The March wind of 2023 scraped the Buckingham Palace railings like a fingernail on tin, the kind that rattles bones and turns every breath to frost. I was thirty-six, eyes hollow from hospital corridors and morphine counts, fingers raw from clutching a clipboard of scan results. My daughter, Ellie, eight, bald as a pebble, legs too weak to climb the palace steps, lay in the wheelchair the Make-A-Wish people had polished to a shine. She’d asked for one thing before the leukaemia finished its work: “I want to meet Cinderella. Real Cinderella. Not the cartoon.” Doctors gave her weeks. The palace gave her a date.

We arrived at the private entrance, 11 a.m., grey sky spitting sleet. Security waved us through—no cameras, no press, just a discreet side door and a footman who looked like he’d stepped out of a storybook. Ellie wore her favourite yellow dress, the one with the daisies, now hanging off her like a tent. She clutched a plastic wand, glitter shedding like dandruff. “Will she have the blue dress?” she whispered. I couldn’t answer. My throat was gravel.

They wheeled her into the White Drawing Room, chandeliers dimmed, fire crackling low. A harpist played somewhere, soft as a lullaby. Ellie’s eyes, huge in her thin face, darted everywhere, the gold walls, the silk sofas, the portrait of some long-dead duke. Then the doors opened.

Princess Catherine stepped in. Not in jeans or a blazer. In the dress. The blue one. Powder silk, off-the-shoulder, layers of tulle floating like clouds. The skirt shimmered with tiny crystals, catching the firelight like stars. Her hair was swept up, a thin silver tiara glinting, not the big ones, just enough to sparkle. She carried glass slippers, actual glass, delicate as soap bubbles, on a velvet cushion.

Ellie gasped. One hand flew to her mouth. “Cinderella,” she breathed.

Catherine, Kate, smiled, not the public smile, the one that curved like a secret. She knelt, dress pooling around her like water. “Hello, Princess Ellie,” she said, voice low, warm, the vowels round as river stones. “I heard you were coming. The mice helped me finish the dress in time.”

Ellie’s eyes filled. “You’re real.”

“As real as you,” Kate replied. She slipped the glass slippers onto Ellie’s bare feet, tiny, swollen from steroids, but the shoes fit like they’d been blown for her alone. Ellie wiggled her toes, wonder breaking across her face like sunrise.

Then Kate stood, held out a hand. “Shall we dance?”

There was no music at first. Just the fire’s crackle. Kate began to hum, “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” soft, off-key in places, but perfect. Ellie’s thin arms reached up. I lifted her from the chair, bones light as a bird, and Kate took her weight like it was nothing. They swayed, slow, Ellie’s head on Kate’s shoulder, the blue dress swallowing her yellow one. The harpist joined in, gentle, then a footman with a violin. The room filled with the song, Ellie’s lips moving, whispering the words she knew by heart.

Kate spun her, careful, the glass slippers catching the light. Ellie laughed, a sound I hadn’t heard in months, bright as breaking glass. “The prince!” she said suddenly. Kate grinned, beckoned to a young footman in tails, blushing crimson. He bowed, offered a gloved hand. Ellie took it, solemn, and they waltzed, three steps, four, before her legs gave. Kate caught her, seamless.

Then the singing. Kate knelt again, took Ellie’s hands. “Your turn,” she said. Ellie’s voice was a thread, but she sang, “Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo,” Kate joining in, harmonies weaving like silk. The staff stood back, eyes wet. I stood frozen, tears cutting tracks through the hospital dust on my cheeks.

When the song ended, Kate reached into a hidden pocket, drew out a tiny glass carriage, no bigger than a matchbox, wheels that actually turned. “For your bedside,” she said. “So the magic follows you home.”

Ellie clutched it, eyes shining. “Will you come to my ball?”

Kate’s smile faltered, just a flicker. “I’ll be there,” she said. “In the stars. Look for the brightest one. That’s me, in the blue dress.”

They wheeled Ellie out an hour later, exhausted, glowing. She fell asleep in the car, glass slippers in her lap, carriage in her fist. Three weeks later, she slipped away at 2:14 a.m., the palace carriage on her pillow, the blue dress folded in her memory box.

We buried her in the yellow dress. The glass slippers, too fragile, we kept in a case. Every March, when the daffodils come, I take them out. The crystals still catch the light. And on quiet nights, I swear I hear humming, “A dream is a wish…”

Kate never spoke of it publicly. No photos. No press release. Just a card that arrived a month later, handwritten: “For Ellie, forever Cinderella. With love, Catherine.”

Some magic doesn’t need a crown. Just a blue dress, a song, and a princess who knelt in the firelight for a little girl who only had weeks left to dream.