Chapter 2
Aurora
When Bell broke through the veil of my prison, I felt it like a splinter beneath skin—sharp, invasive, and oddly thrilling.
A century of waiting had made me patient, but as she stumbled into the heart of my nightmare, weapon drawn and eyes wild with purpose, something inside me uncoiled.
The others had come with grand speeches of salvation.
Bell came with a dagger and silence, and I knew immediately that she would be different.
I smiled, slow and knowing, watching the realization flicker across her face.
The moment crystallized between us—her golden-brown eyes widening slightly as understanding dawned.
She wasn't trapped here with me. She had walked into my nightmare, into my prison, into the ruin of everything I once was.
Yet, unlike the others, she was still standing.
The walls of my castle prison pulsed around us, breathing in time with my thoughts.
I let the moment stretch between us, savoring the way her fingers flexed around the hilt of her dagger…
a weapon as useless here as the notion of escape.
She thought she was here to wake me. She didn't yet understand—I had been waiting for her.
"This isn't real," Bell muttered, but the words rang hollow, frayed at the edges by the weight of my nightmare pressing against her.
She gripped her weapon like it could anchor her to reality, but some deep part of her must have known it was pointless.
The dream had already begun to pull her in, twisting its fingers into her ribs, sinking into her breath.
I could see it happening, the subtle way her outline blurred at the edges, how the surrounding air shimmered as my realm tried to digest her.
I stepped forward, smooth and unhurried, testing her resolve, drinking in every flicker of emotion that crossed her face. Her short black hair shifted in a breeze that didn't exist, the rolled sleeves of her shirt revealing the edges of tattoos that wrapped her arms like armor.
"What is real, Belladonna?" I asked, letting her name curl over my tongue, rich and deliberate.
Her shiver was slight, but I saw it, felt it, a reaction she refused to acknowledge. My realm fed on such small betrayals. The floors beneath us shifted slightly, responding to the tension between us.
"This is a curse," she snapped, trying to inject steel into her voice, but I heard the uncertainty beneath it.
Her eyes darted around the grand hall, taking in the impossible architecture…
ceilings that stretched into darkness, windows that opened onto different times of day, doors that whispered and moved when not directly observed.
The ground pulsed beneath us, a slow, hungry heartbeat, responding to the magic that had bound me here for over a century. I let my fingers flex, let the shadows spill from them, curling like ink in water. A curse. That was such a small word for what had been done to me.
"And yet, you came," I murmured, tilting my head. "You touched me. You kissed me."
Bell swallowed, her grip on the dagger tightening, but I saw the flicker of something deeper in her eyes, something she wasn't ready to name.
She had broken the cardinal rule of curse-breaking: never engage with the cursed.
And now she was here, in my domain, where the laws of her world meant nothing.
"I came to break the curse," she said, but her voice lacked conviction.
"Did you?" I circled her slowly, letting my nightgown trail behind me like mist. "Or did you come because you wanted to?"
The dream twisted in response to my rising interest, peeling back the castle walls like melting wax, bleeding into something older, something burned and broken.
A ruined forest stretched out before us, its trees nothing but blackened skeletons, the air thick with the acrid scent of fire.
Ashes drifted like snow, catching in Bell's dark hair, settling on her shoulders.
Bell gasped as the shift dragged her under, her body tumbling, her hands scraping against damp leaves and scorched earth.
I didn't move to help her, not yet. Instead, I watched, waiting to see how she would handle it.
Most hunters panicked at the first landscape shift.
They screamed, they ran, they begged the nightmare to release them.
Bell did none of those things. She caught herself, her breath coming fast but controlled, her eyes taking in the new surroundings with practiced precision. She was adapting.
"The nightmare moves when it pleases," I said, and for the first time, I heard something new in my own voice, fondness. "It remembers things I've tried to forget."
The burned forest had been my first prison, where they'd tried to cleanse me with fire. Before the sleeping curse, before the tower, before the endless parade of would-be saviors. I'd died here once, or something close to it.
"I don't plan on staying that long," Bell gritted out, pushing herself to her feet, shaking off the dream's weight like it hadn't just tried to consume her.
I let out a quiet laugh, tipping my head back, the scent of charred wood thick in my lungs. She was different. Stronger, maybe. Or just stubborn enough to amuse me.
"You think this is something you can just wake up from?" I mused, stepping closer, my bare feet soundless against the damp, pulsing ground. "Do you know how many have tried?"
She gripped the dagger, but her limbs were heavy now, her breath coming slower, as if the dream itself was weaving through her veins.
"I know how curses work," she insisted, but I saw the flicker of doubt beneath her defiance.
My smile sharpened. No, Belladonna, you don't. If she did, she would understand…I wasn't just cursed. I was claimed. Transformed. Made into something else entirely by hatred and time.
"And yet," I said, voice soft as silk, sharp as the blade she held, "you're here."
I reached out, tracing a single fingertip along her jaw, just to see if she would flinch. She didn't. The nightmare trembled beneath us, recognizing something Bell hadn't yet… she was already mine. Her skin was warm despite the chill of the nightmare, alive in a way I hadn't felt in decades.
Bell's pulse fluttered against my touch, heat blooming in her cheeks, but she stayed frozen in place. The curse should have devoured her by now, turned her inside out, stripped her of sanity and self. But it didn't. And I wanted to know why.
"You don't fight like the others," I murmured, stepping closer, enough that she could feel the warmth of my breath against her skin.
Her breath stuttered, and I saw the war inside her—the part of her that wanted to run, and the part that wanted to stay. The part that recognized danger, and the part that craved it.
"Others?" she forced out, her fingers twitching around the hilt of her dagger.
I let my lips part in a slow, predatory smile. "The ones who tried before you."
The air shifted again, colder, sharper, and I let the truth slip through my teeth. "They screamed, mostly."
Shapes moved in the corner of our vision, half-formed silhouettes of previous hunters, their bodies distorted, their voices reduced to whispers that slithered through the charred trees. Bell's eyes followed them, her pulse quickening. I could hear it, like thunder beneath the earth.
A chill crawled down her spine, the realization heavy and unwelcome.
She wasn't the first. Dozens of hunters had come before her, believing themselves strong enough, clever enough, righteous enough to break the curse.
They failed. They had been swallowed whole by the nightmare, their souls trapped in the endless void of my prison.
Bell looked at one, then another, recognition flickering across her face.
"I know them," she whispered. "Hunter's Guild members... they disappeared years ago."
"They never left," I corrected, running my fingers through the ash that drifted around us. "They became part of the dream. Part of me."
But Bell... Bell was still here. Still standing. Still looking at me like she wanted to understand rather than destroy. The nightmare hadn't consumed her, hadn't even damaged her, beyond the scratches on her palms from her fall.
"So why am I still here?" she asked, lifting her chin, refusing to be afraid. The question hung between us, unexpected and unsettling.
I exhaled slowly, fingers curling at my sides, and for the first time, I let myself wonder as I strolled through the room.
Why hadn't the nightmare consumed her? Why had it kept her?
Why did I keep her? Something about her was different—the way she looked at me, perhaps.
Not as a monster to be slain or a princess to be saved, but as something... real.
The shadows flickered, curling away, exposing a crack in the dream's control—a crack in my own certainty.
"I don't know," I admitted, and that, somehow, was more terrifying than anything else.
For a century, I had known everything about my domain. Every rule, every shift, every trap and terror. I had crafted this nightmare with precision, honed it against the souls of those who dared to enter. Yet Bell stood before me, her existence a question I couldn't answer.
The trees shuddered, the sky fracturing wider, the nightmare breathing around us, restless, eager.
Bell's pulse slammed against her ribs, her fingers aching from how tightly she clung to her dagger.
Around us, the world began to blur at the edges—not another shift, but something new. As if the dream itself was uncertain.
"Then maybe we should find out," she said, her voice steady despite the unraveling chaos around her.
I searched her face, looking for fear or deceit, but found only determination edged with something dangerous…
curiosity, perhaps. Or desire. The same emotions unfurling in my own chest. Bell's face softened when she looked at me, that rigid hunter's mask slipping just enough to reveal something dangerous, hope.