Summary of Cinder House by Freya Marske
Tordotcom Publishing, 2025
Cinder House reimagines the Cinderella story through the lens of a young woman named Ella who becomes the ghost haunting her father’s house after she and her father are poisoned by her stepmother Patrice. Ella falls down the stairs as the poison takes effect, dying on the seventh step—a death the house itself mourns by turning her into its ghost rather than letting her pass on completely.
As a ghost bound to the house, Ella can be seen only by those who own it: her stepmother and stepsisters Greta and Danica. They force her to serve as an unpaid, tireless maid. She cannot refuse any command that improves the house’s condition, but through painful trial discovers that Greta can hurt her by damaging the house itself—breaking windows, carving into woodwork, or scattering lentils that create an unbearable compulsion to clean.
Years pass. Ella learns she can leave the house at night by carrying a piece of roof tile, though she must return by midnight. She befriends Quaint, a fairy merchant at the night market, and begins attending the ballet invisibly, where she notices a thin young man who watches the dancers with yearning intensity. She also corresponds with a reclusive scholar in Cajar about the nature of ghosts and hauntings.
When Crown Prince Jule announces betrothal balls open to all young women in the city, Ella bargains with Quaint for three nights of tangible existence. The price: various objects from her house including mirror shards, ashes from her hearth, and her own preserved hair. Quaint creates magical shoes covered in mirror pieces that give Ella a solid body and a magnificent willow-green gown—but only until midnight.
At the palace, Ella discovers the young man from the ballet is Prince Jule himself. In a private courtyard, he reveals his terrible secret: a fairy curse given at his naming means anyone who watches him truly dance falls uncontrollably, dangerously in love with him. Two people have already died because of it. He can only move freely using leg braces that prevent real dancing, and he’s being forced into a political marriage with Princess Nadya of Cajar, a powerful sorcerer who might resist the curse.
Ella realizes that as a ghost, fairy magic affects her differently—she can watch Jule dance without falling under the curse’s compulsion. She experiences the magic’s pull but isn’t controlled by it. For the first time in years, Jule can dance freely for an audience. They share an intense romantic encounter, and Ella promises to return.
On the third night, Ella’s stepsister Greta—a sorcerer herself who has been trying to enchant the prince—attempts to assassinate Jule using a magically controlled servant and an enchanted knife, planning to “save” him and win his gratitude. Ella throws herself in front of the blade. The knife’s magic interacts catastrophically with Quaint’s spell, and Ella begins disintegrating into ash and dust before vanishing at midnight.
Jule and Nadya (who turns out to be Scholar Mazamire, Ella’s correspondent) trace the magical shoes to Ella’s house. They arrive to find Greta has set the entire house ablaze from within using magic, intending to destroy Ella’s haunting. In a desperate rescue, Jule cuts out the blood-stained seventh step where Ella died while Nadya uses her formidable magic to catch and hold Ella’s disintegrating ghost. They flee the burning house with the piece of wood.
At the palace, Nadya helps Ella make a terrifying leap from the dying fragment of her old haunting to a new anchor: the spot where her blood fell in the palace ballroom. The palace—ancient, magical, and carrying its own grudge about the attack on its prince—accepts Ella as its new ghost. She becomes the spirit of the entire royal palace and grounds, with Jule and his parents (the king and queen) able to see and hear her.
The story concludes with an unconventional happy ending. Nadya marries Jule as planned, their political alliance becoming a genuine partnership. Ella becomes the palace ghost, working as a royal intelligence officer (able to overhear conversations anywhere on the grounds) while pursuing her own education. The three form an intimate arrangement: Nadya uses enchanted silk ropes to safely restrain herself so Jule can dance for her without dangerous consequences, with Ella present as a witness who can experience the performance and the couple’s passion through her connection to the palace itself. They find joy, intimacy, and purpose within the constraints that might have destroyed them.