Yay! I updated. I wanted to yesterday, but a storm made the electricity go bye-bye and I was too tired to do it by the time it came back up. I was a little emotional when I wrote this, so don't hate me afterwards. Oh, and the italicized print that's centered are all flashbacks of the night before. I wrote it like this for a reason, but sorry if it's confuzzling. :P Read on!

Chapter Four: The Cinderella Moment

"Do you mind if I cut in?" Elena was still gaping at the sight to actually realize he asked the question. Gears started to turn in her mind, and she finally got to thinking. Matt Donovan stared at him, astonished. Elena knew what was going on in his thoughts. 'Are you seriously cutting in right now?' was what she expected to find. But Prince Damon just stared on at the both of them, confident in his question and possibly even baiting Mr. Donovan for more of a dramatic reaction.

She nodded her head, only half-conscious to what that actually meant for her. As he took her hand in his and pulled her away from Matthew, Prince Damon smirked so seductively, her insides transformed into jelly and she pretty much died. She smiled up at him as they got into position (with his hand gripping her waist tightly and her hand resting on his strong and muscular shoulder) and counted the beat of the waltz in their heads.

Elena woke up happy and content the morning after the ball. Happy and content and…at seven o'clock! She heard the clock tower of the palace ring for the hour, and she cursed under her breath. She was late! She got up and out of bed and rushed to her dress. Her eyes lingered over to the corner of her room, where her beautiful corset dress rested messily against a small chair and next to her full-body mirror. She didn't have time to look at herself in it, for she was out the door as soon as her rags (now clean, thanks to her mother) were on her. She didn't see her mother or Jeremy on her way out of the Estate. Both were probably still sleeping. Both had the luxury.

Elena normally would on a Saturday, like it was today, but there had been a ball. A magnificent, fairy-tale ball. She had to help clean everything up, for everything was surely a mess. And, worst of all, she was late!

She ran as fast as she could. A fault of living at the Gilbert Estate while being a maid of the palace: her home was on the opposite side of town to her work. She ran passed the market place, navigating through the maze of people and into all the shortcuts. She didn't get time to admire the smell coming from the bakery like she did every other morning, but it blew passed her as she scurried. She couldn't reply to the friendly villagers that greeted her with a good morning, even though she knew these people pretty well like Mrs. Flowers, who was training her pig while she said 'hi' to Elena. She was too much in a hurry for anything.

When she reached the palace campus, the clock hit the half-hour mark. Rose was going to kill her! She ran across the field surrounding the south side of the castle, her feet aching and her breath getting tough. Thank god she was no longer in her corset. Soon she was at the cobble stone steps that led down to the underground service floor, so she could get a couple rags and fill a bucket of water so when Rose does catch her, she won't decide to kill her or worse, fire her, right away.

She went up the service stairwell to the main room, which was plagued with trash and dirt everywhere. Two other maidens—Mary, a pale red-brown haired girl in her early twenties, and Lucy, a cousin of Bonnie's—were scrubbing the floors and walls, and Elena got on her knees and joined them. She dipped a rag in the bucket, twisted it to release the excess water, and started to rub a spot on the floor where a men's shoe made an impression of dirt. She couldn't stop staring across the entire floor, reminiscing about everything that happened the night before.

The violinist played a long G sharp. Damon led Elena through the dance, never keeping his eyes off of hers. In the back of her head, that nagging voice was screaming at her to be a little more realistic. Obviously his intensions aren't as pure as she would've liked. Just this morning, he was in bed with Vicky Donovan. It didn't make sense that he'd like her. But she wasn't in the right mind to listen to that voice. She was too distracted by the blue oceans that were his eyes. They continued to glide across the dance floor, with their focus on only each other. They were in their own worlds, and for a second, Elena was happy. Content.

Voices echoed through the room, bringing Elena back to the present. All three girls looked up from their silent stares at the floor in front of them to see Rose, with a couple other maids. Her hands were on her hips, a bonnet in her hair, and she looked so clean, as per usual. She was paid the most, and had to do the least amount of work. She wore her long brown hair down and messily. A glum smile occupied her face. "Look who decided to show up," she said, staring pointedly at Elena. "You're friend covered for you, but I didn't buy it. You think that you're so important just because you got to go to the ball last night. You're not, because here you are, on your knees and cleaning up the mess you caused last night." She laughed, then bent down so that she was only a couple inches above her. Elena didn't want to, but she dragged her pupils up to look into her eyes as she said. "Seeing you like this is just too great to fire you right now, so you're off the hook. But…" Rose reached across Elena and pushed her bucket of water so that the contents spilled over the floor. "Oops."

She let out an evil laugh before she finally walked away. The maids behind her followed her, giving her sympathetic glares that she really didn't appreciate. As all of the faded out of the room, Elena groaned in frustration, so much so that she probably would've kicked the bucket down herself if Rose hadn't beaten her too it. Oh, how she despised Rose! She was the reason for part of her life being hell! When she stood up, her knees were off balance and felt awkward being so wet. She had to drain her skirt onto the floor before she went back down to the service stairwell to the service floor to get a mop.

There was a long hallway she had to walk through to get from the main room to the service floor. She countered through, with her head hanging on her neck, feeling so heavy. She had made the mistake of getting used to the luxuries of last night, and it had cost her. She was going down a dangerous path, she knew, for everything changed in one night out of years of hard work. Was she really going to risk the future her job provided for Jeremy on some wishful thinking? Yeah, she couldn't be a pessimistic thinker, but being optimistic was proving to be a lot worse. She had to be something a dreamer like her refused to be. Realistic.

But that dreamer side of her occupied most of her, and while she knew she had to clean up the act it took too short a time for her to develop, she couldn't help but think back to all the beautiful moments last night gave her, which sent butterflies to her stomach and chills to her spine.

He whispered something softly in her ear, "You look beautiful." She flushed a deep red, to which he only grinned. She replied with a small 'thank you' as they went along with the melody playing around their heads. They were in their own reality. Everyone in the crowd around them blurred into a darkness that singled the two out into their own little universe. Only them, and this moment. Could it get any better? Though, that tiny part of her was screaming louder and louder. "This is wrong! Don't fall for his tricks, Elena!" She knew, however, that she wasn't falling for his tricks per se. She looked deep into his eyes as she decided that she was playing a much deadlier card. She was falling for him.

She was too stuck in her daydream to notice the body in her path, so when she hit it, she was shocked. She stumbled back, falling on her butt, but luckily landing on her hands. She groaned in frustration, a little too loud, before she realized who she bumped into. "Oh, I am so sorry, Lady Alexia," she rushed to her feet.

"You should be," the Lady said, brushing off dust from her corset dress, before looking up at Elena. "Wait…" she thought about it for a moment. "You look familiar," she decided. "Yes, I'm quite sure you do." Alexia tilted her head a little to the side before both females turned their heads in the direction of a new voice, one that allowed the Lady's shoulders to relax while Elena's back tensed and her brows furrowed.

"Cousin," it had said from all the way down the hallway, coming closer and closer towards them. "Are we ready?" And just Elena's luck, it was the Prince Damon. The moment her eye caught his, she wanted to take it back. She wanted to, instead, hang her head low and scurry down the hallway towards the service floor in shame, for that's how much looking into his amazing blue eyes hurt her. It was because of what she saw, and though she didn't know exactly what it was that filled those icy orbs, she knew that she didn't like it. Was it regret, anger, or confusion? Possibly a mix of all three? Instead of smiling at the memories that flowed into her head at the moment, she frowned. Liars, she called them as she recalled every happy thing of the evening before.

Elena knew it was a dangerous path to go on, falling hard for someone like him. A prince. A man whore, too. And yet, there she was, dancing with him like her life depended on it and staring up at him as if he were the golden light of God himself. Since when did she, Elena Gilbert, become such a damsel in distress? So weak, so dependent on another body? She hated the feeling that succumbed her with so much pleasure at every silky touch of his fingers on her skin. They sent electricity through her nerves.

Damon stopped in his tracks, and Elena couldn't help but frown. They were done? It was then that she once again noticed that they were surrounded by other people and other couples on a dance floor where the music for the waltz had died down. She curtsied as he bowed. But while she took this as a goodbye, the prince had other ideas and grabbed her by the wrist just as she turned on her heal to walk away. They hastened through the single ladies giving Elena death stares and men giving the prince glares of envy and other idle people that questioned the two's actions in their heads. If only they knew that Elena didn't even know what was going on! She only went with the flow, happy that her night with him would play out for a little while longer, before it would sadly drop to an end.

But before the prince dragged her completely out of the room, she caught the stares of three people, grouped together in what seemed like a conversation, only their lips were all opened as they gaped at her and the prince. In the split second it took for the view of Jeremy, Matt, and Vicky to fade into the mysterious scenery of wherever Damon was taking her, she processed Vicky's scowl, Jeremy's hand placed too far down of Vicky's back, and Matthew Donovan's envious and angry stare. Though she should've, she seemed to not have cared.

In the center of the palace was a giant garden enclosed by three walls and a double door that took the place of a fourth wall. The Mystic Gardens, it was called. Tiny patches of soil were covered in roses, blue bonnets, lilies and a million different plants that one wouldn't except to see in such an enclosed location. Elena had been in the Gardens once, when she visited the Castle at the age of seven with her father one morning. Now she was in it again, with a completely different man, but it still looked just as beautiful and breathtaking as she remembered it to be.

"You're different," Prince Damon had said, breaking the comfortable silence that filled the air between them.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Elena then laughed, looking down and around at the flowers while tucking a loose hair behind her ear though it didn't quite stay.

"You should," Damon replied. He gently tugged at her chin, forcing her to look at him and pretty much killing her with those eyes of his and the smile he had currently worn on his face, before fixing the loose strand of soft brown hair. It then stayed neatly behind her ear for good. They stayed there just staring at each other for a while, before he broke their trance. "So many people now a days are too masochistic and obedient, with no mind of their own. You just seem more…more real. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, I guess it does." It was true, that many people just do as they're told and deal with it, never really knowing what it was like to make a decision for themselves and themselves alone. But was she really an exception? She highly doubted that, for she spent a lot of the time working for 'the man', but she didn't voice these opinions aloud. She only waited to see where the prince was going with this.

"I don't know. Maybe it's the pressure that's making me feel this way. Trapped. Like everything is being decided for me. I have to choose a bride and all." So this is where he was going with this. "But I don't necessarily get to choose anything, because I'm a prince. People assume that I get every luxury known to man, and that's almost true."

"Almost?" she asked.

"Almost," he continued, "because I admit to having more material things than most people out there. But with all this fortune and prosperity comes a price you have to be willing to pay, and I'm not sure that I am." He looked sadly at the floor between their cloth covered legs, before turning back up to search her face. "I apologize for pushing this onto you, Miss Gilbert."

"No, please, it's not a problem at all. I'm a good listener," she said honestly. "But what is the price you have to pay?"

"My freedom."

"Look who finally decided to show up!" The Lady exclaimed. "I've been waiting."

He ignored her question and went straight for "What do we have here?" Damon whispered, not taking his eyes off of Elena (which made her uncomfortable, instead of joyful), to Alexia.

"I'm sorry, my cousin. It bumped into me in the hallway," Alexia whispered back to him. Elena could hear their whispers; she wasn't deaf. She stared awkwardly at the thickening air, suffocating those in the hallway. Wait…wait a second. It? She wasn't an animal…

There was a reason why Elena didn't just run from the embarrassing, and well as tear provoking, moment, and that was because it was rude. She was a maid, and her company was not of her equal, therefore she had to be dismissed. Why didn't they just do it already, instead of allowing her to feel bad? She shifted her weight from foot to foot.

"What is it you want?" Damon asked her directly. Deja vu moment. He had asked that to her before, the first time they met yesterday morning. It was actually kind of hard for her to think of it.

"Nothing, actually, Your Highness," she said, probably a little too cold. But hey, it most likely mocked his perfectly! She wasn't crazy; the events of last night did happen, and this was the obvious reaction to his cold shoulder towards her. "I just meant to go downstairs and accidentally bumped into the Lady." She challenged him with her stares.

"Clumsy fool," he said, adding salt to the wound. Elena let that sink in, before nodding her head in denial and stepping back. Once it was said, she noticed the clear regret in his eyes for saying it, but it wasn't enough for him to take it back.

Elena stared at the two of them, with tears she tried to hide behind her lids, but she wasn't sure whether or not it worked. "Excuse me," she whispered, thought it hardly even audible, before she walked away from the scene. Traitor tears slid down her face as she ran down the hallway and stair case to the service floor to get the mop to clean up Rose's mess. Looking, today was not as kind to her as yesterday was.

When she got the mop from the closet, she scraped her hand with a loose nail on the poorly made wooden door. "Damn it!" she cursed aloud. She grabbed a rag from the wooden table I the center of the floor itself and wrapped it around the deep cut on her palm, putting as much pressure as she could on it before she collapsed on the floor and rested her back and head on the cobble stone wall. The mop she had held in her well hand followed her down to the floor, beating against the hard rock floor like a drum. The damn her eyes had built had broken, and the tears she held in flowed out in rivers. She knew not to fall so quickly; she knew he was a dangerous kind of guy. And yet…

"Your freedom?" Elena then asked, honestly curious.

"Yeah. Everything is planned for me. Though I am completely capable of making my own thoughts and decisions, my father makes them for me," Damon clarified. He sighed, moving in closer to her and resting a palm on her knee. "It doesn't help that I'm rebellious and ridiculously good-looking by nature," he continued, making her giggle. "But Stefan is the golden child, whom my father obviously loves more. I don't care; I love my brother. I only wish that people would stop making a comparison between us. I may not be the perfect prince but neither is my brother."

"You should tell someone this, someone that actually thinks this way," Elena gave her opinion. "I mean, I don't think of you negatively, and I am really in no position to judge."

"Enough about me," Damon declared. "What about you? There was something in the wine that makes the truth come out to total strangers. Now, it's your turn to tell all and everything."

"Me? Well, there's nothing much to say, actually, except that I can relate to what you were saying about not getting to make your own choices. But it's not so great with free will either. Especially when the worst thing you can imagine happens for real, and you're forced to make a choice that will decide you whole destiny," Elena explained, thinking back to when her father died. "But I guess that's just life."

They both shared a sigh, and once again shared a sideways glance. This time, though, the moment lingered on, until both bodies scooted in a little closer as if they were polar opposites of a magnet. He didn't take is eyes off of hers as he took the lead and leaned in, while she froze. Another guy was planning on kissing her this evening. The prince, no less! She panicked in her head. Would she let him?

When his soft, plush lips brushed hers gently, she felt a knotting in her stomach. This is what it felt like to kiss someone. One small kiss turned into a second kiss that lasted a little longer, and all of a sudden, her back was resting against the cement bench they were occupying. Passion filled both bodies until there was nothing left but the stars above them and the ground below them.

The palace bell tower ringed for the hour passed midnight. Elena realized one thing.

She was no doubt screwed for the rest of eternity.

And, with the cut on her palm and reddened face, she knew that, in the end, she was right.

I said don't hate me! I'm sorry! I had to! I love Damon, but I just had to write it like this. You'll see why later on...

Love you all!

~KSM