Cinderella's Inferno

by F. M. Boughan

  And as I brushed my thumb across the talisman’s surface, praying and wishing and fruitlessly willing the life I’d stolen to be returned to him, his medallion glowed with a brief, faint white light. I gasped, and it fell from my hand.

  “Did you see that?” I looked at Cerberus, who tilted his head to listen. Had I imagined it? My fingers shook as I reached for the medallion again. I swept them against its surface, and once again the medallion pulsed. Ever so briefly, but there was a light within.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. I hardly dared to hope, to believe in this marvelous possibility. Could there be such a mercy in this place? Grace given to us even here?

  My breath grew labored as I placed my hand over the talisman, fingers splayed to touch William’s chest at the same time. I lay him back to rest his head on my knees so that with my other hand I might press against his forehead.

  He appeared utterly and wholly spent. I saw no life left within him, and I accepted in that moment that it might be too late. He might have already gone to be with his Lord or—and I hoped with everything in me this would not be his fate—to the valley of the hooded heretics above us.

  But I would do anything, everything, to set this right.

  I closed my eyes and prayed again, begging for grace in the depths of the Abyss, and willed with all my might that every ounce of power and strength I had stolen from him, and more, would be restored.

  “Take it,” I hissed, pressing firmly against his skin. “I give it all up so that you might live. Only you can save us now, only heaven’s favor can defeat the beast. I was a fool, a wretched worm, to think that I might fight evil with the darkness inside me to no consequence. I keep causing pain to the people I love, and I’m done. I don’t want this anymore.”

  My voice cracked, and I choked on the lump in my throat. I did not know if it was working. I did not know if the mild warmth beneath my fingers was real or imagined.

  “My time for this power is long past,” I said, and, to my amazement, I felt a wetness in my eyes. “I know better. I should have known better than to try to take on the forbidden powers that no one on or under the earth should possess. I acted with pride. I put everyone in danger—again. We did good things, you and I, but you were right. This end—losing you, losing your friends, maybe even my father—does not justify the means by which I chose to accomplish a task that should never have been attempted in the first place.”

  I didn’t think I was dreaming. The warmth I felt surely wasn’t just my own fingers heating his skin. But I dared not look.

  “I should have trusted, as you do, that the Almighty knows best. If He took my mother to heaven, of course she’ll stay there. I’m not stronger than Him, to move souls from one plane to the next. And Edward … I doubt I’ll ever understand why I was given a second chance with Edward, but perhaps I wasn’t meant to understand.

  “I mean it, William. I don’t want these powers anymore. I choose for you to rescind my control so that you may accomplish this final task, to fight the very enemy you were born to defeat as the leader I know you will become, that I know you are.”

  He felt warmer, he did, but still he did not stir. This time, I allowed my hope to rise, and I furrowed my brow as the tears finally made their escape, falling to coat his cheeks and lips and eyes.

  “Get up, William,” I said. “Get up, my love, and slay the demon in the name of your Lord, as is your right. Please.”

  I filled my lungs. Dug for the final, twisting coil of power inside my belly, and tugged on its threads. With all my remaining strength, I pushed my will into William, the crown prince, the boy—no, the man—who had stood beside me all this time, lending strength and life without question. We had been partners, truly equals save for that one thing. Now it was time for me to repay his selflessness the only way I could.

  I leaned in and placed my lips over his and waited.

  And waited.

  And Celia still roared.

  38

  The Restoration

  William awoke.

  My powers were gone.

  And I was a girl of cinder and bone no more.

  39

  The Vanquishing

  His eyes flew open and his medallion blazed with a brilliance that made me gasp and turn away. He sat up and gripped my shoulders, staring into my eyes with a terror and relief I didn’t understand—but despite this, he also appeared like one utterly prepared to rouse and do as needed, and that was the blessing we required.

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  I blinked, my eyes still blurry with tears, joyful but hesitant. I could hardly speak and so only nodded my response, and his gentle fingers brushed away the droplets that slid down my cheek.

  “Are you sure?” he pressed.

  “Are you well?” I swallowed, my throat full of tears and the bitter taste of my own shortcomings.

  William looked at his arms, legs, feet. He touched his hands to his chest and, finding no gaping wound or mortal injury, looked back at me and smiled. I saw love, I saw acceptance, but I felt nothing but an utter certainty that he would reject me the moment he reflected on all that I’d done since the day he offered his coat to a brazen girl wearing a dirty shift in the middle of a graveyard.

  “I feel incredible,” he said in amazement, turning over his hands from back to palm. “Renewed. How? I remember there were hooded monks … ”

  I dared not correct him, not now while the danger remained. And as if cued by my thoughts, Celia roared again.

  “Come out, come out, little necromancer,” she growled. “Show me your fearsome powers, your blackened soul. Show me how you will rend the flesh from my limbs in the name of justice.”

  William frowned. He pulled back his shoulders and sat up a mite taller, and I recognized the man that I had seen within him on that first day we combined our strength and struck Celia down together.

  He held out his hand like a suitor asking a lady to dance.

  “Shall we?”

  I could only shake my head and cast my gaze from his. I should have felt relief, not shame—and I had, until this very moment.

  “Ellison?”

  “I can’t.” His brow furrowed deeper, and he gently pressed two fingers against my chin that I might look at him once more. “It’s up to you, now. Take Cerberus,” I said. “And finish this as only you can.” I touched his medallion and it blazed—oh, how it blazed—and he nodded, though his eyes were filled with wonder.

  He rose, and Cerberus went with him. He took his talisman in one hand, sword in the other, and stepped out onto the shattered ice of the lake.

  Without the constant disturbance of spirits, it had refrozen as the pieces lay, with tall, sharp slabs of ice stabbing out of the surface, some piled on each other as haphazard as a tin of broken biscuits. William tapped his blade against his leg, brought his medallion to his lips, and uttered brief prayer too quiet for my hearing. Then he started forward, hellhound at his side.

  “What is this?” Celia’s growls rattled the cavern walls. “Am I so fearsome that you would send a little pup against me? And the guardian of greed’s table, I see.”

  Her laughter—if indeed it could still be called such—was filled with such violence that the remaining corpses and spirits, few though they were, went diving for shelter and fleeing for their appointed circles and valleys above. Her feet pounded down the islet, but she moved at a languid pace, disinterested and overconfident. My heart beat an unsteady rhythm inside my chest as William drew nearer.

  “Have you sent me a snack, stepdaughter? A treat to whet my appetite? He looks like hardly enough even to taste. Perhaps—”

  But her words ceased as William, without breaking stride, raised his talisman high into the air and proclaimed in a loud voice: “Soli Deo Gloria!”

  The medallion erupted with brilliant, white light. I shut my eyes to blink away the burning image of pure, holy power, for it caused pain to look directly at the source. Celi
a howled, her cry inhuman and filled with fury, a deep primal rage at the inescapable agony of being touched by the appointed hand of God. This, I thought, was how Samia held back the darkness in the forest, and this would be how William saved us.

  Not William, I corrected. No mortal can credit this for their own glory.

  When I finally looked back, William was pressing onward toward Celia, medallion now blazing from the center of his chest, the hilt of his sword gripped between both hands. Celia continued to stumble backward, blinded by the holy light, and her claws scrabbled at the ground and scraped at her eyes, as though gouging them might eliminate her pain. Blood streaked down her cheeks, pouring from the sockets.

  “Girl!” she screeched. “Come and face me yourself! Why waste the power you’ve rightfully earned? Come and taste the rush of destruction. Let the sweetness of its strength fuel your hatred.”

  She wanted me to attack her. She begged me to strike. Oh, what a fool I had been to be so naïve, to play into her hands without knowing. I felt a gladness, a lightness at my lack of power. Without it, I could not act.

  Without it, I could be only myself, no less and no more, and that was enough.

  I stepped out from the tunnel’s protection and boldly raised my voice—for I was bold, I always had been, and I had learned to be bolder as the day required.

  “I’m sorry, stepmother,” I said, though I was not, “but you no longer control my life. Your influence holds no sway. I fell for your tricks and your deception to come to this place, but now it ends.” Still William advanced, but she’d run out of space. Her massive form slid as she backed onto the frozen lake and reared to find escape from the light.

  Her flesh began to smoke and sizzle. Boils erupted across her face and belly, and bubbling, putrid slime oozed from their centers like slag from a forge. And then they burst open.

  “Villain!” she shrieked. “Child of darkness! Daughter of the damned!”

  “Damned I may be,” I said, “but he is not.”

  And like a young boy on the field before a Philistine giant, William pushed again, making his final advance. He swung his sword, sending it wide, but I saw that he did it on purpose. Celia, desperate to escape the holy light, reared up fully on her hind legs—but on the slippery ice, the sudden motion caused her claws to scuttle against the lake’s surface. She overcompensated as she tried to find her balance, and the force of it sent her pitching back, back, back, falling toward the frozen lake’s wicked spires of cracked, pointed ice.

  She fell, that heavy, beastly form, onto one of those deadly shards.

  Her body jerked and convulsed as the spike plunged through her back, impaling her to the lake’s surface like a body dropped by the Furies. The cavern shook with the weight of the fall, ice cracking beneath our feet. Stones tumbled from the walls, and then all was silent.

  For a brief moment, I thought it might have ended—that our trials were over—when she convulsed again, thick blood like pitch pooling at her back. I feared she might rise.

  As if sensing my thoughts, William, that blessed prince, raced toward her with sword raised high. The holy light still burned her, and sludge seeped out from every pore, but it would not be enough. William reached her hulking form, braced his stance, and brought his blade down across her neck.

  Celia’s head separated from her shoulders, rolled across the ice, and bumped to a stop against a frozen peak. Determined to see it through, William put away his sword and once again raised his talisman.

  He held the medallion close to Celia’s motionless corpse, burning the body to true oblivion. But heaven’s favor was meant to defeat evil, not to dispose of its remnants. Although the monster’s flesh continued to bubble and ooze, limbs melting into tar-like liquid that seeped into the cracks of the lake’s surface, the light also struck the walls of the cavern. The cavern began to rumble and shake as heaven’s favor struggled to strike down the forces of evil. The problem, however, was that every pebble, every stone, every fleck we’d encountered since entering this place, was evil, wholly and completely.

  A boulder toppled from somewhere along the cavern wall and fell too near to William for my comfort. The rocks on the islet quaked, and I realized that if we didn’t act quickly, the entire cavern might collapse around us.

  “William!” I cupped my hands around my mouth that he might hear me over the noise of the shaking earth and falling rocks. “We have to leave.”

  He glanced back at me—and then jumped backward as another chunk of rock dropped from above, landing only an arm’s reach from where he stood. A foot closer and he would have been crushed. He looked at Celia’s corpse, still melting but not fully gone, then back at me again.

  “Leave her,” I said, and I ached for him. It pained him not to finish, but we had no choice. “She’s gone, and we will be too if you don’t come now.”

  He took two steps toward me, looked over his shoulder—and the wall collapsed. I screamed his name as a cascade of boulders plummeted down on him and Celia’s corpse, and in the cloud of dust and dirt I lost sight of him. I heard the crack of ice, the splash of water, the roar of rocks that sought their prey still, wave after wave of stone tumbling down around us.

  And then, out of the dust, came an enormous black hound with three heads, the middle one with William’s coat—and William still wearing it—clamped between its jaws. Cerberus tried to slow as he reached the tunnel entrance but skidded on the ice. With a yelp, he shrank as he slipped, sending himself and William sliding into the mouth of the tunnel at my feet.

  I allowed myself a brief moment of reprieve at seeing William alive and Cerberus not splatted like a bug, but the Abyss was still fracturing around us and we had a far, far way to go.

  “Quickly, up the ramp,” I said, and the others scrambled to their feet. We sprinted through the tunnel and ascended the path out of the pit as fast as we could, but for the very first time since we’d entered this place, my strength began to wane.

  My legs were tired and threatened to buckle, and it became clear that we were not going to escape with any measure of speed. Halfway up the path, around the giants’ knees, my legs gave way as the earth shook and knocked me to the ground.

  “Ellison!” William dropped beside me. “Let me carry you.”

  I waved him off. “We’ll never make it out if you do that. Look.” I pointed above, where pieces of stone fell over our heads. Even above the giants, the ceiling of the valley we journeyed toward had started to crumble. The Abyss was crashing down around us, and we were to be caught in its destruction.

  “Go on without me,” I told him. “You might find a place to hole up and find refuge until this passes.”

  “You think this will pass?” A stone slammed into the path between us. Cerberus yelped and whined, pawing at the ground and dancing in circles as though urging us to move faster. “This whole place is unstable. Either we leave together or we seek shelter as one and pray for a merciful end.”

  Cerberus barked again, then tossed his snout over his shoulder. Gesturing, offering.

  I looked the guardian in the eyes and held his gaze, praying for understanding. “Can you take us back? Can you bear both of us from here to Acheron’s far shore?”

  Cerberus barked three times and swiveled to sit, offering his back. I looked at William, who shrugged.

  “Think of it like riding a horse,” I said. “Only if you fall off, you’ll perish in the Abyss and possibly be trapped to endure torment for all eternity.”

  William rolled his eyes. “I very much doubt that’s the way it works, but if you’re certain it’s safe … ”

  I hoisted myself onto the hound’s back and scratched behind his ears. “Don’t insult him, William, it’s rude. And the whole point is that he isn’t safe. That’s the only reason you and I are still alive.”

  William mumbled a prayer under his breath, which I pretended to ignore—in truth, because I mumbled my own. When I felt his arms wrap around my waist and
his head tilt upon my shoulder, I leaned forward to better grip Cerberus as he grew.

  “Now, friend,” I said. “We must fly!”

  40

  The Escape

  Cerberus burst forth like a runner at Marathon, increasing in mass and size as we drew closer to the top of the path. For several tense moments I wondered whether we would make it after all, for the ramp was not wide and Cerberus’s paws started to slip off the edges.

  But we reached the top just as he came into his full growth, and so we crested into the ring of giants at the same time as those stone-like figures began to tip and waver.

  Cerberus, that nimble hound, easily bore us beyond the reach of the giants, and then across the valley of snakes, and to the hooded monks. There, we approached my next worry, for we’d bounded across the gap of the broken bridge on our way down. How would we make our return? But I need not have worried, for as we reached the infernal crevice, I saw that a pile of freshly tumbled boulders lay like a staircase, short but high enough to bring the edge of the bridge within a less-than-impossible distance.

  I marveled at the ease with which Cerberus climbed up the pile and made the leap across the gap—but a flash of white light at the corner of my eye was a reminder that although the great beast below had been defeated, William once again rested inside of heaven’s favor. He had divine light on his side, and perhaps combined with the strength I had returned to him, the forces of hell sought to hasten his efforts to escape, if only to expel him from their presence.

  I would not question it. I merely held tight as we bounded through the valley where the demons had surged against us, then through the valleys of torments, then climbed all the way to the top of the first valley and scaled the rocky cliff to reach the platform where we’d fallen into the lower circle.