Otto’s mind blanked.Gods help me, she’s beautiful.
Her hair was long and dark, with a slight wave that reminded him of a rippling brook. It framed an oval face with high cheekbones, button nose, and small, rosebud shaped mouth. She looked like an artist’s muse, or one of those ladies who met her friends for tea in fancy parlors he would never be allowed into.If they even still exist.Hard to imagine they did when one spent decades on a battlefield.
But her most striking feature was her otherworldly eyes.
They were large and tilted slightly downward in the corners, giving her a doe-eyed look that made her seem all the more vulnerable. He adored them instantly, but not because they gave her the look of painful innocence. It was because one was a pale, pale color he could only assume was blue and the other was a brown so dark, it looked almost black. They were utterly singular.
“No,” she answered, oblivious to the whiplash of worry and admiration he was experiencing. “I always feel sore after the last night of the full moon. It’s the lyssa.”
Just as quickly as she turned to look at him, she gave him her back. Hunching her shoulders, she fiddled with something until there was a metallic creaking sound and the rush of water.
His throat convulsed at the sound. He was so thirsty, his mind skated away from what she told him as soon as she turned around with a small wooden cup held carefully in both hands.
Josephine’s voice shook when she said, “I’m going to— I am going to put the cup near your foot. Please don’t move until I am out of reach.” Her voice dropped.“Please.”
“I won’t,” he assured her, ragged. “I promise I won’t, sweetlille mus.”
She stared at the floor for several beats, her eyes wide and white around the edges, before she began to inch her away over to him. Each step seemed to cost her, and with the shortening of the distance between them, her breaths quickened.
Otto was so painfully tense, he heard his teeth squeak against one another. He watched her kneel to set the cup down. The contents splashed against the rim with the force of her shaking.
So brave.He ran the pad of his thumb over the stolen ribbon. Even in his state, he could appreciate how much it must have cost her to come so near to him.
“I willneverhurt you,” he vowed as she hurried back to her side of the cell. When she wasn’t looking, he quickly stuffed the ribbon beneath the rough metal of his left cuff.
That done, Otto rose up onto his knees to reach for the cup, but he kept his gaze on her even when his fingers closed around the wood. “Do you understand me, Josephine?Never.”
Her back hit the metal door. Sliding back to the ground, she replied, “They say that sometimes, too.”
“Not like me,” he shot back, lips touching the rim of the cup.
No one could make the promises to her that he would. No one would ever be as safe from him as she would be. No one would matter more, or be as important to him, as her.
He felt her gaze on him as he gulped the cool water down, soothing his parched throat. Gods, he hadn’t tasted water that crisp in an age.
“What are you?”
Licking his lips to get every last drop of water he could, he answered, “I told you I’m a shifter.”
“But what kind?”
Otto withheld a pleased rumble. It was good that his little mouse was curious about him. Curiosity was the first step to trust, and it was critical that she begin to trust him. He couldn’t grasp much with his mind full of holes as it was, but he knew that with absolute certainty. “I thought you didn’t want to know anything about me?”
Josephine tightened her shawl around her narrow shoulders. “It’s not about wanting. It just— it’s easier.”
“For who?”
“Everyone.” Her chin dipped. “Me, especially.”
He rolled the cup between his palms. The links of his shackles tinkled with every slight movement. “Why?”
“Because they always leave,” she answered, suddenly tired, “and they always hate me when they do.”
Otto set the cup down with deliberate slowness. “Well,” he began, “I won’t pretend to know what is going on here, but I know two things for certain,lille mus.”
“What?”
He relaxed against the wall and offered her a slow, drowsy grin. “I will never be able to hate you.” Heat crawled up his spine and bloomed over every nerve when he added, voice pitched to a sensual growl, “And when I leave this place, I’m taking you with me.”
