Standing Up For Grace by Kristine Grayson

 
     
     
     
    ONE
     
     
    Here, in the Greater World, the kids think that fairy tales are all hearts and flowers and unicorns and pink ponies. Everything has gold glitter and with the wave of a wand, every wish comes true. The Greater World includes LaLa Land, a place that prides itself on making up all these lies.
    Until she actually moved here, Imperia Encanto thought LaLa Land—Los Angeles—was this wonderful mecca. But now that she lives here, she’s been discovering the truth. Los Angeles isn’t a mecca—at least not the mecca she imagined from the books she read back in the Kingdom.
    Los Angeles is hot. It’s in the desert. It does have some lovely flowering plants, but the sunlight is harsh . And the people have really, really rough edges.
    No wonder they want to believe in fairy tales.
    Too bad the fairy tales are all lies.
    Imperia Encanto wants to tell those kids about all the lies, but her dad won’t let her. Her dad is one of the Princes Charming. Out here, they call him Cinderella’s Prince Charming, but he calls himself Dave Encanto. That last name thing took a while to get used to, but not as much as the way people think about Imperia’s other life, calling it a fairy tale, like that’s a good thing.
    In a sideways way that fairy tale thing is how Imperia ended up in the principal’s office. Imperia is nursing a sore hand, and hoping her dad won’t be upset at her when she gets home. Dad doesn’t scream or yell. He frowns.
    And when a man whose greatest magical ability is charm frowns, you know you’ve done something bad.
    Imperia does not have the ability to charm. Or, at least, she doesn’t have much of it. If she had it, she wouldn’t have had to punch Skylar Kennedy Campbell to get her to leave Imperia’s little sister Grace alone. But Imperia couldn’t stop Skylar with talk, so Imperia had to resort to violence.
    And Daddy is going to hate that, especially since he thinks Imperia has charm and just refuses to use it.
    Everyone in her father’s side of the family is supposed to have some charm. That’s just the way things work in the Kingdoms.
    There are many Kingdoms, and they overlap with the Greater World which, Daddy says, is the real world, although Imperia isn’t so sure. Imperia was born in the Kingdom—the Third Kingdom, to be precise—and it always seemed pretty real to her, especially when Mom took her and Grace and dumped them on the castle steps like so much flour.
    Your granddad will know what to do with you , Mom said, with that flat look in her eyes. Mom had that flat look for weeks before she dumped the girls. It was like Mom didn’t care about anything except this toothy guy she met in a pub. But that was weird, even for Mom. Because Mom did care about stuff. It was just usually stuff that no one else in the family cared about.
    Fortunately, Mom didn’t say any of this stuff to Grace. Just to Imperia. Because Grace wouldn’t’ve been able to deal with it.
    Grace is four years younger than Imperia, but Grace at eight is a lot younger than Imperia ever was at eight. Maybe that’s because Imperia had to deal not just with Mom, but with Grandmother as well—not Grandmama Lavinia (she loves Grandmama Lavinia, Mom’s stepmom) but Dad’s mother, the Queen, who is Very Proper. But it must be said in Grandmother’s favor that she did cry when she found out that Daddy was bringing the girls to the Greater World, because Grandmother cannot easily come here. Grandfather hates it here, even though he’s never left the Kingdom.
    He thinks that Daddy is running away from his responsibilities. Daddy says he has no responsibilities except waiting for Grandfather to die.
    Imperia wasn’t supposed to hear that conversation—although it wasn’t a conversation, it was a fight, and they had it just outside the throne room, which she had been exploring because there was nothing better to do, and besides, one day All This Would Be Hers, or so her grandmother told her in a