He guarded her for weeks. It might as well have been a sleepless eternity to the exhausted, faithful warrior. He hardly closed his eyes. His posture slumped, but still he sat like an ivory gargoyle near her sleeping form. He ate what little carrion he could find within the designated boundaries of his camp. He waited for her to wake up . . .

Even now Vladya’s pyrite gaze warmed with an impossible flicker of frustrated affection and aching anticipation when it brushed over his girl. Twilight draped lavender shadows across the gently moving plane of her chest. Kobato. Her surrendering scream had obliterated a stone wall within Vladya that had forbidden any promise of tenderness from entering his calloused heart since before he could remember. That impenetrable prison crumbled, shaken into devastation by the raw agony pulling free from the center of Kobato’s injured universe. Ragged boulders cracked and collected in a heavy heap within Vlad’s bruised ribs, leaving the space they once incarcerated hollow and defenseless and weightless. For the first time in his existence Vlad discovered that he could look at someone else with kindness, unfettered by anger’s armor. It hurt. But it was also gloriously liberating. She had splintered as he had splintered; now it was Vladya’s turn to heal the healer.

Fuck. Talk about turning the goddam tables.

When Kobato had fallen into unconsciousness, the fearless soldier that had somehow survived inside Vlad took command. Useless anxiety burned away—this, at least, the outlaw knew how to handle. How many of his tundra brothers had he carried away from the blood-slicked snows of the battlefield? With an ease that spoke of too much practice, Vladya hefted Kobato perpendicularly onto his back, where she hung limp and surprisingly, terrifyingly light. The frostbitten ghost had to remind his pathetic self that Ko was still there and breathing as he marched solemnly into the darkness of Abendrot; as delicate as it was, her heartbeat pattered steadily in her breast.

Now they rested in a secret copse of young trees that seemed untouched by whispers of war and accusation. A few weeks. Forever. Vladya did not know when Kobato would escape her enchanted slumber, if she ever would escape, yet he had resolved himself to wait until flesh dropped rotting from his bones and those bones crumbled into dust. No way was he going to fucking give up on her. She was the soul he’d wasted and the dignity he had lost. She was his reason. She was—

“Vladya . . .”

Hope slammed him in the gut so hard Vladya doubled over where he sat. Breath gasped into his tightened chest. His dark gold and red-limned eyes seared into the forest, not daring to peer over his shoulder to see if Kobato was really awake. He had imagined this moment before, her velvety voice disturbing the crushing silence the way a single drop of rain sends ripples into a calm pool, her sunlit windows bringing life back to that deathly calm face—

The eyes that were open when Vladya slowly craned his neck around to see her—

A smile as shaky as a newborn fawn on its legs tilted Vlad’s scarred lips. His tail flopped awkwardly in greeting as he walked slowly, carefully toward her. “Hey, kid. Rise and shine.”