll manage somehow.” He said it like a haggard prayer. “If Cole wants Perrault, he’ll have to have it over my dead body.”

Ella flinched, wishing he wouldn’t say that. Cole had killed plenty of former monarchs on other planets. “We’re giving it almost everything we have and we’re still losing. He’ll have Perrault if we don’t do something.”

Papa gave her a weary look. “We are doing something. You almost more than anyone. There’s nothing more we can do.” He shook his head helplessly. “I’m so sorry, Ella. We’ll just have to do our best.”

Ella straightened. “No. There’s more we can do. There’s something we still haven’t given up.” She paused, taking time to force steel into her voice.

“Me.”

“What?” Papa asked, flinching back with wide eyes. “Ella, what in all the stars–”

“I’m nearly an adult.” There were less than two years before her twentieth birthday. “I’m eligible to be married, and the future queen of Perrault is a powerful promise. If we made a marriage alliance, we could double or more our resources without giving away what belongs to our people.” Her heart pounded. “I’ll marry anyone you wish me to, from any planet. I’ll even accept someone from the Empire if that’s what will protect Perrault. All I ask is that– that it’s a woman.”

She didn’t know what she was expecting. Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t for Papa to let out a strangled sob, and for him to pull her into a tight hug. “I won’t marry you to a man, a woman, or anyone else. I won’t do it, Ella.” His voice was thick. “I won’t let Cole take that from you.”

Ella squeezed her eyes shut against her own tears, breath hitching as she embraced him back. “What if I give it? I'm willing to for Perrault.”

Herself for a whole planet. What kind of choice was it? What kind of princess would she be if she couldn’t offer this?

“No,” he said. “That is not how we do things. Not in the modern day. Your wife will be someone you choose because you love her and you trust her as your consort, not someone who–” His voice broke then. “I”m sorry. I’m so sorry this was even a thought in your mind.”

“It isn’t your fault, Papa.” A terrible helplessness crawled in her gut as her father sobbed into her shoulder. She had no idea what she could say to reassure him. “I want to do whatever I can for our people. Please– please don’t be upset.”

He trembled in her arms. “I’ve let you take far too much onto your shoulders. This isn’t what I hoped for for you. I’ve failed you.”

Ella shook her head desperately. Of course it wasn’t. It wasn’t what any of them wanted. That didn’t mean Papa had failed her. “It’s Cole’s fault.” She tried to sound steady, reassuring, the way Papa had always done for her. Her voice still shook. “Once we defeat him, things will be better. But we have to defeat him.”

There was a long pause. Papa wept openly. Ella could do nothing but weep with him, clinging to him as tightly as he clung to her. He held her head against his shoulder as if she were still a newborn who needed nothing but to be rocked to sleep in her father’s arms. As if she wasn’t nearing adulthood with three years of war already behind her.

Finally, Papa breathed, “There is no defeating him, Ella.” He pulled back to look in her eyes, expression broken. “Perhaps, if we’re lucky, we’ll drive him off, for a time. Perhaps even for the rest of your lifetime. But until someone learns to kill him, no planet will be safe. Certainly not Perrault.” He scrubbed the tears from his face, only to have more fall moments later.

“Let me help. Let me do my part to drive him off,” she pleaded. She was a child trying to patch over her Papa’s problems with a hug and a crayon drawing. She was a politician who only needed the chance to do her work. She was, terribly and helplessly, something of both. “We can still buy a few more decades of freedom.”

Papa seemed to be knitting himself back together. His voice grew stronger as he said, “You’re already doing your part and more. I won’t hear of it. I won’t sell you to another planet for ours.”

“We all make sacrifices–”

“Not this.” These words weren’t Papa’s, but King Hector’s. They demanded to be obeyed. Though a few tears still slipped down his cheeks, and though he still shook slightly, Ella knew she could not sway him. “I’d do nearly anything for our people, as I know you would. But this is the line. I won’t discuss it further.”

He paused, softening back into Papa with a slight tension in his shoulders, a slight wideness in his eyes. A hint of apprehension. “You’ll only love a woman?”

Her own eyes filled with tears, though she couldn’t have said whether it was out of disappointment, relief, despair, or something else. Her chest twisted into a knot as she nodded.

Papa pulled her back into her arms.

“I love you more than all the stars in the sky,” he murmured, rocking her slightly. “When you’re ready to introduce a partner to the court, I’ll ensure your love is treated like any other.”

Ella buried her face in his shoulder, finally letting herself be fully cradled. “Thank you. I love you, too.” She sniffled and added, small, “I wish Mama could have known.”

His breath hitched. “She’d have said the same.” He held her even tighter, as if he could hold Ella for both himself and Mama. “She’d have been so proud of the woman you’ve become, Ella.”

They held each other a long time. Eventually, when Ella finally pulled back from the hug and they’d both spent their tears, Papa began playing again. It was the same song as before, but this time closer to the bright style it was intended for. She sang along, voice still tremulous at first but growing stronger as she relaxed into the music. For a few minutes, the room was as warm and safe as it had been fifteen years ago.

When they finally parted and went to bed, she slept well for the first time in months.

In prison, especially early on, she cycled between consuming fury and catatonic grief. Her Papa, her planet, everything was gone. The sheer magnitude of the loss was too much to carry in her body.

When she had the energy, she raged against her jailers, against the empire, against Cole. She refused the orders she was given and demanded to be treated as the rightful ruler of a neighboring people. The guards and soldiers were implacable. Only on a handful of occasions did she even manage to get a visible reaction, but they always found a way to make her suffer for it.

Usually, this was in something she couldn’t prove. After she refused to leave her cell to go walk in the courtyard in a semblance of outdoor time (the notion was ridiculous when the courtyard only looked up into a black sky, not a star or anything green and growing in sight), the air grew colder and colder until she was shivering too hard to sleep. When she asked, she was told the heating systems were malfunctioning in certain parts of the prison. The next day, after she relented if only to spend some time someplace warm, the system was fixed.

A few times, the guards were more overt. It didn’t happen often to her– after the first time she was shouted at, she knew she didn’t want to repeat the experience, and she would rather have died than let them restrain her and leave her in solitary confinement for days as they sometimes did with others. But the venom they could hurl at her when she crossed the line, the way they could corner her and make her feel miniscule, made it hard to breathe whenever they approached her too sharply. Despite everything Cole’s people had done on Perrault, their cruelty still managed to surprise her. She learned better than to show them the fullness of her anger before she’d been there a month.

Often she didn’t even have the strength for the small rebellions she could risk. She sleepwalked through those days, lost in a haze of numbness and horror. She didn’t feel like she lived in her own body. She didn’t feel like much of anything but a stray bit of soul tethered to her flesh. She ached for Papa, for Mama, for Mara or Lucille or anyone, but she was alone, and all she could do was continue.

Some days she couldn’t muster the will to leave her cot. Her body was too heavy; if she’d tried to stand she might have fallen with enough force to crack the floor. She did her best to sleep through those days, letting the endless hours slip away in a gentle stream of oblivion.

She was punished for this, too.

Certainly Henrietta wasn’t the kind of queen Mama had been, but Papa wasn’t the kind of king he once was, either, during the war. Ella understood the hard decisions; stars, she did. Her aid programs alone taught her long before she was eighteen that there would always be more need than resources, always be a thousand more things that ought to be done and never anywhere near the time and budget and sheer possibility. A leader needed to prioritize. There was no way around it.

But during the war, under Henrietta’s influence, the things Papa prioritized were different than they once were.

In all her poring over their resources, Ella once found a blessing that made her nearly weep with relief. A forgotten pocket of their budget from before the war, a purchase they’d planned and never made, thousands of livres that had somehow fallen by the wayside– livres that could now be used to invest in their victory. They wouldn’t last long. Probably they would only fund a single purchase, but even that was more than they’d easily managed in years.

She stayed up the entire night before her next meeting with Papa and Henrietta to craft a plan of how to use the money. By now, she knew how to plan a proposal. When she arrived in Papa’s office the next morning, dark circles under her eyes and a mug of coffee in hand, she knew her plan was perfect. She had to keep herself from bouncing with excitement as she waited for Henrietta to arrive. Papa would be so thrilled.

Ella beamed as she told them she had news, and didn’t stop all throughout outlining her proposal. When she revealed the extra livres, both Papa and Henrietta’s faces lit up. Papa got up from his desk to wrap Ella in a hug, pulling her off her feet to spin her around.

“Ella, you brilliant girl,” he laughed.

But after he sat back down, as she outlined her idea for boosting the infrastructure that would allow refugees from the war zones to travel to safety more easily, Papa’s expression turned more thoughtful and Henrietta’s cooled entirely. When Ella finished her presentation, Henrietta smiled indulgently.

“It’s a nice idea, but don’t you think the money could be spent better elsewhere?” she asked.

Ella couldn’t help but shoot her a dirty look. “Where? Buying new upholstery for the guest wings?”

“Ella, please.” Papa closed his eyes and took a breath before softening and offering Ella a thin smile. “You’ve done incredible work, but your stepmother is right that we should explore our options.”

She looked away, fidgeting with her notes.

“Hattie, go on.” He nodded to Henrietta.

“We’ve been eyeing an alliance with Cú Chulainn. Perhaps this could be the budget we need to secure it.” she said, leaning forward. “It would cover the cost to bring their representatives here and host them, or perhaps to offer enough security for our diplomats to visit them. If we can impress them enough to prove the value of an alliance, we could significantly increase our resources to fight this war.”

“What can we offer them?” Ella asked. “We’re besieged. We barely have the capability to export what crops we have left to sell. We’re on the brink of being conquered by Cole. Why would they risk aligning themselves with us now?”

Henrietta glanced down into her lap, expression turning pained. After a breath, she said quietly, “I believe it may be time to begin considering… more drastic exchanges. Perhaps, say, limited mining rights for the minerals on the outer asteroids.”

“No!” She pushed to her feet. “Absolutely not. We can’t trade away the rights to our own ter–”

“Ella, love.” Hector held up a hand, brows creeping inward. “As much as I hate to say it…” He paused. Then his shoulders fell, posture defeated. “It may be time to consider it.”

She looked between Papa and Henrietta, chest crawling. “We can’t win the war against Cole by giving Perrault to someone else. What is the point if we aren’t sovereign by the end?”

“We have to make sacrifices to win. You know that,” Henrietta said, gentle and sweet as oleander blossoms.

“As if you’ve made a single damn sacrifice since Papa married you!” she snapped.

“Ella!” Papa stood, pushing his chair back abruptly enough to make it teeter backwards a moment. “You may not speak to your stepmother that way.” At her betrayed look, he let out a long, overwhelmed breath. His voice was softer as he asked, “Do you think this is what any of us want? Do you really believe we’d be entertaining it if we had another option?”

Ella wouldn’t be mollified. “I think we should entertain anything else before that!”

“We have,” Henrietta said, spreading her hands wide. “You said yourself we have nothing else. Would you rather give up a percentage of the asteroids, or lose all of Perrault?”

“There has to be another way.” There had to be something else to give that wasn’t that. The tips of her fingers felt a bit numb. They couldn’t be to that point. Not yet.

Papa rubbed his temples. “Sweetheart,” he said carefully. “Why don’t we take a few minutes to calm ourselves? We all need to be mature and levelheaded as we discuss this.”

Though he didn’t say it, Ella knew he meant that she needed to be mature.

“It isn’t immature to want to protect what’s ours.”

“Let’s come back in fifteen minutes,” he repeated, firmer. “We’ll discuss it then.”

As she left the room, she looked back and saw Papa putting his head in his hands.

In the end, the windfall was used to send diplomats to Cú Chulainn. The deal was completed, and Cú Chulainn received the rights to mine certain parts of the asteroids in exchange for weapons and supplies. Nothing Ella said would change Papa’s mind, but she caught him and Henrietta holding each other tight after he signed the agreement. Both of their shoulders shook as if they were weeping.

Ella wept, too– for the loss of their sovereignty, and for the new certainty that Papa would pick Henrietta not only over her, but over the planet he was sworn to protect.

When Ella was eight, she would have said her dream was to explore the galaxy in her own spaceship. She would spend hours drawing herself in spaceships, playing out stories with her dolls about adventures on other planets, and dreaming of what the sky would feel like when it embraced her in its velvet cloak. As much as the stars captivated her from the countryside or her bedroom window, she felt that if she could just touch them, something in her would fall into place. It would be adventure, freedom, like the heroines in the books she read. It would be perfect.

If she had been anyone else, perhaps she could have. She could have become a pilot or a journalist or a travel agent, something that would let her fly to faraway places and bring stories of her journeys home. But she was a princess. She, more than any other little girl on the planet, had been born with a responsibility. Perhaps if she’d had siblings, she could have made it work, but as it stood, Perrault needed her.

She had a stubborn streak as a child, and it took some time for her tutors to dissuade her from the notion that she could do both. It seemed like nonsense to her– all the stories featured princes and princesses on grand adventures; why couldn’t she be one?

“They’re just stories, Ella,” Mara told her. “They’re no more real than the dragons in them. You have a far greater adventure to go on right here at home.”

Like all children, Ella had to grow up, and like all children, she slowly learned the difference between better and best. She might have liked more sweets, but it was best to only eat until she was full. As much as she wished to keep playing in the garden, it was time to begin preparing for bed. And though exploring the galaxy would have been incredible, Mara was right– it was best for her to focus on her future leading Perrault.

By the time she turned ten, those drawings of herself in a spaceship were safely tucked away in a keepsake box, nearly forgotten. In boring lessons she might daydream about flying away, but the notion was only ever that– a daydream.

Couronne’s defenses were strong enough that Cole couldn’t strike it. Though the war was being fought near enough the capitol that Ella could see the fires from the highest of the palace’s towers, it could not harm them here.

Ella took advantage of this almost as soon as the war started to shelter as many refugees as she could find beds for, but Couronne was still only one city. She couldn’t bring all her people inside no matter how much she wished to. They needed help across Perrault.

Papa didn’t leave the walls unless he strictly had to. As king, he was too easy a target. Any meeting that could be done over comms or hologram, or where the other parties could travel here, was conducted like that. Ella and her stepfamily could leave, if it was highly planned out with heavy security, but Henrietta, Aloise, and Thisbe rarely did. As much as she hated it, Ella could almost understand this. They were all targets. But she couldn’t just sit in safety and let her people suffer.

As often as she could manage, but not as often as she would have liked, Ella made journeys across Perrault to see her people and bear witness to their suffering. It was the same work she always did, but brought to them in person. Often these journeys were televised, and she knew the footage was played and replayed and replayed for weeks after each of them. Papa said it helped people get by, to be reminded even when she wasn’t there that she hadn’t forgotten them. She did her best to make every trip one worth remembering.

On one of these trips, around eighteen months after the war began, Ella was at a school in Coudrier Province, on the other side of the planet, handing out water purifiers and food. In another part of the school, she knew workers were giving vaccines, and there was another station for clothing and blankets for the upcoming winter on that part of the planet. She was incredibly proud of this trip. It had taken months to coordinate, but the people would leave the school with most of their immediate needs filled, at least for a short time.

She was handing another package to a particularly shy child, complimenting the butterfly clips in her blond pigtails, when the explosion went off. The room shook, lights fixtures swinging uneasily. Ella froze as people started screaming from far too nearby. The child started crying as her mother scooped her up and ran.

Ella’s bodyguards instantly pulled her away, guiding her through the evacuation route as another explosion sounded through the building. She was back on her ship speeding away before she knew what was happening.

“Is everyone safe? Is someone helping the people?” she begged her guards, shaking like the autumn leaves that flashed by below them. Her heart felt like a hummingbird fluttering wings against her ribs, and her head was spinning.

“The security is doing their best, your highness,” one of her guards told her kindly. None could tell her any more. The guard wrapped her in a blanket and laid her down on a seat. When they landed in the palace’s shipyard, they bundled her to the royal physician to check her over, despite her insistence that she was fine.

The next day, she learned that twelve people had been killed. Two of her own security guards, five of Coudrier’s security guards, and five civilians. One of them was only ten years old.

Some agent of Cole’s army had planted bombs outside and detonated them remotely. They’d been targeting her.

The head of security and Papa both told her that her guards had worked exactly as they were supposed to. Ella was safe. She sat numbly in Papa’s office, still like her skin had become stone and trapped her inside. She desperately wanted to cry, but she couldn’t seem to find any tears. She wanted to scream, what about the people who died? How did the security work for them?

Instead, she silently let Papa wrap her in his arms and guide her back to her room to rest. He stayed with her as long as he could manage between all his duties, then called Mara in to keep her company. A few hours later, she finally found it in herself to cry, and Mara held her while Ella fell apart.

It was her fault. If she hadn’t been there, the school wouldn’t have been targeted. Those people would still be alive. That boy, that child, would have grown up if she only hadn’t been so selfish. Why had she gone to help them herself? Why had she insisted on putting everyone in danger like that? What was wrong with her?

It wasn’t safe to leave Couronne. Not for her or any of the people around her. She wouldn’t dare leave again.

Ella was nineteen when the palace was overrun. Cole’s forces poured into the city and then Ella’s home like it was theirs already, and somehow all their guards and their walls and their defense grid did nothing to repel them. Ella wouldn’t learn until later that Henrietta, the wretched woman, the absolute traitorous bitch, had treated with Cole in secret and left a gap in their defenses for him to use, allowing him to overtake them in broad daylight.

When the alarms sounded, Ella’s limbs felt leaden and her heart began pounding. There was only one thing that alarm could mean. She dropped her book and rushed to the nearest safe room, desperately wondering where Papa was. Had he made it to safety? Would she hear from him before the threat passed or overwhelmed them?

Barely a half hour later, she was dragged by red-uniformed soldiers to his throne room. She struggled and screamed with everything she had, knowing if she didn’t somehow get to safety her life would be over. Still, she didn’t fully understand until she saw Henrietta, Thisbe, and Aloise standing free and calm before the throne, heard the grand doors to the throne room open, and was forced to her knees as Cole himself entered.

Henrietta and her daughters bowed of their own accord as Cole shuffled and wheezed toward Papa’s throne. He stopped in front of Ella, sparing her a long, searching glance. A feeling came over her like a rabbit freezing beneath the shadow of a harrier. His face was sunken and papery, so aged he looked like he might crumble to dust with a stray breeze, but his eyes were sharp and deep and dark like black holes as he regarded her. He looked as if he was considering an interesting question. She wanted to spit on him then, but before she could gather the strength to move, he smiled beneficently and moved on. Ella shivered and renewed her thrashing.

Papa was dragged in the same moment Cole settled on his throne. Like Ella, he struggled, but he stilled when he took in her kneeling form, his wife and stepdaughters bowing and free. His face slackened in horror. “Henrietta, what is the meaning of this?”

“Silence,” Cole commanded. “Lady Tremaine has been wiser than you. She has saved your people.”

Papa looked as if there was a great deal he wanted to say but he couldn’t decide which of it to start with. She saw her own shock and rage and despair mirrored in him. His gaze darted between Cole, Henrietta, Ella– landing on her, his expression breaking open. “Ella–” he finally breathed. She pulled at the guards holding her, wanting nothing more than to run to him. If they’d die, at least they’d die in each other’s arms. They’d be with Mama again.

“Will you kneel to me, Hector?” Cole asked.

Papa’s eyes turned back towards Cole. He straightened, standing tall despite being held by enemy soldiers . “I will not hand my people over as my wife has done,” he said, voice shaking. “I am still king. She cannot surrender on my behalf.”

Cole sighed, as if Papa was a tiresome child who kept on misbehaving. “I offered you mercy. It’s a shame this is what you chose instead.” He gestured to one of his soldiers. Ella’s chest tightened reflexively, as if sensing what was about to happen in the moment before her mind could.

“Shoot him.”

The sound that tore from Ella’s chest as the soldier followed the order shocked even her. It was a shrieking howl, grief and fury and desperation, loud enough she couldn’t even hear the gunshot. It should have shattered the windows. It should have cracked the ground open. It should have ripped the very stars from the sky. Instead, the room remained implacable as Papa dropped to the floor in an explosion of blood and what Ella was terrified to think was brain.

Henrietta closed her eyes and shielded Thisbe’s, and Aloise turned away. All of them still and silent.

Ella wrenched herself from the guards’ grip, trying to run to Papa’s side, to hold him. She thought she was still screaming. She could see nothing but him and his blood.

The guards caught her again and wrestled her to the foot of Papa’s throne. She was still insensate, pulling with all her might toward her father. It wasn’t until Cole’s wizened hand gripped her chin and forced her to look into his face that she registered anything else. “Crown Princess Eleanor Saint-Exupéry of Perrault. Lady Tremaine has surrendered. The war is over. I offer you a choice. Will you kneel to me and remain with your people?”

She struggled to speak through what she finally recognized were sobs. “No,” she managed. “You absolute bastard; I will never kneel to you as long as I live. You’ll have to kill me, too.”

She waited for a bullet to take her to where Papa had gone. She waited to die. Nothing happened. Somehow that was more humiliating.

Instead, Cole studied her face, curious. He was relaxed, as if this were an ordinary day to him. It probably was. This bloodshed, this end of everything Ella and each of her ancestors had ever known– this end of the world. All just a day’s work to the immortal god-king of the damned Empire.

“Never is a long time, Ella,” he finally said. “We’ll see.” He let go of her chin and waved the guards holding her away. “Restrain her and stand by. She’ll be returning with me.”

Ella didn’t get to hold her father’s body. The soldiers handcuffed her and waited as Henrietta formally handed Perrault to the Empire, letting her hang broken between them. Then they marched her through the halls of the only home she’d ever known to a starship outside. By the time they locked her in her first steel-walled cell, she had no tears left to cry, no breath left to protest, no strength left to struggle. The ship left Perrault, and no one paid any mind to the way her heart, as if still bound by the planet’s gravity, tore bloodied and bruised from her chest to remain there.

Ella came of age locked in Cole’s prison.

It was before she truly lost track of time, so she knew roughly the day her twentieth birthday passed, during one of the periods when everything that had been taken from her wrapped her like a dense fog. She’d barely been persuaded to take a meal that morning, and it had tasted like nothing as it crawled down her throat.

There should have been a grand celebration at the palace: flowers in her favorite shade of blue everywhere, a grand feast, a night of ceremonies begun by her announcing her chosen adult name. It was meant to be one of the most important days of her life. If she were still home, if everything had gone like it should have, she would have taken her mother’s name like she always planned. She’d have ceased being Crown Princess Ella and become Crown Princess Seraphine, in line to become Queen Seraphine the Second.

Here, no one even knew Ella should no longer be her name. After ten months of imprisonment, it was clear no one had any regard for her traditions. She had been unable to celebrate the Harvest or the Thaw, denied the ability to observe the skies, and chastised for rudeness when she gestured in the ways she’d always known. Thinking of how things should have been compared to this ached like pressing her fingers against a fresh, tender bruise.

But even if no one else would call her by it, she thought that night in a sleepless haze, she would have her adult name. She would not let them take that from her.

For a few days, she called herself Seraphine. It didn’t feel like she imagined it would. Rather than a warm embrace, a tether, a comfortable new coat, the name felt like rags and ash– or perhaps she felt that way, and by putting it on she stained it. Mama’s name was too sacred. She couldn’t pollute it with her misery.

Besides, there was so much more she needed to honor now. Papa, Mara, her freedom, her future, Perrault and all its dead. All they’d lost and all they’d keep losing as long as they were Cole’s. Seraphine would have been queen. Seraphine would have remained with her people or died on her own soil. After everything, she could not be her.

In the end, she chose Cinders. An unusual name, but nothing about her circumstances were usual anymore. So much of her home was ash, barren ground stained with the memories of what had once stood there, a mausoleum to what should have been. So was she. In this prison, how could she be anything but?

Cinders took her name and packed it into the hollow in her chest, right next to the last embers of her pride. She would keep them both safe. They were all she had left.