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It was that sentence that stopped my tears. I rolled my head to the side to see the most beautiful person in the world. She stood there with a flaming sword in her hand, covered head to toe in black leather, with boots that laced up to her knees. The woman looked like an avenging angel, here to collect the evil souls and ready for the fight. Her blonde hair had to be incredibly long and thick for all the braids and twists that covered her head, and I wanted to take out all the pins to see if it was as silky as it looked. But it was her soft skin that really had me in awe. It was glowing like moonlight, and I felt drawn to her. If she asked me for something, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to say no.
She was fierce and frightening, but as she stared down at me, I saw something fragile in her, too.
“He’ll be fine until we can get him to a better healer, but the innocents in town won’t survive,” the man she called Van said. “The stupid pixie said nothing about an injured wolf or innocents. We have to hurry. That’s where your pack went? To the town?”
I nodded. “They’ve been coming and going. Sometimes I hear them. Hear screaming. But they’re not here right now.”
“You go. I’ll stay with him,” she said.
Van gave her a silent nod, and then was gone.
“Does it hurt?”
“I don’t care about the arm.” My voice was so garbled with my raw throat that I could barely make out the words, but somehow she must’ve understood me. “It’s my throat that’s infected. They poured boiling vampire blood down it.”
The sword disappeared as she knelt beside me. “Van’s a healer, but he’s right. You’ll need someone better, and the innocent humans come first. You’re lucky it wasn’t venom.”
“I’m not sure I’d call myself lucky.”
She pressed her lips tight, like she was stopping herself from saying something, before she spoke again. “Do you need anything else?”
Food, but if the healer wanted to straighten my arm, they were going to have to rebreak it. I didn’t want to eat only to throw it up. But the thirst was something that could be fixed. “Water?”
“You need to sit up a little to drink.”
I tried to sit, but couldn’t. She took pity on me and sat beside me, brushing her hand across my forehead before gently lowering my head and upper body onto her lap. The water was just as cold as before, and felt like sweet relief on my throat.
Oh, God. I was so tired that I wasn’t sure if the arm was worth the effort. I wasn’t sure I was worth the effort. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I stink and I’m getting you dirty and—”
“And you’re alive. That’s the only thing that matters.” She drew a breath and let it out slowly, as if she were preparing me for a blow that was about to come. “I’ve witnessed a lot of evil in the more than one hundred and fifty years that I’ve been alive, and too many people victimized by that evil. You’ll be upset for a while, and that’s understandable. But soon, very soon you’ll have to decide what you want the rest of your days to look like. You’ll wither as if you never left that pit. The abuse you’ve suffered will weigh on your soul until it kills you.” She paused. “Or you’ll learn to let go of the past—all the abuse, all the time in the pit, all the horrors you’ve seen—and truly be free of it.”
I wanted that. The truly free part.
“From here on out, no one has control over how you feel but you. No one has control over what you do but you. No one can hurt you but you. I hope you learn to see the beauty in life and find some peace. Because calling us here? That was brave. If you don’t remember much from this day or tomorrow—because you will be in a fog for a few days—I want you to remember this one thing. Live. Let the desire to live burn like a fire in your gut until you can do nothing else but thrive.”
“Is that what worked for you?”
“Yes and no.” She smiled, and it radiated the beauty of her soul. I knew in that moment that I would draw her face—that smile—every day for the rest of my life.
She was salvation. She was my—
There was a crash in the room.
I woke up with my wolf screaming for me to let him out. To find the enemy that had entered my room. To fight the pack that came back to the land in the next second. I wanted to relive that moment when I first got to see Cosette fight. I’d been worried at first—I hadn’t been in any shape to help her and Van was still gone—but she’d been so fierce and beautiful and deadly. That was when she officially started to own my soul. My wolf wanted me to attack the enemy that had woken me up. Kill. Kill. Kill him for interrupting my little bit of peace.
But my wolf was going to get me into trouble. I kept my eyes closed for a second, huddled under the covers, holding onto the feeling of seeing Cosette smile for the first time, savoring it so that the feeling would get me through whatever came next…
I wasn’t sure if it was being confined that brought up that particular memory or if it was because that was the first time I met Cosette—when she saved me—but I didn’t care. I was alive because of her. I thrived because of her. And now, I would do whatever it took to help her.
Time to get to work.
I rolled to sit, resting my legs over the edge of the low mattress. “Hello?” My rasp was always worse in the morning, and worse still with the wolf close.
“Oh. You’re awake.” The squeaky voice came from a few feet in front of me, but I couldn’t see anything there. “Time to get up! Time to get out!”
