AN: Alright, after some thinking I decided to upload my newest story here as well. Mostly because the fandom needs some love and attention and I hope people here will read (and like) it as well.

For people not knowing the game "Cinderella Phenomenon" is a free to play visual novel available on steam among on other places, with gorgeous art and loveable characters and something I highly recommend.

Have fun reading!^_^

Prologue

In the end it all started with a letter. An old letter hidden in an old and unused room in a mostly unused area of the palace. The already yellowish paper had been hidden away in a folder inside a drawer. Lucette hadn't been impressed by the room initially, but she had grown to prefer this one over the other places where she tended to spend her time.

And this room was out of the way. Not even the maids came here to clean it. And if a maid tasked by her father to find her didn't come to get her, then it wasn't because the maid was never sent in the first place, but simply because no one thought about looking here. And maybe, if she told herself that often enough, she may even believe it instead of accepting that the cold feeling coiling inside her was the reaction to the fact that he simply didn't care.

The room wasn't big, but it must have been used at some point at least. The curtains were still drawn back from the window and there was a small terrace in front of it. There were seats arranged around a low table, cushioned but dusty. A drawer at the wall with an empty vase on it, a painting above.

It was a portrait she had never seen before, but the woman looked somehow familiar, with dark hair and yellowish eyes just like her own. She hadn't known at the beginning and had spent some time wondering who it was, before she had found the inscription in the frame, labeling her as Helena Britton, wife to Alexander Britton IV, her grandfather on her father's side of the family.

It was the first time she had ever seen a hint of her grandmother in her whole life. She looked young in the picture and Lucette needed to admit that she barely knew anything about the woman outside her name. She had brown hair and the same yellow eyes she had gotten from her own father.

The woman was smiling in the painting, wearing a cream colored dress with tiny flowers stitched along the hems of the different layers. She looked… friendly. And soft. Nothing like her mother ever had. She couldn't have left much of an impression when no one had ever mentioned her to Lucette before now.

But she was still curious about that woman, especially with her own mother gone, the wound still fresh and gaping inside her, the princess was longing for every scrap of distraction from the pain she could grasp.

The room was… empty of any signs of what kind of person she had been, outside of being seemingly quite talented at sewing and stitching from what the girl could gather from the material in the drawer. It was a talent she hadn't expected to share with the unknown woman. Her own mother had after all told her that sewing was unbecoming for a princess.

And then Lucette had found the letters.

She had simply put them aside when she had found them, not noticing what was inside the folder until she had been about to put it back.

The initial uncomfortable feeling she had felt about reading them had faded as well. The woman was long dead, and whatever was written in there had most likely lost importance long ago.

And so she had taken the folder one day and moved over to the window where the sun was shining into the room, starting to decipher the faded ink. It only took the greeting to realize that the letter was to her grandmother and not written by her.

Dear Helena,

How are you doing? It has been some time since your last letter reached me and I was very happy to hear that you managed to conceive. I hope everything is going well. If there is any kind of problem, just send for me and I'll come as fast as I can. Atreus will help and teleport me. Especially if it is about another descendant of some kind, even when he can't stand Alexander. You know this isn't about you.

Aion is eight already and getting into trouble left and right. I started him up on his healing lessons and it is reining him in at least a bit. He was always curious about it since the first time I brought him to the village with me and he saw me using it.

And when he does get a bit much, Richard and Atreus are always happy to take him for a few hours. Father is finally getting better. Losing Arianna to that accident had really brought him down and it is good to see him recovering. I don't know what he was like after losing his first wife, but from what I heard from Jack it was pretty bad.

Is your father still teasing you about how you got to know your husband? It sounded like a story he would never stop telling, simply to embarrass you. Richard is still laughing every time someone hints at it and Aion recently asked how someone can end up that drunk in the first place. I guess it is good that out here there is no risk for him to run into his uncle. But then a good curse may put a few things straight in that guys head.

I admit, I am not missing court at all. It was tedious, even with Richard around. I guess, we got lucky that Alexander was so eager to move up in the line of succession. Is he already regretting it? Did he already notice how different it is from what he may have thought it was?

Well, I am far away from it and not regretting it at all. And with us so far away from the capital, no one can say that we're trying to undermine his authority in any kind of way. Your husband is either quite paranoid or his advisers are. Whack him over the head please, if he starts acting stupid. Males need that at times. Richard gets tunnel vision often enough.

Aion and Richard both miss you and wish you well.

And just remember: If you have enough from the whispers and gossip and the corsets chaining your soul, father can always make space for you here. He is your grandfather as well after all.

In love and wishing your well for your proceeding pregnancy,

Your aunt Mýrún

Aunt… she had other relatives? Outside her father and mother? She had never thought about that before. Her mother had always been there and she had never needed anyone else.

But now she wasn't, hadn't been for three months and there was this gaping hole inside her yearning for parental affection again. But her father was barely acknowledging her existence to begin with, had barely talked to her during the last months since mother died.

Carefully she followed the loop of the signature on the paper with a finger tip.

Who else was there? This Mýrún had mentioned her father, who was her grandmother's grandfather, making him her own great-great-grandfather. But was the man even alive now? The letter was written before her father was an adult at least. But he wasn't even mentioned there.

Lucette read the letter again, eyes stopping at a phrase. 'But then a good curse may put a few things straight in that guys head' the woman had written. But only witches could curse.

There were witches in her family tree? Was that why mother had kept her away from father? But mother had hated the fairy tales picturing witches like that.

Thoughts running in her head, she carefully put the letter back away into the drawer and left the room. She… needed to think about that. And do some research. Her grandfather -the prior king- was named Alexander, but she had never heard of any siblings… The royal archives should have something about that. The spouses of the ruling royalty always got thoroughly recorded down to specify the family tree.

She just… She needed some time to sort everything out.