Forest of Dreams and Whispers: A Sleeping Beauty Retelling (The Fae of the Forest) by Katherine Macdonald

Author:Katherine Macdonald [Macdonald, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2022-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

Juliana woke to screaming. It was a strange, eerie, distorted sound, like it was happening at the end of a long tunnel, bouncing off the walls, slow and quiet.

She opened her eyes.

She was lying in the middle of the great hall, a hundred guests from the night before slumped in their places. Vines twirled around them, still and quiet.

Nothing else was. Mortal servants screamed across the space, fleeing from the swarms of sluaghs shrieking above them. Some were armed with crude weapons—brooms and pitchforks—others with nothing but their fists.

Three descended on a quivering mortal maid trying to hide beneath the table. Juliana raced forward, drawing her sword—but her blade sliced through nothing.

The mortal screamed as a sluagh grabbed her elbow, but a frying pan swung into the back of her assailant, and another mortal tugged her free.

“This way!” said Dillon, covering her as she fled. “Get to the cellars!”

Juliana called out to him, but he didn’t reply. His words lingered in the air afterwards, like a greasy smear.

What is this place?

Was she dead? Ladrien had promised not to harm her, but perhaps something else had. Or perhaps he’d merely kept her alive until sunset and slaughtered her afterwards.

Although it was still dawn here, and the palace didn’t look like it had been under attack for long. More likely she was asleep somewhere. Little time had passed, and somehow her consciousness had been flung here.

But why? How?

“Come to torment me?” said a voice behind her, more solid than the others.

Juliana wheeled around, grabbing the speaker by the scruff of their clothes and slamming them against the wall.

Hawthorn.

His eyes widened in shock. “You… you can see me?”

She kept her grip on him, only half-convinced this wasn’t a trick of some kind. “You’re kind of hard to ignore.”

She dropped her hands away from him, only to find them flung around his neck a second later when he launched himself forward and buried himself in her arms.

She let herself hold him and be held. Despite the distortion around them, he felt real, solid. His warmth crackled against her. Just for a minute, a fleeting second that wasn’t really theirs, something in the world made sense.

“You’re really here,” he breathed against her neck.

“So are you.”

He shook his head, drawing back. “Not quite.”

His face was far too close to hers. The memory of the kiss burned through her, and she dropped away completely, balling her hands into fists as if she didn’t trust the traitorous limbs to stay away from him.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

If Hawthorn was offended or confused as to why she’d suddenly dropped away from him, he didn’t show it. “I’m still asleep in the tower… or at least my body is. Don’t know what this is but no one can see me. Where are you?”

“The forest, I think,” she said, and bit her thumb. Hard.

Hawthorn’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to see if this is a dream.”

“Pinch yourself, you fool. There’s no need to cause actual damage—”

“Need to know when I wake up how real this is.

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