The Glass Slipper and the Half-Blood
“Hmph...”
Aria tore the letter that had arrived before her to shreds without a moment's hesitation.
An invitation to a tea party and a salon.
If she showed her face there, she'd be carved apart by smiling faces and hidden blades, her body left in pieces.
They no doubt wanted the disgraced princess — a traitor's daughter with no backing whatsoever — standing at their feet so they could giggle over her misery.
No one understood the inner workings of a woman's world better than Aria did. Was there truly any need to set foot in that pit?
Spending that time raising her own value would serve her far better.
That said, she didn't completely turn her back on what was fashionable in high society.
That much was basic cultivation — and ignorance of such things would only diminish her worth in turn.
Shink.
With that in mind, Aria picked up Cinderella — the novel that had every salon buzzing of late — and settled comfortably onto her bed.
She'd gone ahead and bought the author's previous work, Romeo and Juliet, as a set, though she remembered its reviews being far less kind.
It's... quite thick.
For a book thick enough to make gossip-hungry noble daughters sit still and actually read it cover to cover, the rumors clearly weren't exaggerated.
So Aria took a sip of the black tea beside her, shifted fully onto the bed, leaned back against the wall, and lost herself in a long-neglected pastime — reading.
“Ha...”
Late at night, when darkness had settled in completely, Aria closed the half-finished Cinderella and let out a laugh she hadn't meant to.
Cinderella never resolved a single thing through her own ability — she leaned on the prince's help for everything, start to finish. What exactly about a plot like that made the noble daughters swoon?
Well... no, she couldn't say she didn't understand at all.
Even if he did drag her family down into ruin — setting that aside, he was a flawless villain, and the way he poured out his smoldering love until it bordered on obsession. And on the exact opposite end, a prince crafted in the literal image of every woman's ideal, offering up a love that verged on devotion.
And through it all, Cinderella never deliberately played the two men against each other — the two men simply fell into her, naturally, on their own.
Truly...
The kind of fantasy any woman might indulge in, at least once, in bed before sleep.
But Aria didn't particularly welcome that plot.
In a way, her circumstances weren't so different — and yet the way she fought through them was nothing alike.
The more she read, the more it felt like everything she'd worked for, all the patience she'd swallowed while enduring the stares reserved for a traitor's daughter, was being denied outright.
She felt a stinging self-loathing, realizing she harbored such ugly jealousy and envy over a mere novel.
But perhaps that was exactly why.
Aria cracked her stiff neck, forced herself to reopen the book she'd closed, and read straight through to the end.
And around one in the morning, when she finally finished, she couldn't tear her eyes away.
Not because she was captivated by the novel's happy ending — but because of the glass slipper described in its final pages.
It looked far too similar to the gift she'd received from Rohen on her birthday.
Is it a mere...
coincidence?
Then again — if this author really was Rohen, and if the slipper's owner, Cinderella, was meant to mirror her, the plot made no sense at all. It would be nothing short of an insult aimed at her.
If that's not it...
Was he saying he intended to become the prince of this novel for her?
“...”
She was sleepy.
It was the dead of night. She should have closed her eyes — but unable to bring herself to, Aria reached instead for Romeo and Juliet.
She stayed up through the night, skipping breakfast entirely.
Having read both the tragedy and the hopeful ending in full, Aria took a belated bath, shut herself in her chambers, and fidgeted with the three books laid out on her desk.
Were her tastes simply far removed from the popular ones?
She'd found Romeo and Juliet more moving than Cinderella, and a strange residue had taken hold of her.
No — "residue" wasn't quite the word.
If she had to name it, it would be a doubt too stubborn to erase.
In fact, that very doubt was probably why she'd become so absorbed in Romeo and Juliet in the first place.
The suspicion — with no evidence to back it, only a gut feeling brimming over — that this book's author might be Rohen.
“Haa...”
A love story between a man and woman kept apart by the feud of their houses.
Yes — the conflict at the heart of this novel...
Was it speaking to the prejudice aimed at her, branded as she was a traitor's daughter?
Or if not...
Even if they'd been born of different mothers —
as half-siblings joined by half their blood, did it speak of that bond?
Perhaps she was reading far too much into it, but Aria found the doubt impossible to shake.
Call it the much-vaunted intuition of a woman working overtime.
Ha...
Then, struck by how ridiculous it was to even be entertaining these thoughts this late, Aria flung her head back hard.
The very fact that she couldn't shake this doubt — wasn't that itself her secret wish, that Rohen would see her not as a sibling, not as an older sister, but as...
a woman?
I'm...
absolutely not like that.
She thought that as she looked at the mirror in her room — but why was it that her reflected face couldn't hide a thing?
After her mother and Mary died, on a long road where no one existed who could truly be called family, the one who had come closest to filling that meaning was, perhaps, Rohen.
He never made a show of it. Never let it color his face. But how could she not feel gratitude toward the boy who had steadied her as a child?
And yet — the half of her blood that was connected, through all that time, came to recognize Rohen as something like closer family.
...But the half that was not connected — the remaining half of her blood — did not.
“I'm pathetic.”
At last, with a faint sigh, Aria slumped forward onto her desk for a moment — then straightened up and began the day's routine, her own and hers alone.
A sidelong glance.
Midway through her private tutorial on magical theory, Aria checked the little remaining time with a flick of her eyes.
When the mage caught her doing it, he coughed loudly and shot her a stern warning look — but Aria, whose gaze had already met his, answered with a derisive smirk, confirmed the lesson was over, and sprang to her feet.
“Thanks for your trouble.”
She left the room with nothing but those frosty words.
It wasn't that his lessons were worthless.
He was, after all, a capable mage who had carved out his own place in the Magic Tower, and the knowledge he imparted had plenty of merit.
But whenever he taught her one piece of knowledge — and she mastered it faster than expected — some wounded pride would seize him, and he'd refuse to acknowledge it, hammering away at the same pointless drills in an endless loop.
Perhaps it displeased him that a mere traitor's daughter, with no faction behind her at all, was breathing down the neck of the very path he'd walked as a mage.
Well, of course...
If her father the Emperor hadn't personally arranged it, the man would never have wanted to teach her in the first place.
Everyone who dealt with her came armed with those looks and that attitude as a baseline — wasting emotion on them was simply foolish.
Tap.
Tap-tap.
Walking briskly, heels clicking, Aria slowed her pace with practiced ease as she neared the training grounds in the Imperial Palace.
About now would be when Rohen finished his training and came out.
...It's irritating.
Freshly annoyed at herself for knowing Rohen's schedule down to his every move, a wave of self-disgust washed over her.
She might as well be some stalker pervert, honestly.
But even swallowing that self-loathing whole, Aria felt she had to find Rohen under some convenient pretense and talk to him.
Because by sheer chance, she'd heard that "Lapis" now possessed the glass slipper from Cinderella.
...And he claimed it was a made-to-order limited edition.
Could those books have been aimed not at her after all — but at Lapis?
“?”
Frozen mid-step.
The moment her eyes met Rohen's as he emerged from the training grounds, Aria brought herself smoothly to a stop.
There he was, utterly unaware of her pace, wearing the faint trace of a smile.
The smell of sweat rolling off him was unpleasant from the start.
But the lean muscles standing out sharp where the sweat soaked through — those were, annoyingly, easy on the eyes.
「 Is there something you need? 」
Articulate, deliberate.
Rohen made himself understood without writing — each syllable shaped clearly, mouthed one by one.
“...The shoes you gave me as a gift before. Do you remember them?”
Aria had no taste for beating around the bush like a child, so she drove straight to the point. When Rohen nodded his assent, she hesitated just slightly before pressing on.
“Don't tell me you gave a pair to the Duke of Asis's daughter as well?”
“...”
The instant his mouth formed a "yes," Aria's brow knitted furiously as she stared him down — and Rohen flinched, shoulders jerking for no reason he could name.
“Unbelievable.”
A hollow laugh spilled out of her. Brushing her disheveled platinum hair back behind her ear, Aria bit down hard on her lip.
And yet when the raised arm bared the hollow of her armpit and the slit of her dress flashed her chest — when she caught Rohen's gaze lingering there, just for a heartbeat, before vanishing — she couldn't help the mood that lifted in her.
She hated it, how her entire state of mind swayed at the whim of one man.
“Don't... go around giving people advice about their troubles.”
She wanted to add — especially when it comes to love — but couldn't bring herself to say even that much, and passed coldly by his side with a sigh.
So much time had passed, and she'd grown considerably.
But she was still nothing more than a girl.
...So then — once she came of age and became a proper woman.
Once she'd crossed paths with far more people than she did now.
The feelings carried by that unshared half of her blood would naturally thin, and dilute, and fade.
Yes.
She repeated it to herself like a mantra, year after year.
Five years flowed past — and even on the day she finally came of age.
Aria still could not let that feeling go.