Read Online Beautiful Warrior by Sheri Whitefeather - Free Book Online Page A

I’m who you’re supposed to be with. Why do you think I was compelled to turn a butterfly into a woman? Because somewhere deep down, I needed you, Vanessa. I needed the girl who created me.”
    “There must be other women you can be with.”
    “Just the wood nymphs who live nearby. They’ve been my lovers up until now. But I don’t want them anymore. I want you.”
    He was confusing me, making my insanity worse . “Listen to me, okay? I’m crazy, and you’re a character in my hallucination. I have a mental disorder called schiz—”
    He cut me off . “I know what you have. I heard you and Seven talking about it when I first saw you on the monitor.”
    “Then let me go back to where I belong so I can try to get better.”
    “There’s no cure for it. You aren’t going to get better.”
    “Schizophrenia can be managed ,” I argued. “After I break the curse, it will be easier for me.”
    “If I’m a hallucination, then how can the curse be real ? Your logic makes no sense.” 
    “I don’t know exactly . But I can’t take the chance that Duncan or the rest of you might die.”
    “Hallucinations can’t die.”
    They could disappear, I thought, and float into a pit of nothingness. “Duncan is a real person, and he can die.”
    “I wish you would just stay with me.”
    Tears flooded my eyes. “You have to stop torturing me like this.”
    “But all I want is for you to be my wife.”  He lunged forward and yanked me into his arms .
    I buried my face aga inst his chest and cried into his shirt. I couldn’t abandon Duncan. Nor could I stay in an enchanted land that didn’t exist, no matter how beautiful it was.
    “Tell me how to break the curse,” I whispered . “Please tell me so I can go home.”
    “God help me.”  He kissed the top of my head . “For giving you up.”
    God help me, too, I thought. He was holding me as if he loved me. Was I wrong to not stay with him, even if he wasn’t real?
    “The magic is inside your mind,” he said . “All you have to do is believe the curse is broken, and it will be.”
    I stepped back to look at him. “That’s too easy.”
    “No one said it had to be difficult.”
    “But it’s too Wizard of Oz .”  Seven, I decided, would have a field day with it.
    “I don’t make the rules . Besides, if all of this started in your mind, then why can’t it end there, too?”
    Because I needed for it to be something more. “Can’t you give me a magic wand or something?”
    He smiled a little sadly . “No, I can’t. Just use what you have. Use your mind.”
    My diseased brain. “Please, I need for you to fix it in a way that doesn’t involve me having to rely on myself.”
    “I can ’t change how it’s supposed to work. Either stay with me or go. But don’t fight me on the magic.”
    I swiped at my tears . “I feel so lost.”
    “ I know.”  He moved forward to comfort me, to kiss me, but the warmth of his lips never touched mine.
    He blurred b efore my eyes, and the world around me began to tilt and spin.
    I tried to latch onto him, to grab him as tightly as I could, but a deep, dark tunnel was pulling me toward its twisting, twining vortex. I screamed for him to save me, but no sound emerged. Then I realized what was happening.
    I was going home .

 
    Chapter Ten
     
    Silence . Confusion.
    The tunnel was gone, and I was no longer spinning. But I wasn’t back to normal, not by any stretch of my screwed-up imagination. Hazy shadows clouded my vision. Was I in a hospital? Was this a psych ward?
    I didn’t seem capable of speaking or moving or doing anything, aside from blinking my lashes . And even they seemed too heavy for my eyes, as if they had weights attached.
    I wanted to return to the warrior and burrow in the shelter of his arms . I should have agreed to stay with him, to love him, to marry him. Then it wouldn’t matter if I was hospitalized, because in my mind, I would be safe.
    Or as safe as a crazy person could be.
    “Vanessa.”