Shimmer by Claudette Melanson (novels for students .txt) 📕

her held more than the constant flow of past happinesses. There was a message there, threaded through the notes, and when she pieced it together, Ariane realized that once his plan was in place, Aureliam was coming to take her away. On this night the tears that covered her cheeks came from the relief her heart felt, knowing the chains of loneliness and melancholy would soon be broken forever.

 

It took nearly a year for Aureliam to construct a plan to free the two of them from any threat Ariane’s father and his royal guard might present. But to the forlorn princess, sitting night after night in her starlit window sill, it was the passage of but a moment…as Aureliam had wiped the misery of her current fate from her future.

 

At last the lullaby displayed to her mind’s eye the image of Aureliam, scaling the castle wall to her bedroom, taking her into his arms, escaping the wretched palace forever. And when he did take her in his arms in the next moments that followed, Ariane was overtaken by a happiness she hadn’t known could exist. She touched his face, weeping silently, then kissed his eyes, the tip of his nose, his golden cheeks, and finally his lips…and in her carelessness…the lid of the lullaby-box was bumped. The slam as it closed, coupled with the cessation of its sleeping spell, roused the human prince from his sleep.

 

When Ariane’s inconsequential husband saw Aureliam, who had poisoned him with jealousy for all the years since his childhood, with his bride in his arms, a murderous rage possessed him. The sword he kept in his belt, slung over the bottom bed post was drawn, and he advanced toward Ariane’s true love. Aureliam pushed Ariane away from the treacherous blade, but when its tip was thrust, meant to plunge into his heart, Ariane found the strength to draw herself back, so that the blade sliced through her own. She thought it strange how this pain was much more bearable than what she’d felt when she thought she’d lost her golden faerie, love forever.

 

The human, enraged at losing his prize spat at Aureliam, “You’ll never have her now.”

 

With a sharp, earsplitting crack, the snowflake around Ariane’s neck shattered. She turned to the despicable human and said softly, “You never had me either.” Then she told Aureliam one last time how dearly she loved him, before dying in his arms.

 

Aureliam, afraid of just such an ending to their plans, took the vial of nightshade from the same pocket he’d once filled with a box that played a magic lullaby. Before the paltry human could blink, he’d downed the poison…

 

Moments later he was running along the night-colored path laid before him. In the near distance he saw Ariane standing, waiting for him…a smile on her wintry face, her swirling hair dancing in the slight wind like Christmastree tinsel…

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