Awakening Beauty Read Free

her family, a curse from which they would never recover?
    She clung to Joel Thorne’s hand and drew a deep breath as he pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs.

Chapter Two
    It was like walking through a nightmare. If it weren’t for the pain every time she moved, she would have been sure she was still asleep. Perhaps she was dead. The alternative was unthinkable.
    There was dirt everywhere, crumbling stone lying in the passages, ivy blocking the windows of the deserted, moldering rooms, growing up inside the walls. Grass and weeds pushed through cracks in the stone floors. Bushes sprouted in unlikely places. There was even a tree in the throne room. The whole castle crawled with cobwebs, dust, mold, the stench of damp and disrepair and neglect. And silence. Utter silence that she could never remember in her life before, except for the sound of their echoing footsteps crunching through rubble and dust.
    Somewhere, with the part of her brain that could still think, she was aware she clutched the stranger’s hand too tightly. But she couldn’t make herself let go. It was as if he was the only other person in the world.
    Oh please, no, please…
    “How long has the palace been abandoned?” she whispered, blurting the words before she realized she couldn’t bear the answer.
    “More than decades,” Joel Thorne answered. “The condition this place is in, I’d say several centuries. Which is a shame, leaving a beautiful building like this to rot.”
    “But that’s impossible! Where is my mother? My father? What happened to everyone?” She stared out of the open door into the courtyard, so hopelessly overgrown that she could barely even see the fountain.
    With a sudden movement more of fear than anger, she slammed the door on the impossible, unendurable sight.
    “I don’t know, Aurora,” Thorne said as she swung toward him, looking for answers. There was helpless pity in his voice, in the butterfly touch of his fingers on her cheek.
    She gasped. “I won’t have it! I won’t! It’s impossible.” She ran her fingers up his arm and clutched. Beneath his clothing was hard, relentless muscle. “What day is it?”
    He blinked. “Saturday.”
    “More!”
    “Saturday, the twenty-third of May.”
    “In the year…?”
    He swallowed, as if he knew she wouldn’t like the answer. She didn’t even like the question. As long as she didn’t know, she could pretend that everything was all right, that it was a trick, that she’d wandered into the wrong house and forgotten they’d shut this one up for whatever reason…
    He told her.
    The blood sang in her ears; dizziness rushed up from her toes in a low whoosh that might have been her own cry of fear and loss. And then, blessedly, the nightmare was shut out by blackness.

    She could smell wood smoke, could hear the faint sounds of someone rustling in the room. So she wasn’t alone. Someone had lit a fire. This was better. Beneath her still-aching body was softness, and she was conscious of warmth and comfort. Oh yes, this was much better.
    Taking a risk, she opened her eyes.
    The nightmare hadn’t gone. Despair settled over her heart.
    The vegetation across the window acted now as a curtain on the night. Lit candles were scattered about the room and the rubble had mostly been swept to one side. She was in the lesser drawing room. Beneath the high, carved stone fireplace mantel, Joel Thorne poked the flames on the hearth with a stick.
    At least he hadn’t abandoned her.
    She’d never met him in her life before she’d awakened the last time and yet he seemed like her only hope, the only reality left for her to cling to. The flames danced across his clean-shaven, handsome face, shadowing the hollows of his jaw. It was a strong, intelligent face and, despite his odd dress, he gave an impression of solid reliability.
    Unless he was tricking her. Unless all this was some kind of elaborate hoax, though with what aim…
    He glanced up, interrupting her wild