Ysanne

The carriage and the dead horse were exactly where she had left them, though the horse's corpse was somewhat more gnawed from whatever predators had found it during the night. She averted her eyes from the bodies of hr guards, not wanting to see if they had been gnawed too. Maybe she should have buried them. But then no one would ever find their remains. Their families would never know for sure that they had died.

She left the horse where it was for now, and progressed further into the countryside. Wild fruit trees were all stripped bare, their branches clattering in the bitter wind, but after a few miles, Ysanne stumbled upon a small town that she didn't recognise. With vampire stealth, she slipped past the town's boundaries, and helped herself to bread and potatoes and cheese, and an assortment of vegetables, stuffing it all into a small knapsack. She hadn't thought to take any money or even jewellery that she could have bartered, and though she felt a pang of guilt at stealing from people who didn't have much to begin with, she could return with money later. If Edmond was going to stay with her for the foreseeable future then he'd need more food than this anyway, so the next time she came here, she would pay double.

If she could, she would have returned home now and fetched money, but she'd already been out in the sun a while, and the house was several miles away. She couldn't risk her life.

Once, she wouldn't have needed to do this. Once, the grounds of her house had been home to structured vegetable plots – more than enough food for Edmond. But those plots had all died out, leaving nothing but bare earth and weeds. She had no choice.

Slinging the knapsack of stolen food over her shoulder, Ysanne headed for home.

As soon as the house came into view, rearing up out of the frozen countryside, she knew something was wrong.

The front door hung open and a strange man sprawled in the snow outside, clutching his bloodied face.

For a split-second, Ysanne was rooted in place.

Edmond . . .

Then she was running, her feet flying through the snow, the knapsack bouncing on her shoulder. The man lying in the snow was in her way – she trod on his chest as she leaped over him, and his ribs splintered beneath her foot. She tore into her house like a whirlwind, and when another intruder swung towards her, she smashed his face with a single, devastating punch. He crumpled to the floor. Two more were still standing, and one of them had Edmond pinned against the wall. He turned to her, letting Edmond go, and Edmond slid to the floor, the hilt of a knife sticking out of his side.

Ysanne's world turned red.

She lunged at the nearest man, sinking her teeth into his throat and tearing it open, spraying blood across the walls and floor and the face of his friend, who watched, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

Ysanne let the body in her hands drop, and turned her blazing red glare on the final intruder. Edmond's blood was all over his hand; she could smell it.

She'd done everything she could to keep him alive, and the second she left him alone, these bastards had stabbed him.

They would get no mercy from her.

She stalked forward, her face sticky and smeared with blood, her fangs jutting over her lips.

Her target was rooted to the spot, too petrified to run.

Ysanne grabbed his throat, pulled him close and bit deep into his jugular vein, swallowing hot mouthfuls of his blood. He shuddered and flopped in her arms, like a fish on a hook, and as his struggles grew weaker, she pulled back and let him drop. He was still alive as he hit the floor, his mouth helplessly working, blood spurting from the wound in his neck. Ysanne could have quickened his death.

Instead she let him bleed out.

"Edmond," she whispered.

He was slumped against the wall, both hands clasped to the wound, and for one awful, wretched moment, Ysanne was sure he was dead.

Then he groaned, tipping his head back until it thunked against the wall.

Ysanne fell to her knees beside him. "Don't move," she said.

Edmond gritted his teeth, his face pale. "I was . . . trying to protect the house."

Ysanne's old heart gave a sharp twist. He could have run and hidden, but he had risked his life to defend the house because he knew it was important to her.

"You are not going to die," she fiercely told him.

He smiled a little. "I wouldn't . . . want to . . . annoy you."

Carefully, Ysanne lifted him into her arms, but despite her best efforts, he moaned in pain, and more blood spilled between his fingers. "Keep your eyes open," she insisted, carrying him through to the main room.

She didn't know what he'd been doing in her absence, but a pot of water boiled in the fire, and Ysanne's chest hitched in relief. That would save precious time.

She laid Edmond down in the bed, and listened to the beat of his heart. It raced with shock and pain, but it wasn't stuttering or failing. Yet.

How bad was the wound?

Ysanne gently eased him onto his side and peeled away his blood-soaked shirt, trying to get a proper look at it. The knife had pierced him just above the hip, deep enough that the tip of the blade emerged on the other side. He wasn't bleeding from the mouth, which was good, but Ysanne was no physician – she couldn't tell if the knife had hit anything vital.

Edmond watched her, as if waiting for her verdict.

"I don't know how bad it is, but I can't leave the knife in," she said. "But I'm afraid that if I pull it out, I'll make it worse."

"I trust you," Edmond mumbled, still looking at her with pain-filled eyes, and Ysanne's heart twisted again.

How long had it been until someone had put their trust in her like this?

How long had it been since she had let someone?

"It's not a question of trust," she said, the words tasting bitter. "Taking this knife out could kill you."

His eyelids fluttered. "Can't . . . leave it in."

Ysanne closed her eyes. Yes, she might make the wound worse by pulling out the knife, but if she left it in, then Edmond would certainly die. She had to take the chance, however slim it might be.

"This is going to hurt," she warned.

"It already hurts."

Ysanne stroked his dark hair. "You're not going to die," she said again, as much for her benefit as his. "I won't let you."

She didn't even know why this mattered so much. In more than two and half centuries of life, she had suffered loss, and she would likely suffer more in years still to come. She barely knew Edmond; he was just some stranger who had stumbled into her life, but . . . somehow he mattered in a way she couldn't fully explain.

He could not die.

Ysanne grabbed a couple of shirts from her trunk and tore them into strips, then brought over the boiled water.

"Just breathe," she told him, curling her fingers around the hilt of the knife.

It was hers, she realised, one of the knives she had brought from the carriage. She told herself that it wouldn't have made any difference if he hadn't had it – the bastards would simply have stabbed him with one of their own knives – but that didn't ease a pang of guilt in her chest.

Edmond closed his eyes and leaned back in the pillows. "Do it," he whispered.

Ysanne did.

She pulled out the knife in one decisive movement, and Edmond gave a strangled cry, his back arching off the bed. Ysanne held him down, pressing wads of torn shirt to the wound.

If it had been a belly wound, there would have been little she could do. Killing him would have been kinder, to spare him days of suffering. But as she cleaned the wound, soaking more strips of cloth in boiling water and mopping up the blood, she realised just how lucky Edmond had been. The knife had punched straight through his flesh, but it was a clean wound; there was no smell of midden to indicate that it had punctured anything fatal.

Edmond watched as she bandaged the wound, his whole body limp and exhausted.

"I'm going to be a burden on you," he said, his hands moving uselessly on the bed.

"Do you really think I care about that?"

Edmond said nothing.

"Listen to me," Ysanne said, leaning in. "I am going to take care of you. No matter how long it takes to get you back to health; I'll do it."

Edmond's throat bobbed as he swallowed. "Why?" he whispered. "Why do you care?"

Ysanne didn't know how to answer that.

She stroked his hair again, smoothing it off his face. The bastards had roughed him up before they stabbed him; a bruise was spreading across his cheekbone, and his lower lip was split.

With a sweep of her tongue, Ysanne could heal that, but a split lip wasn't life-threatening, and doing something so . . . intimate might send Edmond into shock.

"Get some sleep," she told him. "I'm not going to leave you again."