Bride to the Cursed: a Snow White retelling

Chapter 8: Bloody Progress

A day of being the laughingstock gave her the motivation to accept the challenge of rising above them all. The ex-husband she'd never married was hosting a ball? Great, she'd make it her time to shine.

If he was going to marry another, her time was running out. Common sense told her that her chances of convincing Dane's new wife to let her sleep in his bed for a night were even lower than convincing him alone. Before he got tied up with another woman, she had to shine enough just to seduce him for a night.

Unfortunately, the challenge began with pleasing Madam Piper and following all her screeched orders to a tee.

A week in, Cassie learned to keep her spine straight, her shoulders relaxed, her pace even with a gentle sway in her hips, all while keeping a book balanced on her head for all of thirty seconds. She did it in the library, in the hallways, in the palace gardens, without a care for all the onlookers. Every sneer and snide remark was a reminder for her to keep going. But was it good enough? Of course not.

Two weeks in, she'd mastered her gait, learnt the form and depth of her curtsey to varying ranks, so Madam Piper nit-picked her table manners. Who knew eating and drinking was so complicated? No elbows on the table. No taking such large bites. No lifting her little pinky when holding a goblet. No this, no that. By the way the Madam complained, it was as if most modern Earthens had the table manners of cavemen.

Three weeks in, once she'd extended the book-holding to a whole minute even while eating, the Madam finally considered Cassie good enough to pass for a personal servant of a noble.

"Come on, I can walk, sit and eat with a book on my head now. What else do you want me to do?" Cassie had asked.

"Most ladies can do that by the age of eight," Madam Piper sniped. "Try balancing a goblet filled to the brim with water on your head and not spilling a single drop as you walk, sit and eat."

After that, Cassie learned to eat her words and shut the hell up. A servant was just fine. It was a monumental step up from being a cave-woman.

Not long after that exchange, however, in a most unexpected turn of events, Madam Piper softened—as well as a Grim Banshee could soften—towards her.

It began one fateful morning when she woke on bloodied sheets. Hurrah, she'd discovered the worst inconvenience to trump the lack of smart phones and flushable toilets: the lack of sanitary items for the monthly Aunt Flo.

It would appear that the Madam, like some others in the palace, had harboured their own doubts regarding her mental state and the possibility that she was scheming against their king.

The frantic, bloodied state that the maids and Madam Piper found Cassie in that day worked to dispel all such doubts. In their minds, she was, well and truly, a poor girl who'd been so distraught from the divorce that she'd lost her sanity and memories, for how else could a twenty-five-year-old woman not know how to deal with her own menses?

As strict and harsh a woman the Madam was, abusing a sick child was beneath her. The training continued, though the screeches dropped a whole twenty decibels.

It was also at this point that more and more guests trickled into the palace. Instead of the same style of dresses with a bodice and layered skirts, the newcomers were a far more interesting bunch.

Women in glowing, tanned skin came in dresses of the lightest silk that flowered like water around their legs, their hair and faces half covered in gauzy, embroidered shawls. Every step they took, every gentle wave of their arms was like a dance, their thin fabrics giving the barest hint of their lithe limbs, inviting imaginations of men to run wild.