The Pitchfork of Destiny Read Online Free PDF

did seem to like it short.
    Stop that, she lectured herself. Liz would tell you that the point is not how he likes your hair but how you like your hair.
    Like all of Liz’s advice, this admonition was much easier taken than followed. She let her eyes wander from the dress to a mirror set on the wall behind the dressing table. She cocked her head from one side to the other and watched her hair swish and fall across her face. No, this seemed right. Besides, the style had become so associated with her at this point that some part of her felt that to abandon it would be to abandon a part of her own personality.
    No! You are NOT your hair. She refused ever again to be known simply for her hair—­long or short.
    â€œAnd, that is why I will become the best queen this kingdom has ever known, which means reading bloody Brummell!”
    With that, she threw herself back into her studies. But, a few pages later, her eyes crossed, the book slipped from her hand, and her head began to drop to her breast.
    It was in this half-­asleep state that Elle heard the castle watchman in the East Tower shout the alarm. Her thoughts had grown so languorous that the echoed cries from guards in towers across the castle and the sudden flare of watch fires being lit outside her window blended naturally into a dream she was having where she and Will were being married in a carnival tent with the lords and ladies of the court all around as spectators. A ringmaster was shouting at them to jump through a hoop of fire. Elle started to argue with the man that it simply wasn’t possible for her to do such a thing without catching the skirt of her dress ablaze, when a sound like an avalanche stopped her. She and the ringmaster turned at the source of the noise, which seemed to be coming from outside the tent. The cloth walls began to tremble and ripple, then tear.
    Elle came awake with a sudden start beneath a shower of glass and wood and stone. She threw up her hands instinctively and felt dozens of stings as the debris cut into her face and palms. She looked between her fingers in confusion and saw that the glass-­paned doors to her balcony had shattered inward, taking part of the stone wall with them, and there, amid the ruins of white trellis and jasmine, was a nightmare.
    The dragon, for that is undoubtedly what the beast was, was perched on her balcony, trying to force its bulk through the opening and into her room. It was armored in silver-­and-­gray plates, and seemed to be all sharp edges and angles. Hundreds of teeth like knife blades jutted from its mouth, and a pair of horns curved sinisterly out of the top of its head, but it was the eyes that were its most striking feature. Set beneath jutting brows, the golden orbs seemed terrible and hard, and flames, deep red dancing flames, burnt where the pupils should have been. It stared at her from across the room and renewed its assault, battering its body several times against the castle. She flinched at each jolting impact, but the walls of the tower did not yield any further, and it was simply too large to fit through the door. It beat its wings in frustration, and a hurricane wind ripped across the room, extinguishing her lamps and plunging everything into a darkness that was relieved only by the ruddy glow of the fire that still burnt in her grate.
    Later, Elle would be embarrassed to remember that in that first moment of panic, her thoughts did not initially turn to her own safety or the safety of the castle, but rather to whether her dress had survived, and despite herself, she looked to the corner of the room, where the headless mannequin bride still stood untouched by the dragon’s attack. Then the dragon withdrew slightly and leaned down, thrusting its head and long, sinuous neck through the remains of the door.
    Elle screamed and scrambled backwards off the bed. She pressed against the wall farthest from the balcony, but she couldn’t run any farther