Rosalie Ashwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Rosalie sat at the corner table with her pencil moving across the page. She drew the line of his jaw first, then the scar that cut through it. The sketch wasn't perfect, but it was close enough to pull him out of memory and pin him to paper. If she could show someone this face, maybe she could finally learn his name. She walked to the wooden message board outside the marketplace and pinned the sketch between notices for missing cats and harvest sales. A woman passing by stopped to look. Her face went pale. She grabbed Rosalie's wrist and pulled the sketch down, crumpling it in her fist. "Stop looking for him," the woman said, her voice low and tight. "Trust me. You don't want to find that man." She pushed the crumpled paper into Rosalie's hand and walked away fast, glancing back once before she disappeared into the crowd. Rosalie smoothed the sketch flat against her palm, staring at the scar she'd drawn so carefully. Now she had to know who he was. But the woman had dropped something when she ran. A silver medallion lay in the dirt where she'd stood, ancient runes carved around its edge. Rosalie picked it up and turned it over in her fingers. The metal was warm, as if it had been worn close to skin for a long time. She slipped it into her pocket and looked at her sketch again. The warning had done the opposite of what the woman wanted. If the man with the scar was dangerous enough to make strangers go pale and run, then he'd saved her from something worse than she'd thought. She had to find him, not just to thank him, but to understand what she'd really been saved from.