Ever After High: Secret Storybooks

Chapter Ten: Faybelle Thorn

"Hello?"

When I opened my eyes, I was in a huge castle. It was very familiar, but looked... Older, somehow. The stone walls faded in color, and there was a puddle on the floor from what appeared to be an unfixed leak.

My eyes fluttered around the room, trying to place this setting in my memory. The room was empty, except for one thing.

A spinning wheel.

"Hello? Where am I?" Someone called from underneath the room. The voice, too, was familiar.

"Briar? Is that you?" I shouted, my voice echoing down the stairwell.

"Fay?" She yelled back.

I could now hear Briar's heels making soft clicking sounds on the steps.

I knew that if Briar came up the steps, something awfully wicked would occur. Of course, something in her head would compel her to touch the spindle of the spinning wheel, sending our treacherous story into motion much too early.

"Briar, Briar, here's the deal, please don't prick your finger on the spinning wheel!" I chanted.

"What? I can't hear you! There's this... Noise... It keeps getting louder and louder! Can you hear it? I think it's coming from where you are!" Briar shouted.

Briar was sixteen, sure, and my mother cursed her at birth so that this would happen, but I was almost positive Grimm had altered the spell and the story so that Briar would be able to attend Ever After High before our story would take place.

"What? No, I don't hear anything!" I yelled, desperate to make her hear me over whatever it was that she heard.

"What?" Briar appeared in the doorway, pausing for only a moment. She continued to step toward the spinning wheel.

"No!" I tried shoving her away, but she wouldn't even budge. Why did I remember her to be lighter? Maybe this was the power of the spell?

Briar was only two feet away at this point. I lunged in front of the wheel, separating Briar from it, but she forcefully pushed me aside and held out her hand.

"Briar, please- listen to me! You can't touch the wheel! Please!"

If my mother were here, she'd scold me for attempting to help Briar. The way I saw it, I was helping our story and not Briar. Briar can't prick her finger now. I'm not prepared. I don't even know how to distract the prince.

But Briar and I are also friends. Good friends. Frienemies. Not that I would ever tell my mother that.

Oh my god, Briar doesn't even know her prince yet.

How in Ever After can she consider him her true love and him the same if they've never even met?

"Briar!"

It was too late. Briar touched her finger to the spindle, then collapsed to the ground and into a deep sleep.

"No! Briar!"

Some wave of emotion overcame me, and I dropped to my knees right next to Briar.

"Briar, please wake up!" I shook her shoulders, hoping to wake her up.

Then, in a moment of weakness, I began to cry. "Please, Briar, please..."

"HEEEEELLLLPPPP! SOMEBODYYYYY! HEEEEELLLLPPPP!" I screamed, but nobody heard. The only sound left was the echoing of my cries for help, and terrible silence setting in over the entire kingdom.