Page 160 of The Prince's Curse

“Should I read this one?”

Ursula moved her paw.

“All right,” Shoshanna said tentatively.

And so, she began to read again.

How long had she been studying the same tome? Shoshanna sat back and rubbed her eyes. As she yawned and stretched, she caught the faint tinkling cascade of piano keys. Sitting upright, she looked around. There were no other doors except that heavy wooden one that led to the terrifying darkness, but she heard music distinctly.

She rose and tiptoed toward the wooden door. The music grew louder, beckoning her closer. The lilting waltz was familiar, and she found herself murmuring, “I danced with you once upon a dream,” as she pressed her ear to the door. As her skin contacted the rough wood, the door rattled with three sharp knocks.

She yelped and recoiled, hands up in self-defense. Beyond the small window was not darkness, but a brilliant golden light. Her heart thumped as she pondered it. Looking back, she saw Ursula sitting on the table, tail curled around her feet as she watched.

“Should I open it?” she asked.

Ursula stared silently, as if to say, I’m a cat, why are you asking me?

Feeling rather silly, Shoshanna reached out and tapped the door. She knew that this place wasn’t real. Nothing had hurt her so far, but there was no way she’d read that towering stack of books so quickly without eating or sleeping.

However, she also knew that she wasn’t ready to understand where she was. Once she really opened her eyes she wouldn’t be able to unsee what really lay around her. For now, the dream would do.

There were three more knocks at the door, and the stone floor trembled beneath her feat. She spun around and saw a strange place. Instead of the cozy library, there was a sitting room, with a lovely lacquered grand piano, and a beautiful oil painting on the wall of a handsome blue-eyed man with a woman on his arm.

“Alistair?” she murmured.

A deafening sound rang out from the piano, and she backed away.

Another sharp knock at the door.

Steeling herself, she yanked it open. The howling wind rushed into the room, whipping her robe around her legs, but she kept it open. Far below, glowing soft and hazy against the sea of darkness, shone a pool of light that looked curiously like a doorway.

And stranger still, rose petals were scattered in the air just past her door. They hung perfectly still, as if scattered on an unseen stair.

She looked back and saw Ursula still sitting on the table, licking one of her paws, apparently unfazed by the optical illusions rushing all around. Gripping the stone door frame tightly, Shoshanna extended one leg, tapping her slippered foot near the rose petals.

Something was there. She gasped and yanked her foot back, then tested it again. It had a bit of give, like wet-packed sand along the beach at low-tide. Still holding the frame, she eased out and pushed against the unseen surface with her foot. It held firm.

“What the hell are you doing?” she muttered.

A light wind rippled around her feet, scattering the rose petals. She shrieked in surprise, but they gathered again near her foot, a bit lower and further out, as if they were forming steps. Curiosity tugged her forward, and she gingerly stepped further from the door, now with both slippered feet on the?—

don’t look, thin air above a water grave

—petal-scattered surface. She held her breath and took a step down to the next set of petals, which immediately blew away to a lower point. Below her, the dark shadows clashed and roiled, but there was something soothing in the back of her mind, that piano music she’d heard before.

One by one, painstaking step by step, she followed the trail. Vertigo grasped at her, and she told herself not to look down, to trust that her foot would find purchase. Though it appeared she was walking through open air, her foot was on solid, warm ground that felt like sun-kissed sand.

She dared to look down as her foot touched the unseen surface, and noticed a strange, geometric pattern illuminated in red. It was so familiar, and for some reason, it made her reach for the back of her neck. Her skin was searing hot to the touch, and she heard that familiar cascade of piano music again.

Shoshanna, come home.

The deep voice called to her, insistent and calm. She looked back and saw that glowing door to the tower so far behind and above her. A tiny shadow lingered in the doorway.It was safe and warm back there. Perhaps she should return.

Below her, big reptilian eyes opened in those terrible depths, and great mouths gaped open, full of bloody teeth to swallow her whole. Her body swayed, and she found herself slipping, falling and?—

Shoshanna. Listen to me.

The sweet perfume of rose petals drifted to her nose, and she looked down to see a dense blanket of flowers beneath her feet. They swirled and lifted, gently guiding her further onward, down, down, and then she was dancing over each of them, carried along on the tinkling melody that was calling her home. She pitched headlong into the golden light and into?—

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