Twisted princesses - Cinderella, part 1

Here we go, guys.
The first part of the first "Twisted Princesses" story.
I will post chapters in the next few days, but I think I'll save some of the side stories for a final, deluxe ebook edition.
Or maybe not.
Just an idea.

Anyway, here goes the first princess - Cinderella.
Or Cyn, as she's likely to be known in a little while.
She'll need work, but I'm pretty sure she won't lose her shoe, this time around.

Cassandra lit a cigarette and watched her two daughters as they fought over the invitation card.
“I’m going to the ball!” Clarisse was saying. “I’m the older.”
Charlotte snorted. “No, I’m going. I’m prettier!”
Her sister’s face contorted in a cruel grin. “You’re just a slut!”
“That’s why I’m going to the ball and I’m fucking the prince, you bitch!”
Cassandra blew out a lungful of smoke and clapped her hands.
“Girls! Girls!”
She approached them and offered them her cigarette case. “Here, calm yourself.”
The girls lit up.
She had initiated them herself to the pleasure of nicotine, back when they were thirteen and ten respectively. She had done it out of pure perversity, but soon she found out the smoke had a soothing effect on the two bitches.
“She’s tore up my invitation!” Charlotte said, sulking.
At nineteen, she was a perky blonde with an upturned nose. She was incredibly cute when she sulked.
“I can’t go to the ball with my little sister in tow!”
Clarisse was a fiery redhead, and a royal bitch. Cassandra had no doubt that she would make a wonderful crown princess. And yet…
“You are both going,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette.
Charlotte gave an evil grin to her sister.
“But mom!” Clarisse squealed, smoke blowing from her mouth and nose.
“No buts, miss!” Cassandra checked herself in the mirror,and adjusted a strand of hair escaping from her up do. “Two of you attending the King’s Ball means double the opportunity for me to become the mother of the future queen. I am not renouncing that advantage for some childish rivalry. So you are both going.”
“But she tore up my invitation!”
Cassandra grinned. From a fold in her gown she pulled out an ivory-colored envelope. “We have a spare one,” she said.
Both girls stared, wide eyed.
“No way!” Charlotte blurted, her cigarette stuck to her lower lip.
“The Prince sent an invitation for you, too?” Clarisse asked, incredulous.
“Don’t be silly, dear!” Cassandra snorted. “I could be his mother. No, the charming young prince sent an invitation to all the girls in the kingdom, you see…”
Charlotte chuckled. “He really needs to have sex!”
Clarisse squinted. “He sent an invitation to… to Cinder?!”
Cassandra grinned. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”
The three women laughed, just as the door opened.
A young woman of twenty walked in, carrying a tray.
“Tea is served, mistress,” she whispered.
The three women turned to her and burst into laughter again.
She was of average height, with delicate features and honey-colored hair. A thick layer of soot and grime covered her from head to naked feet, and she wore dirty gray rags.
“Leave the tray on the table and begone!” Cassandra ordered.
Cinder, as they called her, was in fact Cassandra’s stepdaughter. The current mistress of the house had married up, and all of her current riches, the town house and the farmyards in the country, had belonged to her late husband, whose only child Cinder was.
The dirty girl retreated with a curtsy, back to the closet by the kitchen that was her room. She was barely tolerated in the house, the butt of every cruel joke her stepsisters decided to play on her, and barely a skivvy to her stepmother. Even the other servants treated her like a rag.
“The little fool doesn’t even know,” Cassandra said, pouring tea for her daughters. “But her invitation’s just what we need in this emergency.”
“Emergency my ass,” Charlotte said, firing up another cigarette.
They spent the rest of the afternoon smoking, and talking dresses and men.

But Cinder, or Cinderella like she liked to call herself, knew.
She had learned about the King’s Ball from a torn page of a tabloid she had used to clean the windows two weeks before, and it said in there that every girl in the country would receive an invitation. So she had been on the lookout, and had seen Cassandra intercept her card.
In the solitude of her dark room, she sighed.
She was by now so used at being mistreated and abused, that the stolen invitation was just another small piece of her sad, normal life.
She curled up on the thin mattress on which she slept on the floor, and daydreamed about a world in which a good fairy would come and help her.
She had a very dim memory of her own mother, that had died when she was really small. But she did remember this fairy tale her mom used to tell her when she slept. A story of young princesses and good fairies watching over them.
She missed her mother. She missed her stories, her soft lips kissing her cheek goodnight, her nicely manicured hands tucking her in.

And so the night of the ball arrived, and Cassandra drove off her two daughters. Both were wrapped in silk gowns that fully complimented their charms, both had been made up by a professional artist summoned just for that purpose, both were smoking up a storm to soothe their nerves.
They were gorgeous, and wild with excitement.
Cinder watched them go from the kitchen door.
Then she sighed, and went back to sitting in the dark.
A single tear ran down her cheek, tracing a straight line of pale flesh through the soot smeared on her face.
“Well, well,” said a voice behind her, “looks like we’re still in time for the ball, what, baby?” 
Cinder turned.
There was a woman, standing there. Olive-skinned and beautiful, she was sheathed in a long black dress, with a plunging neckline that exposed her navel, in which a ruby shone like a forbidden fire. Black hair piled high on her head, her lips were the color of blood. She arched a perfectly designed eyebrow as she looked at Cinder. “Well, don’t just stand there, girl! Move that fine ass of yours!”