Before the Dawn by Kristal Lim Read Free Book Online

they were dancing. The way they should
have stayed all those years ago if fate hadn't intervened. But they
had found a way to cheat fate now, hadn't they?
    "My Princess," he whispered as he held her
tighter in his arms.
    She closed her eyes and laid her head against
his chest. The gentle throbbing of his heart lulled her and made
her feel comforted and safe.
    "My Prince," she said.
    ***
     
     

Chapter 6
     
     
    Her feet felt incredibly sore in the morning
when the alarm woke her up. Aline found herself stretched out on
her bed still dressed in the clothes she had worn the night before.
The alarm was ringing insistently, and it took her four tries
before she could get it to stop. Her head was fuzzy about what had
happened at the party and how she had gotten home, but she had the
vague recollection of getting worried about staying out too late
and insisting on going home in the very early hours of the morning.
But she remembered it was still Sunday and she didn't have class,
so she drifted off to sleep again easily enough. She thought she
must have dreamed then because, as soon as she closed her eyes, her
mind filled with images of gowns, candles, musicians, and dancers
all spinning round and round until she became dizzy. From time to
time, she was awakened by sounds—the shrill tones of her cellphone,
voices talking—but she ignored them all and went back to sleep. She
was so tired. She just wanted to rest.
    When she fully woke up, refreshed and
invigorated, it was dark outside her window. Glancing quickly at
the luminous digits displayed on the bedside clock, she discovered
it was 7:43 in the evening. She had slept the day away. Aline then
got out of bed and winced in pain once her feet hit the floor. She
hobbled over to the light switch and flicked it on so she could see
what had happened to her feet.
    While she sat on the bed, she inspected them.
They did not look pretty. The bandages she had placed on the cut
she got the previous day had been soaked through with blood. The
stuff had dried fast to her skin and a little moan of anguish
escaped her lips when she peeled it free as carefully as she could.
The wound looked really ugly. It had gotten worse due to all the
dancing she did last night. The soles were red and terribly sore,
and she knew that blisters would appear on them in no time. It was
a good thing she had left the antiseptic and bandages on her
nightstand, so she cleaned up the soles of her feet as well as she
could with some wet tissues then applied the antiseptic and
bandaged them up.
    After getting into her usual clothes, washing
her face, and brushing her teeth, she went downstairs to find
something to eat, with each step she took sending stabs of pain
through her legs. Her dad was in the kitchen tapping away on his
laptop with a half-eaten plate of pasta beside a pile of papers. He
looked up as she came in, his face settling into lines of worry as
he studied her. "You look like you have the worst hangover in
history," he observed, sounding concerned. "I checked in on you
from time to time, but you looked so exhausted I left you sleeping.
How are you feeling now?"
    "Like I wish I only had the worst hangover in
history," Aline replied. "No, actually, I'm all rested. But my feet
are murdering me. They hurt really bad."
    "Then stay in your seat while I get you your
dinner," he ordered and fussed around for several minutes, heating
up the pasta he had left in the refrigerator, serving it up to her,
and then handing her a glass of soda. "Happy birthday!" he said
brightly, and she had to laugh a little at the goofy face he
made.
    "I wish you had been at the party last
night," she told him.
    "Yeah, right," he snorted. "I’m sure I would
have had the time of my life. Besides, I know that I would have
just ruined the fun everyone was having if I had been there with my
old man vibes." He watched her chew and swallow a few bites first
before he asked, "So, how was the party? My credit limit is still
okay, which I