While Beauty Slept

I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told. Those of humble birth suffer their heartbreaks and celebrate their triumphs unnoticed by the Bards, leaving no trace in the fables of their time . . .

And so begins Elise Dalriss's story. When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a minstrel's tale about a beautiful princess asleep in a tower, it pushes open a door to the past, one Elise has long kept locked. For Elise was the companion to the real princess who slumbered - and she is the only one left who knows what actually happened so many years ago.

As the memories start to unfold, Elise is plunged back into the magnificent world behind the palace walls she left behind more than a half century ago, a labyrinth where the secrets of her real father and the mysterious fate of her mother connect to an inconceivable evil. Elise has guarded these secrets for a lifetime. As she understands all too well, the truth is no fairy tale.