Read Online Before the Dawn by Kristal Lim - Free Book Online Page B

on her hand
painfully, and she felt the thin edge of the silver leaf she gave
him cut into her palm.
    She woke up gasping.
    ***
     
     

Chapter 8
     
     
    The first rays of the morning sun were
starting to shine through the window, and Aline could not remember
the last time she had felt so relieved that it was daytime.
Daylight meant that the night was over, that those who threatened
her in the dark could not harm her and she was safe. But was she
really safe? She unclenched her hands and saw that the right one
was bleeding from a cut. The wound was where the silver leaf from
her dream had sliced through her skin as Trevor tried a desperate
gamble to get them away from the Prince and his dangerous Court. As
these memories came to her mind, she suddenly became incredibly
worried about what had happened to Trevor. But, almost as soon as
she thought of him, her cellphone rang and she let out a sigh of
relief when she saw his name and number flashing on the screen.
    "Trevor? Are you okay?" she asked before he
could even speak.
    "Yeah, I'm fine," he assured her quickly.
"I'm—in the Ballroom, in one of the private rooms. How did I even
get here? Anyway, where are you? You just disappeared." He sounded
a bit dazed, like he had just woken up, too.
    "I'm in my room at home. Come get me, okay?
We'll go to school together and talk about this." She was already
moving to get ready. Her feet were hurting more than ever and she
felt exhausted, but she had to check if the other kids she knew
were all right. Trevor promised he'd be at her house as soon as he
could then they said their goodbyes. She immediately began to dial
Cassie's number after hanging up on him.
    "Cassie? Cass, are you okay?" The worry and
nervousness made Aline speak too loud and she heard her friend
grumble on the other end of the line.
    "Aline, what is wrong with you?" Cassie
complained, and Aline was incredibly relieved to hear the other
girl’s familiar voice. "It's too early. I still want to sleep."
    "No!" She almost yelled. "Get up. Don't go
back to sleep." But Cassie hung up on her before she could say any
more. Her calls to Sam and Meran also woke them up and, like
Cassie, they both sounded tired and confused when she insisted that
they meet up in school really early. Gracelyn, however, was still
not answering her phone, and Aline began to be very scared for her
friend as she remembered the lost expression on Gracelyn’s face
that she glimpsed before she and Trevor made their escape from the
Prince.
    A brief shower, a change of clothes, and
fresh bandages on her feet and hand later, Aline was ready and
waiting for Trevor to pick her up in less than an hour. Then she
cursed when she finally noticed the bloodstains on her bed sheets
and the carpet. Her feet had bled on the two, and they were now
streaked with ugly red marks. She stripped the sheets off her bed
then went downstairs to the laundry room so she could stuff them in
the washing machine before her dad could see them. The carpet,
though, was a lost cause. For the meantime, she just covered the
blood with some dirty clothes and other stuff she could throw on
the floor without making it too obvious she was trying to hide
something. Then she went downstairs again.
    "Dad?" she called out. She hadn't heard him
puttering around in the kitchen earlier, but maybe he was up and
about now. "Hey, Dad. I'm going to school in a bit." There was no
answer. "Dad?" Curious, and worried, she tortured her feet by
checking each room in the house that she thought he could possibly
be in. He was nowhere to be found, though. But she also couldn't
see his cellphone and his laptop anywhere, and she knew he'd never
leave home without them, so maybe he had left for work very early.
It certainly wasn't unusual for him to do that. Besides, and by now
she realized that she was just trying to reassure herself with all
the excuses she could think of, he hadn't been at the ball last
night. So there was no way Raven and the Prince had