Download Sleeping Beauty - Harper Voyager Books

A minute later I set two bare feet to the cold floor and found mylegs reluctant to take the weight of me, skinny as I was. Blood stilldribbled from my wrist where the tubes had fed their filth into me.Skin flapped, raw flesh glistened.The table lay bare save for some clear and squidgy pads that musthave kept it from wearing sores into my back. A vent ran the lengthof it and a drain below. They must have sluiced away my filth as Ilay unconscious. A pure hatred ran through me. I would hurt whoeverdid this to me, and then I would end them.A door stood behind me, silvery-steel like the table. I looked aboutfor weapons but the room was bare save for the corroded carcassesof ancient machinery. Gripping the drug stand like a spear, I advancedon the door. There would be larger foes outside. The bugs hadn’tlifted me onto the table or buckled me down.I stood with a hand to the door for a moment, trying to clear myhead. Had Katherine truly been here? Had she wakened me? A kissseemed unlikely – the princess hated me, and with good reason. Aknife to the heart seemed a more realistic greeting. Even so, somethinghad woken me from what must be months of slumber, years even.And Katherine had once kept the company of a dream-witch, so whynot her? Perhaps she thought letting me sleep my days away here,safe from nightmares, was too kind an end for me.Remembering that I was watched, I left the door and stood squarebefore the eye peeping at me from the high corner with its little redlight flashing.‘I’m coming for you and death will not hide you.’ I swung thestand at arms’ length, smashing the box from its stand. It hit thewall, then the floor, and when the lens rolled free I crushed it beneath