Eight

"What's the holdup?" Corrie pushed me out of the way. I caught myself on the carriage door, narrowly avoiding face planting in front of the entire student body.

"Uh ... Kiki?"

"Yea?" I asked.

"Why is everyone staring at you?"

"Daggered if I know."

Just like that, the murmurs began. "Cinderella's daughter."

"Siren."

"Don't look at her."

"Wish the vampires had sucked the species dry."

"Can't believe she actually came."

"How am I supposed to sit in a class next to that?"

"Your Highness—"

I cut off our human footman with the palm of my hand. "Kira. Call me Kira ... please."

"Yes, Your Highness, Princess Kira, daughter of the majestic Cinderella." I dropped my hand to my side and sighed. Why did I even bother? We were so screwed. "Would you like us to begin unloading your luggage to the first-year dormitory?"

"Sure, sure. Do that."

The footmen scurried to do our bidding, dragging out Corrie's pink and black trunk followed by my three. The other students sneered at my trunks' gold framing.

"Are you sure you didn't leave anything behind?" Corrie arched an eyebrow.

"What? The academy guide didn't say what not to bring. It's called being prepared."

There were barely enough footmen to carry all our stuff. They heaved it across the courtyard.

"We better follow them. I can't make heads or tail-feathers of this map to figure out where the first-year dorms are," Corrie said.

Glancing around at the other immortals still eyeing us, I nodded. So much for blending in. I should have known better than to think I could just waltz in all invisible-like. I might as well have worn a crown of feathers and been heralded in with a "Hear ye, hear ye, Cinderella's daughter, the siren imposter, has arrived. Kill her while she's mortal."

I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I missed the girl bending over in front of me and ran right into her. She collapsed forward, catching herself on the pavement.

"I'm so sor—" My apology cut off when she stood and towered above me.

"You're Cinderella's daughter, the siren." She spoke with a rough growl. I knew I'd have to defend myself at some point but come on! We'd just arrived.

"They say you can control any living being with nothing but the power of your mind." She frowned, glaring at me as if it were my fault I was born or that I was Cinderella's daughter.

I couldn't help myself; she was practically begging me to overreact. I raised my index finger and waved it in her face.

"What the hell does that have to do with you, shifter?" She was obviously a bear shifter with her thick, shaggy hair and impressive height, which meant I had to crane my neck to meet her eyes. Oh, and there was a wooden necklace swinging from her neck with "bear 4 lyf" engraved on it.

"Don't poke the bear," Corrie, who had been following behind me, hissed. "Don't do it."

"Didn't anyone ever teach you it's rude to stare." I poked the bear shifter in her large biceps muscle.

"Of course, she poked the bear." Corrie threw her hands in the air.

The girl shrank back, even going so far as to step away from me with her head bowed—a submissive stance. My jaw dropped; Corrie's jaw dropped. She thinks I can control her.

Seeing the bear shifter submit, other immortals shrank back, fear in their eyes. Did they think I was forcing her to do so?

I grabbed Corrie's hand and pulled her after our footmen. When she started to protest, I pleaded, "Just go with it." Once we caught up to our footmen, we slowed. Blood pumped in my eardrums.

"What happened back there?" Corrie whispered.

"I think she was afraid of me?"

"Wait. She was so afraid of the rumours she'd heard about you that she willingly submitted to you?"

"Seems so."

"And now they're all afraid of you?"

"I guess. Or at least wary of me."

"This is awesome!" Corrie did a little happy dance and fluffed her wings.

"What do you mean?" I batted away her feathers.

"Well, if the rumour spreads that you forced a bear shifter to submit to you on the first day, everyone is going to be too scared of you to question your immortality."

The corners of my lips curled into a grin. "So, what you're telling me is, not only am I a total kickass princess, but I have also accidentally spread fear into the hearts of every student at the academy." We were so not screwed anymore. All we had to do was let the rumours do their thing.

In the meantime, I was desperate for a nice bath before the opening ceremony. Our footmen were carrying our trunks into ... a hovel. At least, "hovel" was the only word I could think of to describe the first-year dorms.

"You can't be serious." I said as we followed the footmen through a wooden door and down a dark hall.

"You were assigned a room on the first floor, with a terrace, Your Highness."

"Yes! First floor." Corrie pumped her fist into the air, spreading glitter along the dusty hallway.

"Are your eyes broken? And your nose?"

"What?" She shrugged. "Okay, it's a bit of a step down from the faerie court, but I can't fall out a window and die here."

It wasn't just a step; it was a tumble down into the dreariest of basements. The walls of the hallway were the same heavy stonework as the exterior. The stone was damp and mouldy, the air stale. There were voices coming from inside the dormitory rooms, a hum of general excitement from the other first-years as they unpacked. This probably wasn't such a downgrade for them. In fact, a werewolf or a shifter might even consider this nice. They lived in dirty dens and burrows, right?

"Princess Kira of the Glass Palace and Corina of the Faerie Court, may I present your room."

A footman swept open one of the pond-scum-green doors, allowing us to enter first.

I shook my head. It was so ... basic. Two high beds sat on either side of a floor-to-ceiling window which opened to a small terrace. At the end of each bed was a large wardrobe. Underneath the raised beds were drawers and who knew what infectious diseases.

"Is that it?" I asked, checking behind the adjoining door to find a bathroom with a vanity, rustic toilet and bathtub.

"Yes, Princess Kira."

The footmen dismissed themselves. It took everything in me not to run after them and beg them to take me back to the Glass Kingdom. But I couldn't let my mother down. I wanted to make her proud so she would publicly name me her heir.

"You know, my room at home has a double bed with gold furniture and a glass ceiling so I can stare at the night sky." I grimaced at the mould creeping its way along the stone walls.

Corrie flopped onto one of the beds. The plain white linen crumpled under her wings. "Can you smell that?"

"Yeah, that's the pungency of death, mould and claustrophobia."

"Freedom! That's the sweet, sweet aroma of freedom!" She crawled off the bed and flung open the lid of her trunk. Magical pink glitter exploded into the air.

"Hurry up. The opening ceremony is at noon and I want to talk to Ash before then. He's a second-year faerie. Well, he would have been a third-year but they held him back a year so he's in the second-year class. He can give us the low-down on the place."

I batted faerie glitter particles away.

"You deliberately packed your trunk with a pink glitter bomb?"

"Of course." She lined up her scissors, hair dye and comb on the bathroom vanity.

My trunks were stacked, taking more space than the single bed.

"I hate to be a finicky faerie but, I think you're going to have to cull your junk by ... at least half." Corrie said, shaking her head. She was folding item after item of black clothing—all coated in sparkly pink—and placing them neatly into the drawers under her bed. Why did she get first pick of beds anyway?

"What if I wanted that bed?"

"Okay, it's yours." She stepped back, gesturing to the plain linen sheets which were not so plain now ... since they were covered in a layer of glitter.

"Changed my mind. Don't want it anymore."

She smirked and resumed unpacking.

I sighed at my trunk tower. "I think I'll unpack after I take a bath."

"Translation: I'll delay unpacking until I'm forced to pull out each item, as needed. Because I was raised in a glass palace in a kingdom with lake beds lined in gold and have never had to unpack my own things before."

I stuck out my tongue and closed the bathroom door on the very rude gesture she gave me. Turning bath taps on full blast, I stripped and wrapped myself in a towel. I waited until the tub was full and dipped my toe in.

"CORRIE!"

She squeezed her wings in through the door frame. "What? What happened? Is it your siren?"

"No, dummy. I doubt my siren awakening is going to be this magical, instantaneous bam-she's-awake thing. I probably won't even realise she's woken up."

"Then what?"

"The water's cold."

She stuck her finger into the bath. "Yep. Definitely cold water."

She looked at me. I looked at her.

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?" she asked.

The water in the Glass Palace was all spelled by witches to run warm when we wished it. I'd never lived anywhere without spelled plumbing before.

I wiggled my fingers in the air, "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo. You're a faerie, aren't you? Use your magic to heat it."

"I only just accessed my magic like a month ago," she whined. "You know I'm going to get you back once your siren awakens."

"I'd expect nothing less. Now boil." I waved my hand at the water.

"Doesn't work like that."

"Well, it should." I felt gross after spending the night in a carriage and was desperate to be clean.

Corrie closed her eyes, probably chanting some weird faerie limerick in her head. I tapped my finger against the sink. Magic fizzled in the air. I stepped forward in anticipation.

"Something's happening ..."

The water made a strange cracking noise and froze solid. Corrie opened her eyes and rapped her knuckles against the block of ice. "That's definitely frozen."

"I said boil, not freeze."

"Well, why don't you use yourmagic and see how well you do."

I laughed, "Fine. I'm going to see if I can dig something out to wear for the opening ceremony. You, uh ... can have a bath first."

"Good idea. Faerie magic doesn't work under pressure."

"You mean Corrie magic doesn't work under pressure."

"Same thing."