“Please tell me who you are. I think I’ve seen you watching me from a distance. I want to see you. I want to know who you are.”
“You will know soon enough. We will meet again, my beloved.” His hand swept across my forehead, the way my mother used to soothe me when I was ill.
Don’t think about her. She’s dead to me.
I pushed those thoughts away and focused on the warmth of this man’s touch. His fingers comforted me in a way no one had since Balthazar had broken me. I clung to these feelings drowning me and discovered a string to follow to safety. But if I moved abruptly, too fast, or tugged the string too hard, it would snap, and I’d sink like a stone.
“Stay, Olivia. Get strong,” he said.
Then he rose, leaving a cold vacuum of air where his warmth had once been.
I shivered, drawing the bison hides around me. Had I imagined the man? Had my shattered mind conjured up something I could hold onto, some wisp of sanity to pull me out of the depths?
I brushed my fingertips across my face.
I think it was real—I thinkhewas real. But who is he, and what does he want with me? Was this the same man who had rescued Roman from Balthazar? Might Roman and I have some strange benefactor?
Whoever the man was, or whatever he was, or whether or not I’d dreamed him, I felt a restorative measure of peace. I vowed not to die—at least not tonight, anyway. And in the morning, I could assess everything and make new choices.
Yet when I drifted into a night of sleep as dark and weighted as the space surrounding me, I became uncertain if I would ever wake up.
Had death mercifully claimed me after all?
Olivia
It had been two weeks of endless trekking across the unending plains. Two weeks of traveling with our small, haggard tribe. No songs were sung, no idle chatter was exchanged—it was like we were ghosts, having abandoned our spirits on the day of the Kiowa attack. Yet still, we moved as if to remind ourselves of our earthly existence.
Grey Feather could never settle for long in a place before he up and moved us again.
I didn’t care one bit. With no will left, I simply did what I was told. You want me to go here? Done. You want me to travel for three days until I rest? Done. You want me to haul firewood from the foothills? All right.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Nothing, except for the memory of being caressed by the man who came to me that night. His presence in the dark of the night, in the smothering murkiness of my teepee two weeks ago, made no sense to me. He’d soothed me—speaking to me with tenderness.
How could the darkness be kind? Could demons still hold beating hearts, a sliver of light inside their shattered souls?
I refused to believe that. And yet…his touch had been so tender, speaking of care and comfort. His touch urged me to slowly come back to life. I wanted to be in his presence again. I wanted him to come back to me. But he never returned, and I felt more lonely like I’d experienced a dream that faded away.
Had I made him up? He was here one minute and gone the next. Could he be a demon like Balthazar, or was he a fiction of my imagination?
I refused to believe that he possessed the same demonic soul as Balthazar. No, he gave me comfort and strength. The darknesses I’d encountered were all evil and ruthless, especially Balthazar, who had no kindness. Balthazar inflicted pain and sorrow. The man who came to me, whoever he was, comforted me. No darkness would ever do that. But the way he disappeared and his swift, graceful movements only made me question my encounter and consider that maybe he was the darkness.
I hoped I would get answers soon.
“Olivia!”
The sound of my name broke my memory-wandering. I looked up, squinting at the high grasses that surrounded me.
“Olivia!” The tone was sharper, more insistent.
I cocked my head and stared at the dull-purple spikes of the switchgrass.
“Olivia!” My name was uttered as a scream this time.
The grasses in my line of sight rippled, and a bobbing shape pushed through the tall plants.
I studied the shape until it took on form and meaning.
