You’re weak, said the Iceman. You should have ended it. Now you’ve got this to deal with when Hunter is out there, trapped, the Agents closing in. They’ll take her away and you’re crying like a baby in your little ice box.
He let out an exhausted, exasperated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. Something Liz once said to him leapt from a memory inside his mind as though she were gazing into his eyes and whispering to him. Make the right choice now, she said, when it counts.
Joshua nodded slowly, ran a hand through his hair and made his decision. After all, there was really no other choice in the matter.
Are you serious? The Iceman shook his head slowly. You’re actually going to wake them up instead of finding Hunter first?
“Miss Smart will get Hunter to forgive me,” Joshua said softly. “All will be as it was.”
The Iceman pointed a bright blue finger at the other body. And the kid?
Joshua lifted the silver chain with the fragile symbol for fire made from his very own minerals and dangled it before his eyes. He could still remember the moment Liz forced the gift for her new baby daughter into his cold hands seconds before she died.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I’ll have to wake Eli as well.”
Dear reader,
For you to understand exactly how blown away I am that you have picked up this book and stuck with it to the end, let me share a little about myself and how this story came to be.
As I write this, I am sitting in my bed around a pile of books in a small city called Adelaide. I work at my local video store, I teach acoustic guitar and I am a part-time Nanny. I finished school two years ago, and have since then worked several different jobs and travelled for 3 months around Europe. Having caught the travel bug, I am now in the process of saving for 6 months work in a Canadian ski resort in Alberta, after which I will travel the USA.
I am not a movie star or someone with a particularly interesting or challenging life story, but I just so happen to have a wild imagination gifted with the ability to tell a story. And I am deeply proud of this book. So proud, in fact, that the first several comments I received online from the lovely people who read this as an ARC copy made me break down in tears. Because it is so wonderful to have someone read something I have worked so hard on and love so completely that it literally fills my heart with joy.
So I want to personally thank you, Reader, for simply giving Rouge a chance, for sticking with it (her) until the end (of this book), and I pray that you have fallen in love with Hunter’s story enough to someday, when it is released, pick up the sequel.
With all my love and gratitude,
Isabella
Rouge Page 31
