Beauty In Her Madness (Winterland Tale Book 3) Read online

  Beauty in Her Madness, Copyright © 2020 by Stacey Marie Brown

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Published by: Twisted Fairy Publishing Inc.

  Layout by Judi Fennell at www.formatting4U.com

  Cover by: Jay Aheer at www.simplydefinedart.com

  Edited by Hollie at www.hollietheeditor.com

  Edited by Mo Siren’s Call Author Services [email protected]

  Dear Santa

  Thank you for adding more bad boys to your naughty list.

  Send them all my way!

  ALSO BY STACEY MARIE BROWN

  Contemporary Romance

  Buried Alive

  Shattered Love (Blinded Love #1)

  Broken Love (Blinded Love #2)

  Twisted Love (Blinded Love #3)

  The Unlucky Ones

  (Má Sorte—Portuguese)

  Royal Watch Book 1

  Royal Command

  (Royal Watch Book 2)

  Smug Bastard

  Paranormal Romance

  Darkness of Light

  (Darkness Series #1)

  Fire in the Darkness

  (Darkness Series #2)

  Beast in the Darkness

  (An Elighan Dragen Novelette)

  Dwellers of Darkness

  (Darkness Series #3)

  Blood Beyond Darkness

  (Darkness Series #4)

  West

  (A Darkness Series Novel)

  City in Embers

  (Collector Series #1)

  The Barrier Between

  (Collector Series #2)

  Across the Divide

  (Collector Series #3)

  From Burning Ashes

  (Collector Series #4)

  The Crown of Light

  (Lightness Saga #1)

  Lightness Falling

  (Lightness Saga #2)

  The Fall of the King

  (Lightness Saga #3)

  Rise from the Embers

  (Lightness Saga #4)

  Descending into Madness

  (A Winterland Tale #1)

  Ascending from Madness

  (A Winterland Tale #2)

  Savage Lands

  (Savage Lands #1)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About The Author

  Acknowledgments

  Beauty in Her Madness

  A low rumble penetrated the space, freezing me in place with utter terror. It was here for me. Wanted only me. Tears clogged my throat with fear, air halting in my lungs. Puffs of condensation and ice filled the room, billowing in the air, my heart pounding in my ears.

  It was there, its presence behind me. Waiting.

  Growls nipped at my heels, panic pounded in my chest, sobs hiccupped in my throat as my little legs ran forward, but I couldn’t run fast enough, my feet stumbling, crashing into the stone.

  Grunting and huffing with fury, the monster was getting closer. Run, Dinah! But I couldn’t get up, my muscles locked, my body trembling.

  A single claw raked up the back of my neck, and I let out a strangled sob, my lids squeezing tighter. I was going to die.

  Hot breath rasped against my ear.

  “Little one...”

  Chapter 1

  The midafternoon light dimmed through the glass, running for the horizon. The thick clouds concealed the sun’s retreat as if it couldn’t wait to get away from this part of the world. The room resisted the early nights with its false glow, outshining nature.

  I felt mesmerized by the swaying tree outside the window. Settling in for a cold, long winter, the last leaf was plucked from its branches by the gusts, twisting and turning in its final throes of death before hitting the frozen ground. It hadn’t snowed yet, but winter sniffed at the edges only one day after Thanksgiving, ready to fully consume autumn. Change was coming, colors switching from oranges and browns to the festive lights and decorations of red and green.

  Normally I loved this time of year.

  Normally.

  “Dinah?” A woman’s voice spoke softly behind me, but it felt distant, as if she were calling me from another room. My head was lost in the flashes of dreams, voices, and moments that hadn’t happened but felt as genuine and vibrant as reality. Fear iced down my spine.

  For two years, I’d felt more and more like an outsider—with my family, my boyfriend, and especially myself.

  “Dinah, don’t you want to sit down?” The woman’s voice was smooth and calming, but it only brushed the wrong way up my neck. “Talk about why you are here?”

  Why I was here? I snorted. Because I feel I’m going crazy? Something’s wrong with my brain, and I’m going to become like my sister?

  Though she was well now, flourishing in New York with her business and boyfriend, our parents had to put Alice into a facility for her mental health two Christmases ago. The episode in my bedroom where she flipped out, thinking gremlins were attacking her, still haunted me.

  “Please have a seat.” Dr. Bell motioned at the sofa across from her. She was probably in her early sixties, pretty, with short white hair, sharp blue eyes, and a pert nose. Her bright lipstick and thick-rimmed black glasses made her seem a little funky, while her ill-fitted beige suit and brown shoes contradicted it, blending into the same-colored furniture. “Don’t think of me as a therapist, but as a friend you can confide in.”

  I took in the space, not moving. The room was simple, clean, and comfortable with lots of pillows on the sofa and books on the shelves. It was designed to make the patient feel at home. The office was outside downtown Hartford in a newly restored older building, half of it still empty, waiting for tenants.

  I had found Dr. Bell from a flyer hung up at the university. It wasn’t the best way to find a therapist, but the offering of the first session free was too good to pass up on my budget. I had researched her, and she had all the credentials and high praise.

  Dr. Bell sighed, opening up her folder. “It says your sister went into an institution two years ago.” She frowned, adjusting her glasses. “It doesn’t have the facility name. Do you know?” Her blue eyes lifted to mine in hopes I could tell her.

  My brain searched for the name, but nothing came to me. “I-I don’t remember.” It was instant, the pounding in my head, the feeling of exhaustion, like I was trying to grab fog, push against an unseen force until I was limp and defeated. I rubbed my temple, running my hands through the silky brown locks I had let grow way
past my shoulders.

  In the last two years, lots of things had changed, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when or why. Ever since Alice returned from the ward, something had been off. As if I didn’t exactly fit into the picture anymore. With an analytical brain like mine, I could go mad just trying to find the piece that landed me in the office of a therapist here in Hartford.

  All I understood was pre-Alice’s episode, as my mother liked to call it; everything had been perfect. My plan for my future set. Everything in line. My sister had always been impulsive, passionate, artsy, and flighty, but one day things abruptly shifted, and she was seeing make-believe monsters in the dark and hearing Christmas icons talking to her.

  Full psychotic breakdown, they called it.

  Like the ones you are hearing and seeing? A voice whispered in the back of my head, whipping me back around to the window, my throat bobbing as I stuffed it back. No, this wasn’t the same.

  Alice was happy now—disgustingly happy—with hugely successful café/hat shops in the city that kept her busy nonstop, and with the sexiest man I had ever seen in my life for a boyfriend, screwing each other relentlessly like horny rabbits.

  Jealous? I felt the voice tug at me, flashing a chiseled face with icy blue eyes and a cruel mouth through my mind.

  I folded my arms, shaking the image from my head. He’s not even real. Just some figment of my imagination.

  I didn’t even care about pretty faces. Scott wasn’t even in the same hemisphere as Matt Hatter, but he was kind, faithful, and loved me. We met in debate club at school and had been dating since we were fifteen. Now we lived together in a tiny apartment while we attended the university where my father worked.

  “I know you didn’t come here to stare out my window.” Dr. Bell’s voice broke into my reverie, my attention sliding back to her. With an exhale, I sat my five-foot-six-inch frame on the sofa, the pillows almost swallowing me up. I inherited my mother’s petite frame, but while she and Alice had curves, my addiction to running kept mine nonexistent.

  Dr. Bell let the silence sit in the space, waiting for me to fill it. Twisting my hands in my lap, I took a deep breath. “I feel…” My throat tightened. This went against my nature, talking about my feelings. I wanted to solve and cure everything with logic and strategy and wanted her to tell me why I was having these dreams and visions.

  “What do you feel, Dinah?”

  Lost. Scared. Unsure.

  “Um.” I tugged my hair behind my ear, glancing up at the light, then over to the shelf. “Unsettled.”

  “Unsettled?” Dr. Bell’s eyebrows curved up. “Peculiar word choice. Why unsettled?”

  “I don’t know. Having strange dreams. Ones I used to have as a child, but they’re different now. I-I just feel off. Like something’s not right. Sometimes I feel I’m being watched, but no one’s there.” I squirmed on the sofa, dying to get up and move. “You know those times when you feel you’ve forgotten something, but you can’t remember exactly what?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s how I feel.” I rubbed my sweaty palms on my jeans. “All the time.”

  “When did this feeling start?”

  “Uhhh…about two years ago.”

  “Two years, huh?” Dr. Bell replied, her tone leading.

  “Yeah.”

  “Around the same time your sister went into a mental facility? It must have been quite traumatic for your family.”

  I licked my lip, staring down at my hands. Traumatic? Yeah, you could say that.

  I remembered sirens wailing, my sister screaming, flashes of blue and red lights reflecting off the houses, neighbors milling about in the street. I remembered Alice pinned to the ground, shouting and crying nonsense. And I remembered her talking to Mom and Dad, pleading for them to believe her, that she wasn’t crazy, someone was doing this to her. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall parts of that night, while others were crystal clear, making the night disjointed like a badly edited movie.

  I groaned, reaching deeper into my memories, trying to remember. Mom said the trauma we all went through was why we blocked it from our minds, the pain of seeing Alice hurting herself and possibly others. But who called the police? Who found the facility so fast? She was home one minute and, in a blink, locked up. It didn’t make sense they took her straight to a mental ward and not to the hospital.

  It all seemed strange.

  Memories weren’t reliable and could shift with perception. But I had a tickle at the back of my neck and the feeling of knowing something, but I couldn’t puncture through, letting it gush from my lips. It hovered around me, buzzing and irritating, but never revealing itself.

  “That had to affect you.”

  “It did.” The words croaked from my throat, my head turning to the window.

  “Here, have some water.” Dr. Bell poured a glass from the pitcher on the coffee table, handing it to me. The cool water drizzled down my throat, clearing away the emotions clogging my airways. It was like drinking pure snow; the refreshing taste had me guzzling down the rest.

  “Thank you.” I set down the empty cup, my attention latching to a drop trailing down the side of the glass. We sat in silence for a moment, her regard expectant, waiting for me to speak. My hand brushed over my face, and the instinct to run, to get away from this office, was palpable.

  This is silly. Why am I here? I’m not my sister. I’ve had a few bad dreams, making me paranoid.

  “Can you tell me about the dream you had last night?” As if she read my thoughts, Dr. Bell’s voice nipped at my ear.

  “It’s nothing.” I shifted in my seat, my gaze going back outside. The night gobbled up the last of the light, drenching the small enclosed area behind the office in shadows. My stare caught on something next to the tree.

  Hot terror wrapped my ribs, filling my stomach, my chest puffing for air.

  “Dinah?” She called my name, but once again it seemed far away, my attention locked on the figure.

  Oh god, not again.

  “Do-do you see it?” I pointed. “By the tree.”

  “See what?” Dr. Bell sat up, squinting to peer into the dark. “I don’t see anything.”

  “R-right there,” I stammered.

  “Dinah, nothing is out there.”

  But I saw it. Deep in the murky shadows, a huge outline of a hooded figure watched me, digging into me. Fear buzzed over my skin, prickling it in goosebumps, freezing me in place. I couldn’t make out any detail from here, but this wasn’t the first time I had seen the hooded figure watching me.

  “Dinah…” A man’s voice whispered around me, making me jolt out of my seat with a cry. “It’s almost time.”

  “Oh my god.” My calves shoved back into the sofa. It had never spoken to me like that.

  “Dinah?” Dr. Bell called for me. My head whipped to her. Her blue eyes filled with worry and confusion. She peered out the window, her brows furrowing.

  My attention shot back outside. The spot by the tree was empty. The courtyard was small and fenced. No way someone could have gotten out so quickly without notice.

  My nerves trembled, and I felt a sensation of being strangled, the air being pulled from my lungs. My dreams were reaching into the daylight, becoming more and more real.

  “Are you all right?” Dr. Bell reached for my arm. “Dinah?”

  The instant her fingers touched me, panic gripped my throat, needing to escape.

  “I’ve got to go.” I grabbed my bag on the ground. “I shouldn’t be here. It was a mistake…”

  “Dinah—”

  “Thanks for your time.” I rushed for the door.

  “Dinah, wait!” She jumped up, but I was already out. I jogged down the hall, vacating the three-story brick building and rushing out into the frigid evening.

  Bending over, I sucked in deep breaths, my sticky skin relishing the icy temperatures. It would snow soon; I could taste it on my tongue.

  Standing up, I took another deep gulp of air.

 
Buzzzz

  My cell vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out, figuring it might be the therapist’s office wondering what the hell just happened. My shoulders sank with relief seeing Gabe’s number.

  “Hey, boss man.” I tried to sound like my cheerful self, but my throat strangled out the greeting.

  “Oh, I like when you call me that, Liddell Two.” Gabe’s raspy smoker’s voice was heavy with innuendo. Even though my sister didn’t work there anymore, he still called me Liddell Two.

  “Don’t make it gross.” I rolled my eyes. The manager of Santa’s Workshop had quit. He and his wife were moving to Hawaii, and Gabe took over the position. Not because he was any good at it, but because it was easy, and he had no motivation to do anything but smoke pot and dress in a Santa suit. “What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” He snorted. “Well, besides piles of money, some tacos, and endless weed, I wouldn’t mind my employee being on time for her first shift this season.”

  My gaze went to my watch, my mouth gaping. “Shit!”

  “Supposed to be here five minutes ago.”

  “Oh, like you were ever on time,” I snapped back.

  “Doesn’t matter, Number Two. I’m the manager now. I can be as late as I want. It’s your job on the line,” he replied hotly, but I knew he was full of it. Gabe was all talk. He would never do anything. He knew he was lucky to still have me this year. But rent, food, and books for school were not cheap, and I needed the extra cash. “Be here in ten.” He hung up.

  “Asshole,” I huffed, heading to my car. The wind whipped through my hair, my bones finally absorbing the chill and revolting against it. I reached my old white Volkswagen Rabbit, pulling the keys from my purse.