VANGUARD(57)

“Sounds like you’re doing just fine,” Anjali said encouragingly. “Make sure you wear gloves and take the meds yourself. Does the kit have everything you need?”

“Yes, thank you.” Michael took a damp cloth and wiped Sophie’s forehead again, taking care not to catch the stitches on her forehead. It occurred to him that this could provide something else for him to do. “Anjali, do you want me to remove her stitches?”

“Sure, they’re due to come out.”

Michael disinfected the area, clipped the ends and removed the thread. The wound had healed well, but she’d have a scar running diagonally between her eyes now.

“One less thing to worry about,” he grunted. “Do you think this is where the infection entered the body?”

“Unlikely,” Anjali said. “It’s not like she split her forehead open in a latrine. It was a knife wound, and it was cleaned thoroughly before stitching. Mind you, she used her scarf to stop the initial bleeding in the Commandant’s office. Hardly a sterile item, it had been all over the camp. So it’s not out of the question.”

“Yes.” Michael mumbled a few more things without knowing what he was saying, then hung up.

A knife wound. In the Commandant’s office.

Michael had seen the men in Parnaas who had the symbols on their faces. They whispered that the Commandant himself cut it into the flesh of Orlisian men who had been called upon to offer their services to the camp. It was said to be done with the Commandant’s special knife, right in his office. Some had died of the subsequent blood infection.

He could feel his body start to tremble, and he groped blindly for a chair. He sat down before he fell down.

I will kill him with my bare hands.

Sophie twisted in bed behind him, moaning. Michael knew why the Commandant had chosen to mark her. The knife had been payment for allowing him out of the camp. The only question was how she had managed to escape with a single slash as opposed to the entire hammer and sickle the other men had borne.

She allowed a madman to put a knife to her face to protect me.

Michael heard a noise in the room and realized it was coming from him. He crammed his hand into his mouth to muffle the rising shriek inside him. He sat there, numb, as his world crashed down around him. Every barrier, every defense he had built over the last ten years collapsed in a heap at his feet.

I am a fool.

After all she had done for him…

“How do you think I feel? I had to be rescued by a woman.”

Had he thanked her? Michael searched his memory for some evidence that he’d shown appropriate gratitude to her. He found none. His eyes stung with tears.

Sophie Swenda. The woman he loved more than his own life. She was everything, everything to him.

When were you planning on letting her know that?

She knew. Did she not? Did she not know how much he loved her? It always seemed to be such a natural part of who they were.

How would she know? When was the last time you told her? He knew the answer to that question. Once. He had told her once in the last ten years that he loved her.

His mind whirled back. All the years, all the time that had passed since they had met. He had never visited her at Stanford. Her calls, emails, friendly texts had arrived regularly. His had been sporadic. Michael had used her a dozen times to get out of bad dates, yet he had never asked her out on one. Never taken her out for a nice dinner. Never even taken her to the movies.

But we both knew we had to be apart while we finished school and started our careers!

The unspoken agreement – that they had to wait until they had established their careers until they could truly be together. Now, ten years and four academic degrees between them, he had yet to lower the last wall and bring her into his life forever.

When they’d ended up in New York City together the previous summer, he’d dreamed of spending every minute with her. In fact, he had declined his second field placement with Médecins Sans Frontières so that for once he and Sophie could be in the same place at the same time. They would have done all the things they’d missed out on in the previous years. The summer of a lifetime, perhaps capped off by him asking her to share the rest of her life with him.

Instead, he’d stormed off to Orlisia, convinced he could save his country. And she had let him go…given him her blessing. Because he had asked it of her. Yet when she had begged to come with him, he’d lost his temper and said no.

She had thought of him as she lay with other men.