Awake: A Fairytale

by Jessica Grey

  “But he’ll be safe? He’ll wake up?” Alex asked.

  “I see no reason why, if the terms are not met, the transfer would not occur the same way it did with Lilia.”

  “Alex—” Becca started.

  “I’m just asking,” Alex said quickly. “I haven’t made a decision.”

  Bryony smiled at Alex, as if she knew she only was telling half the truth. “Alexandra, you tend to underestimate yourself. Whatever your decision—and it does have to be your decision because we cannot work against the original spell and free your friend for you—you might be surprised to find that you are on more of an equal footing with our sister than you ever thought. Your power is very strong: the like of it has not been seen for many generations. Even in Arraine it was rare for a petite-fae to have power like yours. If you allow yourself, you can become a very powerful fae.”

  Alex wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She saw Becca and Lilia looking at her with similar expressions of awe, and she could feel her face turning bright pink.

  “All of you have significant power,” Saffron spoke quietly. Her strawberry blond hair flowed down across her yellow cloak, making her look like a living flame. She was quite possibly the most beautiful of the sisters. “And together, the three of you have something very special. I hope you will continue to grow in your power and not let yourselves be divided like we have been from our sister. When there is a bond like that breaking it is very painful.”

  “But how do we know what we should do?” Becca asked.

  “You will find your way,” Bryony assured them. “You have already found it thus far. Let you power lead you, and sometimes,” here she looked significantly at Alex, “you must even let your heart lead you.”

  The forms of the three sisters, already more faded and transparent than when they had first appeared, began to shimmer and flicker around the edges with more frequency.

  “We cannot stay much longer,” said Bryony. “Our power was weakened by our battle with Briar Rose, and your world is not friendly to our magic. We have been too long outside of it and it has changed too much.”

  “Wait!” Alex said urgently. “What should we do about Nicholas?”

  Bryony laughed slightly. “Lilia did an admirable job disarming him. When he does finally awake, while he will remember some of what occurred, he will find the memories hard to grasp, like sand through his fingers. As I said, we work well within the magic of coincidences; perhaps it would be best if his friend, the professor, had need of him in France? For him to be far from you might be wise. His intentions are not entirely pure.”

  Becca shot a pointed “I told you so” look at Alex, which she chose to ignore.

  The fae sisters began to fade rapidly, becoming more and more transparent until nothing remained but smudges of color. “Remember Alex, trust yourself. Trust Luke,” Bryony’s voice said cooly and softly.

  And then they were completely gone.

  ~ Chapter Nineteen ~

  ALEX SAT GINGERLY on the side of the bed and looked down at Luke’s sleeping face. Over the last two days he had started to look less like the boy she had known and more like the older, quieter, more noble-looking Luke she had seen in her dreams. She wondered how much of it was because of those dreams, and how much of it had already been there and she had just been blind to it.

  She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out the friendship bracelet she had taken from his bedroom, turning it over in her hand. She would have thought that she’d be nervous, or doubting her decision, because she usually doubted most of her decisions. Sometimes even something as easy as what sandwich to order for lunch caused her minutes of agonized stress and self-doubt. The weird thing was, as she leaned over Luke, studying him, she felt no doubt at all about what she was about to do. She didn’t know if it would work, but she knew she had to do it.

  Alex secured the bracelet on her left wrist, tying it with a small knot. The thin strands of blue and red thread felt comforting against her skin.

  “Are you sure?” Becca asked for at least the fifth time since the three sisters had disappeared, vanishing into thin air as quickly and as silently as they had come. She and Lilia stood at the foot of the bed wearing identical expressions of concern.

  “Yes,” Alex replied without looking up.

  Becca twisted her fingers together, agitated. “Okay, if it doesn’t work I guess we can find someone to wake you up. But you heard what they said: if Briar Rose still has power, it’ll be within her already existing spells. I don’t want you putting yourself under her power.”

  At that Alex did finally look up. “Well, we just have to hope the spell doesn’t transfer to me then,” she said with a slight smile. She didn’t say “and that I’m Luke’s true love” but the words hung heavily in the room nonetheless.

  Alex knew it was a big risk to take. Becca was right; they could probably find some poor schmuck to kiss her and wake her up, but for however long that took, she could be in Briar Rose’s grasp. It boiled down to it being a risk she was willing to take in order to snatch Luke back from the fae’s hands.

  The thought that Briar Rose still had control over Luke was too much for Alex to bear. The three sisters may have driven her back as far as possible, but the fact remained that her largest spell was still holding power. The bed, its metal and gems, and the magic twisted into them hadn’t faded when Briar Rose had. Luke was just as heavily enchanted as he had been before. The only difference was that Alex was willing to admit why it mattered to her.

  “Well, if it’s really true love that breaks this spell, maybe it will be enough, even if it is one-sided,” she said out loud.

  There was no answer from the other two girls. Which was probably for the best as their answers would likely have been along the lines of “you’re an idiot.”

  Alex leaned down toward Luke, closing her eyes. She may have been sure of her decision, but she certainly couldn’t have gone through with it if she kept her eyes open. She heard Becca’s sharp intake of breath, and then her mind stopped functioning correctly as her lips settled on Luke’s.

  They were warm and soft, which momentarily surprised her. She supposed it was because he had been lying so still that she’d expected his lips to be cool. His beard tickled slightly.

  And then he began kissing her back.

  What started as a sweet, chaste kiss quickly escalated as his mouth moved over hers, and Alex melted into it. Her brain—the part of it that still had firing synapses—flooded with relief, but she couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes. She doubted she could have forced them open anyway; her whole body was responding to Luke’s kiss.

  Luke took over control of the kiss, angling his mouth against hers, taking it deeper than Alex would have had the courage to do. The thought that she couldn’t feel his beard anymore flickered through her addled brain but was quickly driven out by the sensation of his arms wrapping around her, lifting her up to fit better against his long form.

  She thought for a moment that her whole body might go up in flames, between the heat of Luke’s body and mouth and the warm sun beating down on their heads; she felt overheated and flushed. The scent of him, clean and manly, mixed with the heavy perfume of the roses.

  The sting of disappointment was made sharper because it followed so quickly on the heels of her elation. Alex broke away from the kiss, now not even sure if it wasn’t entirely in her imagination, turned her face toward the warm breeze carrying the perfume of the roses, and tried to open her eyes.

  But now her eyes were held closed by dread. She didn’t want to open them and see Briar Rose’s enchanted garden with heavily scented, drugging roses lazing in the sun. She didn’t want to open them and see her own failure and the truth about Luke’s feelings for her. Well, she thought prosaically, if I am here and the spell has transferred to me, at least that means Luke is awake. Alex grabbed onto that one sliver of satisfaction in the midst of the ruins of her hope, and forced her eyes open.

  The hazy afternoon su
n was beating down on Briar Rose’s garden, just as she remembered from her first brush with the gems on the bed. The roses stretched out as far as the eye could see, broken only by the white of the steps leading up to the colonnade on the far side of the garden, and by the colonnade itself, although it was covered with vines as well. They were studded with wicked looking thorns and dripping with flowers so pink the saturation of color burned against her eyes.

  Alex looked down. She was wearing the same white woolen dress she had been in that first vision, her feet bare against the dirt. Maybe it was a vision of my future, she thought dejectedly; maybe somehow Briar Rose had known that eventually I would end up here.

  Alex let out a resigned sigh, which was promptly cut off in a gasp as a large warm hand enfolded her right hand. The quick reversal in airflow caused her to choke and sputter as she turned. She had been so caught up in her own internal drama over being transported to Briar Rose’s garden that she hadn’t even noticed the person standing to the side and slightly behind her.

  “Are you okay?” Luke asked, concerned. Alex stared at him in shock, continuing to gasp for air, until he reached out and soundly thunked her on the back. The surprise did the trick, sorting her air intake and output back to normal.

  She glared up at him. He was wearing the dark pants, white shirt and leather vest he had been wearing in her dreams. The rose emblem on the front of the vest was faded, but knowing what to look for, her eyes were immediately able to trace the outlines of the flower. She looked up into his face, and he looked like the Luke of her dreams again, serious and noble—and clean-shaven. The sun highlighted his dark blond curls, creating a hazy halo of light around his head. That, combined with the clothing, made him look as if he’d just stepped out of a Hollywood production of King Arthur. Alex’s heart swelled with love and irritation at the same time.

  “What in the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, smacking his arm. “You were supposed to wake up.”

  “Lex, you’re usually pretty smart, but you must be an idiot if you think I’m going to let you swap places with me. Didn’t I tell you I would be fine?”

  “So what, you’re saying that you purposefully didn’t wake up? How is that possible? And why not let me swap places with you?” She hit his arm again in frustration. “You know, you may think I’m an idiot, but I might actually be better equipped to deal with this kind of stuff than you—the thought probably didn’t occur to you that I might actually know what I am doing for once.” She was getting angrier by the second. “And now we’re both here, instead of just one of us, so that was really brilliant on your part, huh?” She emphasized her point with another jab to his arm.

  Luke completely ignored her punches, which was kind of deflating because Alex thought she’d really put some actual force into the last one.

  “I don’t actually think you’re an idiot. There is just no way I’m going to let you put yourself in danger for me. Well, that was the plan at least. I felt the kiss pulling me out of the enchantment, so I tried to resist. I didn’t expect you to get sucked into the enchantment too. I thought maybe if I just resisted hard enough, I’d stay asleep and you’d give up.”

  Alex took a deep breath, squeezing her eyes closed against the pain that bloomed in her chest.

  “Well, that answers that question,” she said fighting against the slight break in her voice. “If you loved me the spell would have just broken. You wouldn’t have had to resist changing places with me because we both would’ve been awake.”

  Surprise flashed across Luke’s face. “But I—” he began.

  “In a non-sisterly, more than just ‘I don’t want Alex to put herself in danger for me because I’m just a nice guy like that’ kind of way,” she cut him off with a sharp look. “Look, I appreciate that you thought you were looking out for me.”

  “That isn’t what I was going to say—“ he tried again, but this time he was interrupted by a low, amused chuckle that reverberated through the garden. Alex, with a sinking sort of resignation, recognized the voice. Luke must have recognized it too, because he wrapped a protective arm around Alex’s shoulders.

  “Silly boy,” Briar Rose said, an undercurrent of malicious laughter rippling through her voice as she stepped out from behind one of the pillars of the colonnade. She wasn’t wearing her dark cloak anymore, but a simple dress in a soft rose color. It was the same style as the dress Alex was wearing, although on Briar Rose it highlighted her fierce, other-worldly beauty.

  Briar Rose continued speaking to Luke. “Trying to be a hero, it gets you into trouble often, doesn’t it?” Alex’s eyes narrowed. It irked her that she and Briar Rose would agree on anything, but the fae wasn’t wrong. If he hadn’t given into his penchant for heroics, Luke would never have kissed Lilia and embroiled himself in an ancient battle. It also irked her that Briar Rose was talking to Luke as if Alex wasn’t even there.

  Briar Rose walked down the white marble steps and into the garden toward them. As she passed the bushes, the roses leaned toward her. The vines that had been growing up the pillars followed her, snaking out along the ground in her wake, like faithful dogs. “And look, here you have given me what I wanted, at least in part. It would be ever so much fun to destroy all three pesky girls at once, but I’ll take pleasure in starting with this one.”

  As she came closer to them, Luke deftly moved Alex behind him, placing himself between her and Briar Rose.

  “Stay away from her,” Luke growled. Briar Rose answered with another laugh, not slowing her walk towards them.

  “That is very touching. But you, my boy, are no match for my powers.” She raised her hand toward Luke and the emblem on his vest once again writhed to life, the vines snaking out from the center of his chest and around his midsection. This time, however, Alex was ready. She’d already reached around from behind Luke, grabbing the sides of his vest in both hands and ripping it off of him with a force that surprised even her. The seams popped and tore as the fabric met, and then yielded to, the solid resistance of his arms.

  The vines flung themselves out, looking for purchase, thorns tearing at Alex’s hands and sleeves for a moment until she threw the vest as far away as she could. It hit the dirt several yards away with an audible thud. The vines, still bubbling out from its center, seemed confused and disoriented. Before they could find their way back to Luke, Alex stepped in front of him and spoke a few words in a language she didn’t yet fully understand. She knew enough to call her own flowers, though, and the alyssum sprung up in front of her immediately, creating a barrier between them and the vines cascading from the vest. Alex cast suspicious glances at the rose bushes on all sides of them, and the alyssum responded to her unspoken thought, encircling her and Luke. The rose vines writhed their way to the edge of Alex’s protective barrier. The delicate alyssum flowers looked like they wouldn’t be able to hold back the sturdier plants, but as the vines reached the alyssum, they faltered and pulled back, unable to breach the line of small white flowers.

  Alex was pleased to see that the flowers responded to her even better than they had in her dreams and in the field behind Luke’s house. She had been afraid that here, in Briar Rose’s garden, under her enchantment, and without the other girls, she wouldn’t be able to access her magic as easily. But she could feel the power flowing through her, alive and responsive. She let it seep down through her bare feet, and she felt an answering echo from the warm, sun-baked earth. She couldn’t understand why the ground in Briar Rose’s garden would be responsive to her at all, but she wasn’t about to argue with it.

  “Lex,” Luke said urgently under his breath, and she looked up toward Briar Rose. The fae was evidently not as happy as Alex was that she was able to work magic on Briar Rose’s turf. Her beautiful face had contorted with anger. The air around her was pulsing with dark energy, the rose plants nearest her were vibrating with it, snapping to attention like soldiers awaiting orders.

  Alex didn’t relish the idea of doing battle with Briar Rose, with
no assistance, here in her own realm. Especially with Luke standing there just waiting to be collateral damage. Alex had managed this much protection for the two of them, but she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hold out for long. She wondered briefly if Briar Rose might be open to negotiation but was afraid she didn’t have much to negotiate with. Just herself. And the odds were that Briar Rose would eventually be able to overcome her paltry defenses, so it was doubtful that her surrender would be a very strong incentive.

  Briar Rose said something in Fae, and suddenly the earth below their feet betrayed them. It rolled up fiercely, feeling more like they were standing in a boiling pot of water than on solid ground. Huge bubbles rose and popped, splitting the surface with deep cracks. Alex could feel the dark power flowing through and seeping out of the dirt.

  She fell to her knees, no longer able to stand against the roiling ground, and a moment later she was joined by Luke. She dug her hands into the dirt, scrabbling for purchase, but the energy from Briar Rose’s spell was so fierce that the earth burned her hands. She tried crawling forward, then to the side, but wherever she moved the ground split and raged. It was like being in the middle of an earthquake, but an earthquake that was centered entirely on her.

  The ground under the alyssum began to break up, tearing the plants apart and scattering the small flowers. Alex knew that soon even that paltry defense would be gone and they would be dealing with the vicious vines on top of the shaking ground.

  Alex raised her head and screamed in Briar Rose’s direction. “If you want me, why don’t you take me? He means nothing to you; let the enchantment transfer just like it did from Lilia.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Luke insisted. She shot him a fierce look. He was on his hands and knees, barely maintaining his balance against the movement of the ground, although the dirt didn’t seem to be burning his hands the way it did hers. From the corner of her eye, Alex could see the vines testing the edges of her alyssum, just waiting for them to break apart enough to let the vines through.