Page 28 of Cinder's Adventure: Get Me To the Wedding!

Proceed to Chapter 49.

Chapter 30

Cinder braced herself, shut her eyes, climbed through the looking glass…

And promptly fell face-first off a ledge.

She landed in an inelegant heap on plush carpet.

Catching her breath, she opened first one eye, and then the other. Relief swirled inside of her as she took in her familiar quarters in New Beijing Palace. The same vanity, the same wardrobe, the same wedding gown hanging on the door, waiting for her.

Beaming, she got to her feet and checked the time on her interface.

Hardly any time at all had passed! She hadn’t missed her wedding and all would be well and—

“Cinder!”

She yelped and spun around to see Iko standing in the doorway, arms akimbo and a look of utter disgust on her face. “What have you done to your hair? And you’re not even dressed yet!”

“I’m sorry,” said Cinder. “I’ve been, um, dealing with things.”

“Dealing with things?” Iko threw her arms into the air. “You’re supposed to bedealingwith getting married! Honestly, I leave you alone for five minutes! Come on, sit down. I’ll fix your hair.”

Knowing better than to argue, Cinder settled down on the vanity seat, wondering whether she had dozed off. Could it have been a dream?

As Iko took out the peony flower and the pins and began combing her hair, Cinder found herself fidgeting with her ring finger. Her heart jolted, and she looked down.

The ring was missing.

Gasping, she looked up into her own horrified expression in the mirror.

But her attention was almost immediately diverted to Iko’s reflection… and the white rabbit ears now sprouting up from among her blue braids.

In the mirror, Iko gave her a wink. “We have to hurry. You wouldn’t want to be late!”

The end.

Chapter 31

Ignoring the ghost’s outstretched hand, Cinder hopped up into the driver’s seat of the pumpkin carriage and grabbed the horses’ reins. “You don’t mind, do you?”

There was no answer.

When she glanced back, the ghost wasn’t there.

She frowned, swiveling her head side to side, but he was nowhere to be seen. Had he climbed inside the carriage?

“Uh—I’m just going to get going then, right?” she called loudly. “And you can call out directions as needed?”

When there was no answer, Cinder shrugged and cracked the reins. The horses started off down the long driveway. She considered the day’s itinerary. First, she would go meet with this Erlking guy, see what he wanted, maybe give him an invitation to the wedding? She wondered if that was what this was all about. Perhaps, being a king (supposedly), he was annoyed to have been left out. The Commonwealth’s relations with other leaders and political allies was strong, but she knew those relationships didn’t just happen. They required effort. And as the almost empress, that sort of diplomacy would once again be among her official duties.

She determined that she would resolve this issue quick and gracefully, and make it back with plenty of time to spare. She wasn’t about to start her reign with some diplomatic controversy hanging over her head.

At the bottom of the long hill, the horses turned away from the sparkling city of New Beijing, toward the dense forest at its outskirts. They seemed to know where they were going, and the unseen ghost still hadn’t said anything, so she didn’t try to stop them. Soon the carriage was passing beneath a dense tree canopy, the branches alive with birdsong and spring flowers. The air smelled sweetly of moss and she could hear a gurgling brook not far off.

It was all perfectly lovely.

Until Cinder began to realize that she’d been driving for longer than she’d expected, and the woods were now growing thicker, the trees warping into gnarled trunks hung with tendrils of wispy vines. The pleasant birdsong was replaced with the shrill cries of a raven and the clatter of branches as the wind whipped through.

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