Chapter 1 #2
The air was thick with fog, heavy with the scent of ash and something metallic that clung to the back of my throat. Each breath felt like swallowing knives. I pressed my palms against the floor, steadying myself, and felt a pulse beneath my hands… a rhythmic beating, like a massive heart.
The stone was suddenly warm. Wet. I looked down and jerked back—what I'd thought was flowing water was too viscous, too dark. The floor was slick with something that looked too much like blood, fresh and flowing in small rivulets between the stones.
"What the hell?" I choked out, scrambling to my feet, wiping my hands frantically against my pants. My weapons were still at my sides, a small comfort in a place that seemed to defy basic physics, but better than nothing. I reached for my knife, fingers closing around the familiar hilt.
"You shouldn't have done that," a voice whispered, quiet but carrying, as if spoken directly into my ear.
I twisted, blade drawn in one fluid motion, years of training taking over where rational thought failed. My heart slammed against my ribs.
Blue eyes stared back at me—frozen, too bright, too knowing.
Aurora stood a few feet away, no longer lying in repose, but standing with inhuman stillness.
Her pristine white dress was gone, replaced by a gown of deepest black, the fabric seeming to absorb light rather than reflect it.
Tendrils of shadow licked at the hem, shifting, breathing, reaching toward me with curious intent.
Her blonde hair caught the strange light from the cracked sky, glowing like a halo around features too perfect to be human. Her lips, the same lips I had pressed mine to moments ago, were curved in a slow, amused smile that held the weight of a century of torment at its edges.
"Where am I?" I demanded, fists clenched, every instinct screaming at me to move, to run, to fight… but something about this place made the rules different. Moving felt like pushing through mud, each motion delayed and dreamy.
Aurora tilted her head, taking a step forward. Her feet were bare, silent against the bloody stone, the shadows at her heels stretching toward me like eager hands.
"You're inside my nightmare," she said, voice velvet and knives.
My breath caught. The weight of my weapons pressing against my ribs suddenly felt useless, like bringing a gun to a tsunami. This wasn't just a prison… it was a kingdom. And Aurora was its queen.
The wind howled through the ruins, carrying whispers I couldn't quite understand, voices too close and yet nowhere at all.
My pulse skittered, fingers clenching the grip of my dagger.
My gaze darted to the window. The nightmare landscape stretched in all directions, ruins giving way to forests of glass and bone, a vast black sea churning in the distance, waves crashing against nothing.
"I need to wake up," I muttered, more to myself than anything, my skin crawling with the wrongness of it all, the impossibility.
Aurora laughed, low and sweet, like something I should be afraid of. And I was. Despite years hunting monsters, despite scars earned in battles with things that shouldn't exist, I felt genuine fear crawl up my spine.
"Do you?" she mused, stepping closer. "Because you just got here, and I haven't even begun to play."
Her eyes flickered in the fractured light, pupils expanding until blue was swallowed by black. The shadows around her feet surged forward, stretching across the stone toward me. I backed away, knife raised, knowing it would do no good but unable to stop the instinctive response.
"This isn't happening," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "The curse was supposed to break. You were supposed to wake up."
Aurora's smile widened, revealing teeth too sharp, too white. "Oh, Bell," she said, my name falling from her lips with intimate familiarity, though I'd never told it to her. "I am awake. More awake than I've been in a century." She gestured around at the nightmare landscape. "And now, so are you."
The shadows reached my feet, curling around my ankles with gentle insistence. They were cold, so cold they burned, and I couldn't move, couldn't step away. Fear clawed up my throat.
"What do you want?" I asked, hating the tremor in my voice. I was Belladonna Moreau. I hunted nightmares… I didn't become trapped in them.
Aurora moved closer, each step impossibly graceful, until she stood before me. Up close, her beauty was terrifying…too perfect, too precise, as if someone had taken every ideal and sharpened it until it could cut. She reached out, one pale finger tracing the line of my jaw.
"What do I want?" she repeated, her touch leaving a trail of ice against my skin. "I want what was taken from me. I want revenge on those who cursed me. I want..." Her eyes locked with mine, endless and hungry. "I want you, Bell. The one who was brave enough—or foolish enough—to kiss me awake."
The shadows tightened around my ankles, surging up my legs. Panic rose in my chest, but I kept my expression neutral, years of facing down monsters serving me well.
"I was hired to break a curse," I said flatly. "Not to become a prisoner in someone else's nightmare."
Aurora laughed again, the sound echoing strangely in the impossible space. "And who said you're a prisoner?" She leaned closer, her lips nearly brushing my ear. "Perhaps you're my guest. Perhaps you're my salvation. Perhaps you're exactly where you're meant to be."
The shadows crawled higher, wrapping around my waist, my arms, holding me in place with gentle, implacable strength. I couldn't move, couldn't fight, could only stand there as Aurora's fingers traced the edge of my sleeve, pulling it back to reveal the black tattoos crawling over old scars.
"You've known pain," she murmured, tracing the inked patterns.
"You've known what it is to be trapped." Her eyes met mine again, something almost like understanding flickering in their depths.
"So have I. For a hundred years, I've been trapped in this nightmare.
And now that you're here..." She smiled, beautiful and terrible. "Now the real story begins."
The sky fractured further overhead, cracks of light splitting across the darkness like lightning. The ground beneath us trembled, the pulse quickening. Wind howled through the ruins, carrying whispers that sounded like my name, over and over.
"Welcome to my world, Belladonna Moreau," Aurora whispered, her lips brushing against mine in a ghost of a kiss. "I've been waiting for you for so very long."
And as darkness closed in around us, as the shadows tightened their hold, I realized with absolute certainty: I wasn't sent here to wake her up.
I was sent here to join her in the nightmare.
>>>Want to see the cool art of Bell kissing Aurora? See it here!