Darkness. Inky blackness that seems to stretch on and on, seemingly to no end. Eating away at every single thing in its God-forsaken path. It's all I can see with only temporary flashes of relief when my eyes flutter open just enough to be considered that. Unable to open them any wider my eyelids hover in that position for only a few seconds. My eyes are blinded by the candle burning intensely next to me, only to eventually close again and suck me back into the void that is my mind.
My thoughts are scattered, bits and pieces floating around nothing quite sticking together.
Book.
Gaston.
Trap.
Blood.
Woods.
Castle.
Book.
More blood.
A wound.
Dante.
Maurie.
Falling
I can feel multiple bodies moving around me. My eyes may be closed but I know they're there, a sense I devolved after years of hunting at night. The only other time when I'm surrounded by this much darkness.
"What happened to her?" a feminine voice filled with worry asks. I quickly recognize that it belongs to Amelie.
"I already told you she fell off her horse," Maurie replies, unlike Amelie the tone of his voice is flat which brings a sense of surreal ease around me.
If he isn't worried about me then there is nothing to be worried about.
"What about her leg?" another feminine voice asks, only this one sounds older and authoritative, Miss Potts, it has to be.
"It seems she got cut with some sort of machine. Honestly, I've never seen anything like it." I can hear the brief flash of fascination in Maurie's voice and if I wasn't in so much pain or the one laying on whatever they put me on I would find myself speaking the same way.
"Well of course you haven't seen anything like it we've been stuck in a castle for ninety years," Charles says, his voice laced with sarcasm, as it almost always is.
Suddenly my brain remembered everything. All of those scattered thoughts snap back together. Including the memory of the wound on my leg, and the pain that comes with it. My eyes shoot open and a scream so loud it almost started shaking the walls erupted from me.
The whole group, minus two people, jumped back at my sudden movement. Their stunned expressions lasted only a second before Amelie started crying, Charles started comforting her while the trio of Miss Potts, Maurie and Fabienne rush to my aid.
Miss Potts checks my leg, Maurie searches through a whole table full of vials and Fabienne holds my hand while whispering words of support.
"It's okay, jeune. It will all be alright we're going to give you something for the pain."
"What happened to you?" Maurie asks as he continues to search for something.
"Where's Dante?" I ask, concern flooding me along with the pain from the wound.
"He's safe, now what happened to you?"
"And the book?" I ask.
"The book is fine, Valerie, so please tell us what happened to you?" Maurie asks more forcefully.
Hissing through the pain I shift my body so that my back is relaxing against the wall behind me, instead of the brown headboard.
"The guy... the man I'm taking the book from started suspecting that someone was breaking into his home-"
YOU ARE READING
Thorn in the Rose {Book 1 Of The Once Upon A Time Chronicles}
FantasyBelle is a maid living in service of a handsome prince who she falls madly in love with. Jealous of all the other women and angry at his refusal to notice her she curses him and turns him into a hideous beast. For years they remain together in the c...
