Before She Wakes: Forbidden Fairy Tales by Sharon Lynn Fisher Read Free Book Online Page A

back from literal to more abstract depictions. My new dragons were ecstatic dances of color and light. Less precise, yet somehow more alive. I’d stopped concentrating so hard. I’d let go of mopping at mistakes with a damp cloth and opened to the flow.
    “One more, Aurora,” I murmur. Selecting a brush from the dozen resting against the cave wall, I wonder whether I refer to this last blank canvas, or something more final.
    Aurora groans and drops her head onto her coiled tail.
    “Don’t let me interrupt your nap.”
    She gives three barks of animal laughter, and her long tongue snakes out once over her lips before she settles her head and closes her eyes. A moment later one eye opens, rolling toward the mouth of the cave.
    Sighing, I bend to open my jars of paint. I lift a circle of waxed linen off the precious pot of Tyrian purple, and Aurora huffs at the foul smell.
    “I know,” I say. “But I can’t do a Royal Moroccan with—”
    There’s a loud scraping sound behind me, and wind rakes at my hair and clothing. I turn, and Aurora shoots out of the mouth of the cave like she’s been fired from a crossbow.
    “Hey!” I shout after her, watching her figure recede into the orange-tinged sky, not sparing a glance for the costly pigment I’ve dropped. She’s never done such a thing, not even over the stink of Tyrian purple.
    My hand curls around the hilt of my sword as I move to the mouth of the cave. I speak into the breeze that caresses my face: “What did you hear?”
    My eyes scan the rocky cliffs opposite our position, sweeping down to the mouth of the valley. I strain to separate shadows in the twilight, and I listen with my whole body. No firelight blinks between the trees. No smoke smudges the indigo sky. What could have caused her to bolt like that?
    I can think of only one thing: a threat too dire to wait. And here I am, trapped by the treacherous descent beyond the mouth of the cave, the geography that protects us from ambush rendering me useless to anyone.
    “Aurora,” I groan in frustration.
    Leaves rustle in the valley below. It’s just air moving through the trees, as it always does come evening, but I decide to put out my fire. I kick the burning logs apart and lift a bucket of dirt to finish the job.
    “Drop the bucket and your sword.”
    I spin to face the issuer of this command, bucket dropped, but sword in hand. How has he managed to creep up on me here?
    His own sword is raised in warning, and slowly, with a voice like thunder rumbling in the clouds that roll in from the Mediterranean, he repeats, “Drop your sword.”
    My gaze shifts beyond, to the band of sky that silhouettes him. Hope flares as I glimpse a bright point, only to blink out as I realize it’s the moon rising, spilling her neutral light into our valley.
    “Isabeau.” The sound of my name in this stranger’s mouth—this warrior who speaks my native Occitan with a choppy, tumbling-rock accent wholly unfamiliar to me—has ignited a hot tingling at the base of my spine.
    He is dangerous
.
    “She’s not coming,” he continues, “and this is your last chance to do as I’ve asked.”
    He takes two steps closer and I take one step back. His movements are slow and deliberate. His body is quiet, but I don’t mistake this for calm or ease. He’s watching me, expecting me to challenge him.
    I’ll not disappoint him, if it comes to that. But if he planned to kill me he’d have done it while my back was turned, and I’d be a fool not to use this knowledge to my advantage.
    “Who’s not coming?” I demand, hands steady on the hilt of my sword. I keep my sword tip even with his, though he still stands nearly six feet away.
    He studies me, and the effect of his light eyes glinting from within the circles he’s charcoaled around them makes me feel I’m being watched by an animal. A dark line runs down from each eye, like the track of a tear, yet they do nothing to soften his appearance. A band of silvery blue, close