My Sister Stole My Mate And I Let Her (Seraphina) novel Chapter 554

Chapter 554: Chapter 554 FALLEN FROM GRACE (BONUS Chapter 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.”

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