Sleeping Beauty

by May Sage

  Sleeping Beauty

  Not Quite the Fairy Tale Book 7

  May Sage

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Sleeping Beauty

  May Sage © 2017

  Not Quite the Fairy Tale Book 7

  Edited by Hot Tree Editing

  Cover by Sylvia Frost

  Photography by Courtney Larsen and Austin cCnn

  Chapter 1

  The king sighed out loud, lying back on his plush throne. They’d won the war, this time. At twenty-nine years of age, he’d lived through seven conflicts—four where they’d been victorious, three that Alenia had won. Their borders had been redefined each time, cutting back and then regaining useless, barren pieces of land.

  What was the bloody point?

  “I’ll not waste my years on a fruitless endeavor like my forefathers, darn it!” he cursed, and the woman at his side laughed softly.

  “I’m afraid you won’t have much choice on the matter, Rupert,” she replied, putting another dark grape between her delicious lips. “Unless you wish to relinquish your kingdom.”

  Some days, he wished he could; then he remembered he was king of Ferren, the most powerful kingdom of Europa—this year, in any case. It was entirely possible that Alenia might regain the title by Winter Feast.

  “Or, I guess you could try to form an alliance,” she suggested offhandedly.

  He looked at her as though she had grown another set of horns, although Maleficent only had the two usual ones, proudly sprouting out of her pretty head.

  Rupert knew just how lucky he was to have her for a friend. Like most fays, she didn’t directly intervene in human matters, but her counsel was invaluable. Normally. Right now, she spoke complete, utter gibberish.

  “An alliance with Alenia. Have you been sniffing pixy dust again?”

  The last time she’d come up with something half as unlikely, she’d been high as a kite.

  “Doesn’t hurt to ask,” she replied with a shrug. “Their queen might feel the same way about your incessant conflicts.”

  Although the very prospect seemed completely impossible, he asked, and it turned out that Maleficent was right. The queen of Alenia did want peace. So much that she proposed to give him her youngest daughter as proof and guarantee.

  Rupert didn’t question it, betrothals of that sort happened everywhere to straighten out kingdoms. He should have looked into it and sought to understand why the queen of Alenia was in such a hurry to dispose of her own flesh and blood. Instead of researching his intended, he readily accepted the deal.

  And that was the beginning of the end.

  One hundred and five years later.

  There wasn’t much to know about King Rupert—he had been simple, non-descript in the textbooks. He was less bloodthirsty than his predecessors, although he’d ended up winning the two wars he’d fought in record time. Everything led one to believe that he had been a great king. There were dozens of letters of thanks from small, faraway farms and impoverished territories expressing gratitude for his visit and the measures he took to ensure his subjects thrived.

  He’d married an Alenian princess at thirty. The correspondence preceding the event had made it clear that the union had been a political arrangement, but there was no reason to think that the couple had been anything but blissfully happy. The aged, sepia antique photograph of the king and queen on their wedding day attested that the golden couple matched perfectly. They were both equally stunning, equally regal and proper.

  Three years later, King Rupert and Queen Marina had the most beautiful little girl, with big golden curls like her mother’s.

  A few years after that though, tragedy struck their little cloud of happiness. There weren’t many texts explaining what had occurred, but historians had concluded that a plague had wiped out most of Ferren.

  This is my fault, the king had written in his diary, I should never have allowed it to reach this point. Now, I think of nothing but protecting the child from this curse. None of this is her doing, and she is my daughter. I have to try.

  What he’d tried had been risky, very much so. A hundred years ago, the carbonite freezing process had been rudimentary at best; it was a miracle he, his wife, and their daughter had survived it.

  Aurora Stephenson forced herself to look away from the painfully beautiful face standing a head taller than she. Even in his frozen state, immobile and mostly blue, he was striking—more so than anyone she’d ever met, although she had been engaged to two of the sexiest kings in Europa.

  She spent more time than she cared to admit looking at him, studying his features, wondering what his voice sounded like. It was always worse when she went away for a few days: his incomparable beauty struck her afresh at each return.

  The fact that no living man had ever fascinated her as much as the king she studied was most probably the reason why neither one of her engagements had worked out, in all honesty.

  At first, she’d blamed Aiden, prince of Ennom, and then Dane, king of Alenia, but two years had passed since he’d broken their engagement, and she’d looked in the mirror and admitted the truth.

  She was the problem, or part of it at least. She was cold, uninterested, focused on her work. Nothing animated her half as much as the discovery of one of King Rupert’s correspondences or a discussion about the probable cause of his demise. It was worse than fascination; her interest bordered on obsession. What man wanted that in a wife?

  Aurora shook her head, forced her gaze away from the capsule covering her king’s shell, and went back to work.

  She was reporting the details of yet another simulation. It had grown redundant at first; now it was plain old boring.

  Ten years after the royal family had been frozen, there had been an attempt to revive them; the scientist started with Queen Marina. Suffice it to say that it ended up being unfruitful—the fact that there were now only two capsules, rather than three, attested to that. They’d lost their queen. From the reports, the process had been too lengthy and her heart hadn’t survived the thermal shock. That was the reason no one had dared try again, although three generations later, science was at another level altogether.

  They’d run through every option, calculating alternatives and probabilities. Then some people had actually volunteered to try the whole process. No child had been allowed to serve as a lab rat, but the five men who had opted to get frozen and brought back to life had survived without any damage. The results were conclusive. They could revive their king.

  Just as soon as the Council allowed it.

  Aurora’s heart ached at the idea of having to inform him that his beloved wife had passed, but first and foremost, he was king. There was no doubt in her mind that after an appropriate mourning period, he would resume his duties. Those raised to bear a crown never lost sight of what’s important.

  “Ms. Stephenson? It’s time.”

  Aurora sighed before gathering her files and getting up. She hung up her long, white coat, revealing an attire very different from the comfortable cargo pants she usually wore at the lab. Today, she was wrapped in red and gold, her family colors. The long dress was simple, understated with long sleeves and a high neckline. She’d never been one to show too much skin, and even if she had been, she wouldn
’t have in front of the crowd she had to address today.

  It wasn’t the first time the Council had asked to get a report on the progress of the king’s case, but if Aurora had anything to say about it, it would be the last.

  She’d been present at the previous discussions, but at the time Dr. Joanesson had been in charge. There was nothing remotely wrong with the now retired professor, but he hadn’t known how to talk to the band of vultures who decided everything in the kingdom. He’d been a scientist, first and foremost, and while Aurora was as versed in genetics as the old man, she was a different animal. With the regent of Ferren as her father, she had grown up amongst vipers, and she could play the political games with the best of them.

  She would get them to authorize the process, or she would get them to admit the truth: the reason why they denied it was because, as things stood now, they were in power and they had no inclination to relinquish it.

  Chapter 2

  Then

  Rupert hadn’t thought much of the girl when they’d met in Alenia; a brief encounter had ensured that she was pleasing enough to look at and had all her teeth. Nothing else mattered really. He didn’t expect anything as convenient as love at first sight, and he certainly didn’t get it.

  Marina de Luz wasn’t very impressed with him. He didn’t care, knowing that as a princess, she’d been raised to understand her duties. As long as she played her role and kept the peace, he was happy to ignore and be ignored in return until death did they part.

  Of course, there was the matter of producing an heir. Rupert was an only son, and thanks to the wars, he was also the last of the Evermore, save for a distant cousin no one thought of.

  But Rupert put that problem out of his mind. He was young yet and healthier than most. As nothing indicated that he had to lead his armies to any battles, he had another good forty years before him. He’d think of it in a decade or so.

  “Well, well. If this isn’t a delightful sight.”

  Rupert smirked, thrilled to have backup. For three days, he’d ridden alongside his men—soldiers too professional to show anything other than respect for their future queen—and Marina’s entourage.

  His oldest friend was casually lying on the back of a black horse adorned with long wings. Much could be said about her, but damn, the woman excelled at making an entrance.

  “Maleficent,” he greeted her with a reverent bow of his head.

  They were close to her lands, stretched behind a thick wall of thorns and poisonous ivy to ensure that she never received any visitors. Quite obviously, Mal hated to entertain. And she also protected hundreds of endangered creatures such as the magnificent beast she now rode.

  “Indeed. Where are your manners, Rupert? Shouldn’t you at the very least point out which of these lovely ladies you intend to saddle yourself with?”

  He turned to four scowling, visibly aggravated faces. None was as petulant as that of his betrothed. It hit him that, while she could have been quite pretty with her long, silken, golden hair falling in waves and her big brown eyes, she wasn’t because she constantly grimaced, like someone was holding a pile of turds under her nose.

  He sighed audibly; peace had come at a high cost.

  “The fairest,” he said generously, rather than voicing his thought.

  “Oh. In that case, don’t expect me for a few days, dear. I’d better stock up on pixy dust.”

  Now

  “I’m not about to insult you as to doubt that you are all up to date with the progress that we’d accomplished up to your last meeting with my department two years ago,” Aurora said, smilingly.

  The last time, they’d gotten Dr. Joanesson to recap every single calculation and experiment accomplished over the last hundred years, spending most of the meeting revisiting history and pointing out how dangerous it had been to jump into reviving the queen without the appropriate knowledge and tools.

  Aurora wasn’t going to let them direct this conversation; she’d opened it that way because, if someone asked for previous results now, it would make them sound incompetent. They knew it, she knew it. This was just a game of words, and the most manipulative amongst them would win. Simple.

  “Since then, we’ve run three thousand, two hundred and seventeen simulations. We’ve also cryogenized and awoken ten new subjects, all similar to our king in height, weight, and age. All of them have come through with flying colors.”

  “But none of them have been frozen for years.”

  She turned to Viola Edwards, a thin waif of an old lady with a tongue sharper than the average blade, and she smiled. It wasn’t like she hadn’t expected that question.

  “I’m glad you pointed that out. One of our subjects has volunteered for an experiment you’ll find fascinating.”

  Aurora gave a signal, and one of her assistants closed the heavy curtains surrounding the throne room, where the Council, in its delusion of grandeur, liked to hold their meetings.

  No one sat on the king’s throne, or his wife’s, for that matter, but they’d otherwise made themselves quite at home.

  At the foot of the elevated platform where the thrones were raised, there was her father’s chair, practically as impressive as the king’s. His six advisors were seated at his side behind a long, rectangular stone table.

  Back in the day, the Council had been composed of three individuals chosen by the king, three elected by the House of Lords, and the King’s Hand, chosen by the people.

  When King Rupert was in power, the Hand had been Mark Stephenson, Aurora’s great-grandfather. He became regent and somehow managed to make his office hereditary. As for the advisors, they were all handpicked by the regent; no one else got a say.

  Aurora loved her father dearly, but after her last fiancé confessed that he believed him capable of anything to keep his power, she’d observed his doings, and regretfully, she had to agree. Anyone who was proactively supporting the king’s return had no hope of a political career in the kingdom. They’d had countless arguments about it, and each time the reasons he found seemed more ludicrous. “This man has no notion of the world as it is now, dammit! What if he came back and forbade women from doing the jobs they pleased because in his day it was the way? You can say goodbye to your office and start shopping for a husband!”

  Aurora just shook her head, exasperated. Yes, women had less power a century ago, but King Rupert had been the one who had given them the right to vote, study, and work in practically every job of their choosing.

  This time, the verbal sparring wasn’t going to be full of bollocks. Everything they said was recorded, so her father would watch his mouth. Which was why she would win. She had every fact on her side.

  Eager to start making her point, she gave a hand signal to one of her colleagues standing at the far end of the room. Aurora had installed a white screen behind her, and Thomas fired up a projector. The screen opened on a shot of her lab, dated two years ago, only a couple of weeks after their last meeting on the subject.

  “Meet Hugo Ross,” she said, and the collective attention suggested that they knew exactly whom she was talking about, but she nonetheless finished the introductions, “a pirate in every sense of the term. He hacks into government sites, banks, anything he likes. And in his spare time, he roams the sea hunting for treasure. On his last voyage, he acquired an artifact that belonged to the Ferren crown. When he tried to sell it, we captured him and condemned him to ten years of prison. His sentence had been reduced to two years, so long as he agreed to serve the crown.”

  She played her video, and they saw the tall, rather impressive man getting undressed, revealing all of his musculature and the scars marring his skin. Then, slowly, he removed the advanced prosthesis that replaced his left hand and walked into a capsule similar to the king’s.

  “Who’s authorized this?” Peter Gerald grumbled.

  He was head of the legal department and knew that something regarding a Ferren prisoner should have been under his authority.

  Aurora smil
ed sweetly, replying, “Why, you, sir. Surely you recall I’d asked for your signature?”

  Except that she’d worn a top with a neckline much deeper than her usual style, so he probably remembered nothing except the shape of her boobs. Regardless, she hadn’t quite told him in which way she intended Ross to serve the crown.

  “Mr. Ross has been in carbonite freeze for two years, twelve hours, and thirty-three minutes,” she said, after a quick glance at the watch on her wrist. “Sure, it’s not a hundred years. But it’s still an extended amount of time. If he pulls through,” and she didn’t doubt he would, or she would never have risked it, “there’s no reason to believe that our king couldn’t.”

  The frustration of the crowd before her was almost comical; it was obvious that they wanted to find something to say, but couldn’t. Last time, they’d argued that a few days or a few weeks of experiments weren’t relevant, and when pressed, they’d said that if a subject survived the process after a considerable amount of time—over a year—they’d consider that particular question settled.

  Of course, they’d believed no one would voluntarily relinquish their life for over a year. Aurora knew differently. Truth was, if she had been an acceptable subject, she wouldn’t have hesitated to volunteer. She’d known right then that finding someone suitable would be possible. Not easy, but possible.

  Hugo Ross’s arrest had been an unbelievable stroke of luck. Ross was a long-removed, very distant relative of the king—his uncle’s cousin’s great-grandson, or something of the sort—and even she had to admit that they looked alike: similar features, same height and weight.