Chapter 554 FALLEN FROM GRACE (BONUS - 1)

CELESTE’S POV

Fairy tales have a tried-and-true recipe: poor, mistreated, desolate sweetheart with sunshine in her eyes and a dream in her heart meets handsome prince with a staggering net worth, bearing salvation.

Despite the challenges of her past—an abusive family, suppressed potential, cruelty, the works—she finds love; she slays her demons; she reaches her full, magnificent potential.

And they live happily ever after.

That was what readers turned pages for, what audiences bought tickets to see.

Each character fit perfectly into curated boxes, and they received the affection they deserved—you adored the protagonists, laughed at and with the comic relief, mourned with the tragic figures, and wished a thousand painful deaths on the antagonists.

There was no love for the ugly stepsister, no tears shed for the sea witch, not a thought spared for the evil queen.

Because they were villains, and villains deserved to be punished.

And there was no punishment more severe, no hell more brutal, than working in the fucking Blue Lantern.

Tucked away on Rainier Avenue in the rougher reaches of South Seattle, the Blue Lantern was where sunshine eyes and dream hearts collided smack bang with reality—and the stench of fryer grease and stale beer.

“Hey, sweetheart! You raising the cow back there? Where the fuck is my burger?”

‘Call me sweetheart one more time, and you won’t have any teeth to eat your fucking burger with.’

I let that thought flit through my mind, briefly reveled in the satisfaction it would have given me to voice, and then let it go.

Then I forced a flat, hollow smile I’d perfected over the months since working here and turned to the beer-bellied loudmouth with the receding hairline.

“In a minute, Ken. The kitchen gets pretty backed up at this time, and Iris is out sick, so it’s just me.”

He snorted and took a large gulp of his beer. He set it down with a thud, and I winced as the liquid sloshed over the rim and onto the counter I’d just cleaned.

“Kitchen’s always fucking backed up,” he grumbled, wiping his lip and completely missing his foam mustache. “Don’t know why so many people come to this dump.”

Yeah, neither did I.

If you asked the regulars, they’d tell you the Blue Lantern had a certain...charm.

Most of them grew up kicking empty beer bottles in the parking lot; some worked here during college summers, and now they stopped here on their way from dead-end jobs to dead-end family lives for a drink and a burger and whatever shitty song was playing on the ancient jukebox.

For them, the Blue Lantern was nostalgia, maybe even home.

For me, raised on silver platters and Michelin stars, whisked around the globe in private jets and pampered on sun-soaked beaches, it was pure torture.

It was where entitled little princesses who’d fallen from grace faced their reckoning.

“Maddie, order up!”

I flinched. I wondered how long it would take before I stopped instinctively recoiling at that name.

I turned toward the kitchen pass-through, where a hand slid a loaded tray onto the counter beneath the service window.

“Thanks, Joe.”

“Anything for you, hot stuff.”

If the North Pole got foreclosed on by the bank and Mrs. Claus took the rest of his shit in the divorce, forcing Santa Claus to move to Seattle and get a dead-end job as a mediocre cook in a mediocre diner, he would look like Joe.

He was nice enough, certainly adequately jolly, but he flirted with me like humans breathed oxygen: constantly.

I hid my revulsion behind a tight smile and grabbed the tray, balancing it on one hand as I took one plate and pushed it across the counter.

“There’s your shitty burger,” I said to Ken (without the ‘shitty’).

“Fucking finally,” he muttered, reaching for a ketchup bottle.

“You’re welcome, douchebag,” I mumbled (without the ‘douchebag’), sidestepping him and walking out to the dining area.

With any luck, he was just a few greasy burgers away from the heart attack that would finally rid this place—and my life—of his presence.

The decrepit hardwood floor creaked under my steps as I passed through the aisle, setting out plates and drinks.

The jukebox looped on the same Beatles song for the last hour, and I hummed along as I worked, pretending I was literally anywhere else.

I cleared a pair of empty glasses, dropped them at the kitchen pass-through, and picked up two fresh orders waiting there before carrying them back out to my section.

By the time the plates were delivered, the last of the drinks had been set down, and I returned behind the counter, Ken was gone, leaving his empty plate and a dollar tip.

"Wow," I muttered, sliding the sticky bill into the tip jar, “wonder how much they’re selling islands these days.”

I dropped the empty plate at the service window and realized, with a small skip in my heartbeat, that I had a moment of reprieve.

No.

No, I didn’t like having breaks.

If I stood still too long, my mind wandered, nosing around doors I’d locked tight, prying them open just enough to peek inside.

I had an absolute no-peeking policy.

I looked around for something to do—plates to clear, drinks to make—when the bell above the door rang, signaling new diners.

My sigh of relief died halfway, morphing into a groan of disgust.

Four overgrown frat boys stumbled in, shoving themselves and laughing rambunctiously at something I bet my right hand on wasn’t funny.

Milo, Steve, Harper, and Tom were regulars in the Blue Lantern. They co-owned the hardware store across the street and came in here every night for dinner.

They were loud, messy, lousy tippers, and more likely to know my bra size than the color of my eyes.

They were the bane of every shift, living proof that karma existed. If the Blue Lantern was my hell, these four were the Ninth Circle.

They took their usual booth in the back, and I counted to ten before I poured four pints of draft beer and descended into my purgatory.

“Hey, guys,” I greeted as I set the drinks down. “What’ll it be tonight?”

“Fuck, yes.” Harper immediately grabbed a beer and downed half of it in two seconds.

“Hey, Maddie, you’re a chick, right?” Milo said, his muddy brown eyes fixed on my chest.

He didn’t wait for me to answer—which was a good thing because I wasn’t a fucking baby chicken—before he continued, “Settle this for us. If you’re not gonna put out, do you have the right to get mad if he goes looking for a bitch that will?”

“Yeah,” Steve snorted, taking off his hat. He ran a hand over his shiny bald head. “If the cow doesn’t want to get milked, I’m gonna get a fucking goat.”

I should have been appalled—and when I first started working here, I was—but this was the kind of misogynistic, sexist filth that I regularly heard from the Ninth Circle, and I barely batted an eyelid.

“Tonight’s special is Chicken-Fried Steak. You guys in the mood for that?”

"I know what I’m in the mood for." Milo flashed his trademark sleazy grin, and instead of dousing him in beer, I summoned the smile I curated just for them: part shy, part mockingly indulgent.

“Unfortunately, I’m not on the menu.” You disgusting piece of shit.

He pressed a beefy hand to his chest. “One day, sexy, one day.”

I’d sooner put a bullet in my skull than let that day arrive.

“I’ll be back with the special,” I announced and spun on my heels.

“You do that, sexy,” Tom snorted, punctuating his sentence with a smack on my ass.

I started to whirl around, fury bubbling up inside me like lava. I was ready to snap that fucking hand right off.

Then I caught sight of the bar shelf’s reflective glass and froze.

I hated mirrors.

Ironic, since I’d spent most of my life admiring my golden reflection in every pane of glass I passed.

Now, sometimes, when I glimpsed myself, I flinched. Sometimes, I needed a second to remember that the stranger looking back at me was...me.

Short black hair cut bluntly above the shoulders, cheap makeup covering pale skin where a golden tan had once been, and a white button-up shirt beneath a stained apron.

Celeste Lockwood would have never been caught dead looking like this, but Madison Brenner...well, she was a lot of things Celeste Lockwood had never been.

My friends and I went to Coachella when I was eighteen. We walked past a group of drunk college guys, and one of them made the unfortunate decision to slap my ass.

He barely made contact before Hansel, one of my Frostbane guards, broke his jaw and hand, costing him his basketball scholarship.

Celeste Lockwood was precious. She’d lived in ivory towers and worn the finest silks and was waited on hand and foot, not the other way around.

Madison worked twelve-hour shifts in a greasy diner. She counted her tips at the end of the night and wondered whether she would make rent that month. She fielded lascivious advances from disgusting men with a smile on her face.

“Problem, sexy?” Milo asked when I hadn’t moved.

I straightened my spine, shooting him that stupid smile.

“Nope. I’ll be back with your food.”

I walked away, careful not to look at my reflection again.