Sleeping Beauty by Maureen McGowan Read Free Book Online Page A

came true, she’d be left to defend the entire kingdom on her own.
    Her hand rose to cover her neck. She was doomed unless she learned how to slay. Arguing with Miss Eleanor would be nothing compared to fighting a vampire. She would make the teachers at the school see. She’d make them believe she could do it. If only she could tell everyone she was the princess, then they’d have to do what she wanted.
    She stepped back from the balcony and turned to the stairs. “I’m going down to join the boys.”
    â€œLucy! Stop right now!” Miss Eleanor called after her as she ran to the flight of stairs leading to the gym.
    Dizziness seized Lucette at the top of the stairs. She hadn’t walked down a flight of stairs alone in her entire life, but after drawing a deep breath to steady herself, she took hold of the banister and raced down.

    â€œLucy!” Slowed by her high heels, Miss Eleanor reached the top of the stairs just as Lucette reached the bottom. “Girls aren’t allowed on the gymnasium floor! There are weapons! You’ll get hurt!”
    Hearing the thuds and smashes of the weapons and bodies slamming into each other, fear and excitement coursed through her. Training with these boys, she might get an injury way worse than a finger prick.
    Nonetheless, she stepped onto the floor. Two tall boys were sparring right in front of her, so close she could smell their sweat. She stepped to the side and saw a rack of stakes about twenty feet down the wall she was standing against. What she wouldn’t give to hold one in her hand, to feel its weight, to leap and strike one of the dummies. She headed toward the stakes.
    â€œWatch out!” Someone yelled, and she was tackled from the side.
    An arrow swooshed over her head and thunked into the wall. Lucette looked up. Just above her head was a bull’s-eye, the arrow still vibrating at its center.
    â€œWhat were you thinking, walking in front of a target?” An angry voice startled her, and she realized it was the tall blond boy she’d been watching earlier. He had her pinned down, and she could see his eyes were bright blue, flashing with life, and very, very angry.
    â€œI didn’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
    Miss Eleanor’s voice rang out, “Mr. Harris, one of my young ladies is on the floor and one of your young men has attacked her! Stop your boys right now!”
    A horn sounded, and the mock battles stopped.
    â€œTristan, help her up!” someone yelled from the other side of the room.

    The boy named Tristan shook his head in disbelief and his eyes narrowed as he rose to his feet. Lucette still sat, feeling hot and scared and excited. Her heart was beating so quickly she wondered if it might pound its way out of her chest.
    Miss Eleanor’s heels clacked across the gymnasium floor. “Lucy, you are on warning! Behave or I’ll have you expelled. You’re a young lady—even if you don’t much look like one—and I’ll have you act accordingly.”
    Lucette’s cheeks burned. Having her appearance derided in front of half the boys in the school—not to mention her blond lifesaver—both enraged and embarrassed her.
    She would not be treated like this. She would not be held back by people like Miss Eleanor. Somehow, she would learn how to fight.

    That night, Lucette stared into her bathroom mirror at a face that looked back at her with angry red cheeks, and lifted another clump of her long, wavy black hair to the side. Her father loved her hair, and she considered it her best feature, too—her only feminine feature, even though she usually kept it bound up in a braid. But what good was a lot of nice hair on top of a toothpick body, or around a bony face?
    Grabbing the knife she’d smuggled out of the gymnasium, she sawed her hair, and a three-foot-long section fell onto the marble floor. She’d show her father she wasn’t some