The Healer

PROLOGUE

When you love someone, you will do anything for them. You will travel to the ends of the earth and bargain away your soul to sorcerers if it might give you just one more day together. You will crawl on your knees until they are scraped and bloodied. You will give away your money, your possessions, your dignity. You will throw yourself upon the mercy of doctors, of witches, of criminals.

You will trade your life for theirs in a heartbeat. You will if you know this is the bargain before you, if someone lays it out plainly, like the price tag on a trinket you might buy at the store.

Your life. For theirs.

Simple.

I know this now. I know so many other things I didn’t back then. Helplessness and hopelessness. Desperation. Love beyond all other loves. Love so big and vast that words fail. It would have been an easy decision.

My life. For theirs.

The problem comes when you’ve no idea that in choosing your own life, you’ve given theirs away.