A Knight to Remember by Bridget Essex

everything…I fall fast asleep.
     
     
     
    Chapter 4:   Another World
     
    I wake with a start and a rush of breath.   My neck hurts so much as I open my eyes, sit up…but it probably hurts terribly because I fell asleep sitting up in my comfy chair, my head falling back against the chair top like I’m a ninety-year-old woman.  
    I rub at my eyes with the heels of my hands, yawn and stretch overhead a little, my head to the side as I massage my right shoulder.   Huh.   What a weird night.   I had the strangest dream, and…
    I blink and stare at the couch across from me for a long moment, breath coming in short gasps as my heart rate increases.
    There’s a puddle of dried blood on the cushions.
    Okay.
    So it probably wasn’t a dream then.
    I stagger upright, which doesn’t last long, because on my first step, I’m tripping over Shelley who was fast asleep on my feet, and I sprawl on my living room carpet.   Shelley yelps as I wake her up ungracefully from what was probably a lovely dream about excess kibble.   She scrabbles beneath me, and I crawl off her quickly, but she doesn’t seem to mind much, as she instantly bounds up, shaking her puffy coat, and then she’s wagging her tail hard again and pointing her long nose up with one of her cute doggie grins as she stares up at…
    “Are you all right?”   There’s a strong, warm hand at my elbow and my waist, and then gently, I’m turned over and raised in muscular arms, and I’m held in this incredibly gentle embrace…
    And oh, my God , it’s the woman from last night.
    She’s standing in my living room.
    Holding me.
    My eyes are drawn to those beautiful, full lips that are curled upwards in a graceful smile.   Her eyes, crinkled at the edges as she grins down at me, are the most intense blue I’ve ever been witness to, made even more intense by the daylight, as if that were possible.   They seem to glow from within, an ice blue that’s clear and vibrant beyond description.   As I stare up at her, at her gorgeous face with her lovely, strong high cheekbones, her graceful jaw and full lips I’m trying to memorize, she gently lets me go, steps away from me, gazing at me and clearing her throat softly, brows up and still smiling as she inclines her head toward me.
    “Um,” I breathe out, as I stand there with my mouth open.   Very articulate.   “Um…”   My voice trails off as my gaze drifts down, and I stare at her leg, at the gigantic hole in her leather pants.
    At the complete lack of blood.
    And, you know, at the lack of wound .
    The wound is gone .
    “Are you all right, m’lady?” she asks then, cocking her head.   She’s taken off her fur capelet and cloak, and stands in her armor over her shirt and pants and leather boots, one hand on her hip, and one hip cocked up.   She’s standing there in front of me with such an aimless surety, actually, and this raw sort of sensuality that my breath catches in my throat, and then I’m swallowing again, my mouth suddenly and instantly as dry as any desert I can think of.
      Virago, I remember, grappling with my brain.   She said last night that her name was Virago.
    “Virago…” I mutter, clearing my throat.   I can’t stop staring at her muscular, tanned leg through the hole in the leather pants.   (I’m kind of fixating on the leather pants thing, I realize.)   “What…happened?   Where’s…I mean, didn’t you have a really bad wound there last night?”   My eyes drift back up to her face, my cheeks reddening because my gaze pauses for a long moment on her armor-clad chest.   The wound on her stomach is also completely healed—I can see the bare, tanned skin through the hole in the shirt beneath her armor.   It’s as if she was never wounded in the first place.
    “I healed,” she says simply, gazing at me with brows raised, as if that statement was the most natural thing in the world.   She strides past me with the same practiced ease as a wolf, running her