The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 4
I brushed my teeth slowly in the library bathroom. The gym had better changing rooms, but the library was the only building on campus open twenty-four hours a day.
Fairy tales are real.
Rose Briar is a diabetic college student without insurance. She’s been scraping by through a combination of maxing out credit cards and relying upon the kindness of strangers.
Unfortunately, she’s spent every dollar at her disposal. There’s no money left to buy her life-saving insulin.
Without her medication, Rose falls into a diabetic coma. She tumbles into a deep slumber and wakes up in a fantastical place called the Dream Realm, where fairy tales and legends of old are still very much alive.
She has one chance to wake up.
She must trek across the world, visit the most powerful object in the land, the Obsidian Spindle, and entreat with the fates; the only beings powerful enough to send her soul back to Earth.
But evil forces don’t want her to leave. They will stop at nothing to capture her and make sure she never goes home again.
Now, with the help of her half-gorgon girlfriend and a mysterious red rider, Rose must race across the land fighting dragons, monsters, and the forces of the Wicked Witch, Nimue, in order to reach the Obsidian Spindle before her body dies on Earth and she’s trapped in the Dream Realm forever.
Will she be able to wake up? Can she survive? Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
I brushed my teeth slowly in the library bathroom. The gym had better changing rooms, but the library was the only building on campus open twenty-four hours a day. Being alone with my thoughts in a quiet place never brought me solace. In the still darkness, my mind worked against me.
I thought back to my childhood, where I had to watch every move I made for fear of being beaten by my father. I looked for my mother for a month until they declared her dead. I don’t know what affected me more, accepting that she was dead or making my first kill.
I spit out my toothpaste and wiped my mouth. My eye was nearly swollen shut now, and no amount of make-up could cover it up. I gingerly pressed the welt with my finger. The pain stiffened my whole body. In the heat of battle, the adrenaline stopped me from feeling any pain, but now in the quiet, pain was all I could feel: the welt under my eye, the bruises on my legs from the chains, and the throbbing pain in my shoulder. Compared to the rest of me, my migraine was a dull ache.
I left the library and hobbled back across the quad. By the time I got back to the car, all the lights in the parking lot were out. I slid open the door to Rose’s van and hopped inside. Rose didn’t move when I laid down next to her. I felt her chest to make sure she was breathing, and then drifted off to sleep myself. I had class in the morning, and I didn’t look forward to it, or the residual pain I’d be sure to feel all day long. That was a problem for future Chelle. She would deal with that tomorrow. Now Chelle needed sleep.
I kicked the sliding door of the van closed and pressed the lock with my foot. Then, without another thought, I drifted off to sleep.
Fairy tales are real.
Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.