Hundreds (Dollar, #3)

by Pepper Winters

Elder wasn’t just a man. He was more than human. He’d transcended into fantasy. He was the beast locked in a castle. He was the hero battling inner demons. He was more than just mortal because he’d already done so much more than any other roguish storybook prince would do. He’d rescued me. He’d awakened me.

I hadn’t been a saint in my past but staring at Pim…no other woman existed. She was the only woman. She was the only creature with that title. It felt as if I’d never seen a female before.

How had she been kept as a possession for all those years and never broken? How could she be treated so terribly but never allowed them to ruin her? Did no one else see what I did? See the empress in mortal form? See the warrior so much braver than anyone?

“We’re worth the weight of what we leave behind. The people we’ve touched. The lives we’ve shared. The knowledge we’ve gathered and traded. Physically, we’re worth the dust our corpses turn into, but spiritually, we’re rich forever.”

She was the first person to give me something with thought behind it. To treat me like a lover and not a captor. In her presence, I was more accepted and cared for than I had been in years. The loneliness I was so used to was now a third wheel with her around.