Ella, verzaubert

In the first hour of my life, a fool of a fairy named Lucinda bestowed upon me a gift: the gift of obedience. “Ella will always be obedient,” she declared, and with those words, my curse was sealed. Against a direct command, I was powerless. My mother and our cook, Mandy, understood the horror of it, but Lucinda would not be swayed. Instead of making me docile, the curse made a rebel of me. I learned to twist orders, to delay, to find loopholes in every command, though each moment of defiance cost me dearly in dizziness and nausea. My childhood was a game of evasion, a constant struggle to carve out a sliver of my own will.

When I was nearly fifteen, my mother grew ill. Her last words to me were, “I love you, precious,” but her last command to Mandy was not to send for my father, Sir Peter. The next morning, she was gone. At her funeral, lost in a willow tree's embrace, I was found by Prince Charmont. “You can call me Char,” he said, his kindness a small light in my grief. He told me he knew all about me from our cooks' gossip at the market - that I could imitate people, that I made up my own fairy tales, that I was terribly clumsy. He made me laugh, a trembling, fragile thing after so much weeping. For a few moments, walking beside him, I felt almost normal.

My new life began soon after, when my father announced he was sending me to finishing school with a Dame Olga and her two daughters, Hattie and Olive. The journey was a torment. On the coach, Hattie discovered my secret. “Oh, let me,” she said, asking to try on my mother's silver necklace. It was an order. Her eyes glittered when she realized my struggle. “Yes, you have to. Give it over.” She took my most precious possession, and from that moment, she held the whip. She made me her lady-in-waiting, forcing me to perform menial tasks, reveling in her newfound power.

Finishing school was a different kind of prison. Every mistress issued commands: “Sing this note,” “Step lightly,” “Take small stitches.” The curse forced a dreadful perfection upon me, molding me into a model of grace and accomplishment I never wished to be. My only comfort was a girl from Ayortha named Areida. She taught me her language, and I told her of my life in Frell. We became inseparable, until Hattie delivered her cruelest blow. “I hate to cause you grief,” she said with a malicious smile, “but you must end your friendship with her.” That order was more than I could bear. That night, I decided I must run away.

My goal was to find Lucinda. I had learned from a letter in my magic book - a gift from Mandy that showed me things as they happened - that she might attend a giant's wedding. My journey was fraught with peril. I was captured by ogres, who discovered my obedience and planned to feast on me. “Stop!” one commanded as I tried to flee, and I was frozen. Trapped, I found a new power within me. I began to practice their persuasive, honeyed way of speaking, and when they prepared to kill me, I convinced them they were full and sleepy. “You want to go back to sleep,” I soothed, and to my astonishment, they did.

Just as they slept, Char and his knights appeared, having been scouting the area. “Can you tame them again, Ella?” he called, his voice clearing my wits. I could, and I did, tricking the ogres into being bound. He was amazed, and I was overjoyed to see him. We spent the afternoon talking and laughing, and for the first time, I felt I was more than just a cursed girl. He was so easy to be with, so surprised by my jokes. As we parted, he asked when I might be in Frell again. “I should be back shortly,” he said. “Perhaps I'll see you soon then.” His words were a promise I clung to.

I reached the giant's wedding just in time, and there she was: Lucinda, beautiful and rapturous, bestowing another terrible gift upon the newlyweds, binding them to be together always. I approached her, pretending to speak only Ayorthaian, and begged her to help me with my own affliction of being too compliant. She smiled dazzlingly. “Obedience is a marvelous gift, Elle,” she said. “Be happy to be blessed with such a lovely quality.” The command settled over me, and I was suddenly, horrifyingly, filled with joy at my own enslavement.

This new, enforced happiness made me a willing pawn in my father's schemes. He married me off in his mind, but when that failed, he married Dame Olga himself and then left on a trading journey, abandoning me to my new stepfamily. They made me a scullery maid. My life became a cycle of scrubbing floors with lye that burned my hands and hiding from Olive, who constantly demanded stories or my few remaining coins. My only solace was my secret correspondence with Char, who was spending a year in the court of Ayortha. His letters were my lifeline. He wrote of his loneliness, his duties, and his growing feelings for me, asking in every letter, half-joking, if I was old enough to marry yet.

Then came the letter in which he confessed everything. “I think I've loved you since we met at your mother's funeral,” he wrote. “I want to be with you forever and beyond.” My heart soared, and for a moment, I saw a way out. But then the truth crashed down on me. I could not marry him. As his wife, my curse would be a weapon that could destroy him and the entire kingdom. With a broken heart, I penned a cruel reply, forging a letter from Hattie that claimed I had eloped with a rich old man, enclosing a note in my own hand to make him believe it. I made him hate me to save him.

When Char returned to Frell, three royal balls were held in his honor. I attended all three in disguise, my gowns and coach conjured by Mandy and a repentant Lucinda. I was Lela, a mysterious lady from a distant town. He was drawn to me, this masked stranger who knew Ayorthaian songs and understood his jokes. On the final night, we danced and talked for hours, my heart aching with the knowledge that it was our last time together. But as the clock struck midnight, Hattie, in a fit of jealousy, tore the mask from my face. “Ella!” she shrieked. I fled, losing a glass slipper in my haste. Char followed me to my home, where he found me in my servant's rags. He held out the slipper. “Marry me, Ella,” he commanded, his voice full of love and confusion.

My whole being screamed yes, but I knew I could not. The curse warred within me, a violent, tearing battle between my love for him and the compulsion to obey. I would not be the instrument of his downfall. I would not. Rocking in my chair, fighting the words that clawed at my throat, I found a strength I never knew I possessed, a power born of my love for him. With a final, monumental effort that felt like tearing myself in two, I broke free. “No!” I shouted, the word a thunderclap in the silent hall. “I won't marry you. No one can force me!” And with that refusal, the weight of a lifetime lifted. The curse was broken. I had saved him, and in doing so, I had saved myself. I knelt before him, finally free. “I'm older now,” I said, my voice clear and steady. “So much older that not only can I marry, but I can beg you to marry me.”