1416934715(FY)

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Authors: Cameron Dokey
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single thing about this dreadful place.”
    She turned back to the window. For a moment, I thought that Amelie would go to her. Instead, she gave a little sigh.
    “Come with me, Cendrillon, if you please,” she said. She preceded me into the hall. I closed the door quietly behind us, then hurried to keep up as Amelie had already set off at a brisk pace down the corridor.
    “I think this place is beautiful.” she said after a moment. “Especially the house. I didn’t think I would. I didn’t think I’d like anything about this place when we first arrived.”
    “What made you change your mind?” I asked, then cursed myself for an idiot when Amelie stopped abruptly and turned around. I had spoken to her like an equal, as if I had the right to ask her what she felt and thought. As far as she was concerned, of course, I did not. I was no more than a servant in Amelie’s eyes. The fact that she treated me better than her sister did didn’t change things a bit.
    “You have lived here a long time, I think.” Amelie observed. “And you love this place.”
    “I have lived here all my life,” I answered, deciding to focus on the first statement and let the second go. “I was born here, in fact. Old Mathilde delivered me.”
    Amelie’s expression brightened. There was something about her that always reminded me of a sparrow, though she was neither drab nor plump. But she had a sparrow’s bright, dark eyes. A bird’s darting interest and intelligence.
    “I did not know that,” she said. She turned back around. If we had truly been equals, she might have inquired about the rest of my family, my mother and father, but she did not. Instead, she set off once more along the hall, her pace so brisk I had to almost trot along behind her to keep up.
    “But it makes you the perfect person to answer my question,” she went on.
    “What question is that?” I asked, as Amelie finally came to a halt.
    “I am hoping you can tell me,” she said, “why this door is kept locked. None of the others are. I know. I’ve checked them myself.”
    I swallowed past a suddenly dry throat. I had been so busy worrying about giving myself away, I had failed to notice that Amelie was heading straight toward my mother’s door.
Tell her. Tell her all of it, the truth about who you are,
I thought. There might never be a better time.
    I opened my mouth, but the words I wished tosay seemed to stick inside my throat. If I claimed Constanze d’Este as my mother, then I must also claim Etienne de Brabant as my father. Etienne de Brabant, who had sent his new wife and stepdaughters to the great stone house without bothering to inform them of my existence, so great was his desire to deny I was even alive.
    How would Amelie take the news if I told her? Would she be kind? Would she even believe me at all? But it was thinking of what Anastasia’s reaction might be that finally made up my mind. Her scorn I could bear, but not her pity, and, in that moment, pity seemed the only possible outcome of the telling of a tale such as mine.
    “This room belonged to Etienne de Brabant’s first wife,” I finally answered, deciding there was no point in telling a lie. All Amelie would have to do would be to ask someone else. “He locked the door and threw away the key when she died.”
    Amelie put her hands on her hips, pursing her lips and putting her head to one side. She studied the locked door as if it were a puzzle, just waiting to be solved.
    “And has it never been opened since? Has no one even tried?”
    “Never,” I said. And it occurred to me suddenly that not even I had ever been through that door, not since I had gone out it on the day that I was born. I had no idea what my mother’s room contained.
    “What was her name, do you know?”
    “Her name was Constanze d’Este,” I said.
    “Ah,” Amelie answered, and her voice was like a sigh. She took her hands from her hips and, to my surprise, laid one palm very gently on the surface of my

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