Chapter 11: The Bracelet

Valerie's POV

They carried her to the infirmary behind the great hall and laid her on a narrow bed under a window.

She looked like me.

That was the worst part.

I stood at the foot of the bed in a borrowed coat and looked at my own face.

It was grey and slack, with blood dried at the corner of the mouth.

My own chestnut hair lay across a pillow that was not mine.

"Is she dying?" I asked the old woman who ran the infirmary.

"Slowly," said the old woman. "The body is fighting her. It wants the wolf it was made for."

"How long?"

"A week. Perhaps less."

She left.

The room was quiet except for the sound of my own lungs, rasping, in a chest that was not mine.

Odette's eyes opened.

They were gold.

They were mine, and they were full of tears.

"Val," she whispered.

I did not move from the foot of the bed.

"You asked the witch to make it permanent on the first night," I said.

"You sat at my bedside while I decided, and you cried, and you knew."

"I wanted to live."

"I know you did."

"You don't know what it's like." Her voice cracked.

"Seven months of waking up with a pain in my ribs, knowing this morning might be the one where it didn't stop."

"I looked at you, and you were so strong, and you were going to have everything. Jasper said it was only fair."

"Fair."

"He said you'd never need that body as much as I did."

I looked at her.

I thought about all the afternoons on my father's porch.

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