Free Once Upon a Dream by Liz Braswell Page B

chastising or questioning Lady Astrid, Maleficent standing in front of her large mirror, adjusting her outfit—none of it was what was actually happening in the room.
    Lady Astrid
was
in there with Maleficent. Gagged and tied up. The rope cut into her flesh and made her gold dress balloon in ridiculous folds between the cords. She was only upright because she was held that way by the two guards. Astrid’s face, pale and sweaty, strained her gag and her gold-and-white wimple.
    “An excellent choice, my pets,” Maleficent was saying with a throaty laugh. She looked like she wanted to stroke one of the horrible guards, but pulled her hand back at the last moment and clasped it into a fist. “The lady is certainly…robust. True royalty would be the best—their blood would be the strongest. A pity about the Exile being gone—that was a mistake. But
she
will serve for now.”
    The queen reached deep into her cloaks. She pulled out a strange ripple-bladed black stone dagger that looked sharp but awkward.
    Before Aurora could even guess what it was for, Maleficent plunged it deep into Astrid’s chest. The movement was swift and yet unending; the queen had to jiggle it back and forth to get all of its sinuous bends into the woman’s flesh.
    Astrid screamed, or tried to, the muffled cries sounding wet and useless behind her gag.
    The guards holding her whistled and hooted with glee.
    With a determined set of her jaw, Maleficent wrenched the dagger out.
    A fountain of blood streamed from the poor woman’s chest—too purely, too neatly to seem possible considering the jagged imprecision of the wound.
    Aurora ground her knuckles into her mouth to keep from screaming.
    Maleficent chanted:
    “Magic of the darkest power,
    Grant me this, but one more hour.
    I give thee blood for one who sleeps.
    My body dead, but my spirit keeps
    Alive in her thoughts and dreams—
    Though to her this world seems
    As real as the waking one.
    I will live again, my will be done.”
    Almost delicately, like she was watering a fragile flower, Maleficent took her staff and held the crystal orb at its tip in the stream of blood. The world blurred; the orb was a hole in the air itself and the blood bent and gushed into it, pulled into its vortex. Somehow it passed through the wall and filled the glassy vessel, churning and frothing redly.
    When it was full, the queen pulled her staff back and gave it a dramatic twirl. The blood inside glowed and bubbled furiously. Then it changed, losing its redness and becoming the familiar bright, glowing green of Maleficent’s magic.
    The queen sighed, shifting her shoulders and stretching out her arms as if she had just woken from a long, restful sleep or come out of a hot bath. The shadows under her eyes were gone. Her skin looked fresher, plumper.
    But she didn’t look entirely happy.
    “It wasn’t enough. It’s taking more and more blood from those idiot nobles to sustain me for fewer and fewer minutes….”
    Lady Astrid was apparently already forgotten. The two monsters let her fall forward. Blood pumped out of her in ragged spurts directly onto the floor. Blood moistened her gag as well, and began to collect in large, heavy drops on her chin.
    Aurora found herself praying that the lady was dead. There was something about the way the guards couldn’t keep their eyes on their mistress but let them slip to the pale body they now held. Their tongues hung out of their mouths and they slavered hungrily.
    Maleficent moved her staff in a circle.
    “Spirits of evil, open the window to that other realm!”
she commanded.
    The orb traced a silvery outline in the air that shimmered and shivered. The view through it was of the same room, but distorted. Or…
less
distorted. The details in the image were somehow more distinct than reality, the colors more complicated. It was both uglier and more fascinating than the real room.
    But that wasn’t what caused Aurora to gasp.
    In that other room, through the shimmering