CHAPTER 17: The River Between Us
The mountain had been quiet for days, save for the gentle rustling of wind between pine trees and the steady rhythm of recovery inside the Yurman estate.
Yurman — once a living shadow — now sat up on his own. His eyes, once dim with fatigue and slow death, now held glimmers of clarity. He could sip herbal tonics without aid, flex fingers that had withered from disuse. The heir of the Albert Empire — bedridden for twelve long years — had begun his return to life.
Thanks to her.
The healer no one could name.
The woman who asked for no recognition and gave no identity — only results.
Valerie stood silently outside Yurman's room that morning, her fingers resting over the brass doorknob, her thoughts already a valley away.
"You've done more than we ever hoped for," Jennifer had whispered that morning, holding her hand firmly between warm palms. "If there's anything we can ever do for you…"
Valerie only smiled behind her mask and shook her head. There was nothing more to do. Her work was finished. The mountain had given her peace, and now it was time to go.
She returned to her cabin, its small hearth still warm from last night's brew. Her duffel was already packed. She moved with practiced silence, folding away herbs, salves, and fine needles with the care of someone putting away sacred relics.
She was famished.
And she only knew how to make one thing.
She whisked a few eggs into a pan, the scent of soft browning omelet bringing a lump to her throat. It always did.
Valerie sat before the plate, staring at it as memory overwhelmed her. Her sweet mother. Gone.
Just then, a soft knock came at the door.
She opened it slowly. A tall woman stood at the threshold — poised, elegant, and gentle.
Jennifer Yurman.
"I know you won't eat much," Jennifer smiled, holding out a container. "But this is from both of us. Yurman insisted." Her eyes softened. "Thank you. For everything. I don't know who you are, but we owe you… his life."
Valerie took the thermo box and offered a respectful nod. "Your son is strong. He only needed the right push."
Jennifer hesitated before leaving. "Be safe, healer."
Her mind drift off to Jackson message of groups looking all around for her. She scroll through the message again, she cant shake off the strange feeling she had at that moment.
She turned off the screen. If someone was truly coming for her, she'd deal with it. Like she always did.
She left quietly.
She took a hidden path down the mountainside, a route only she knew — through thickets, over rocky ridges, to a clearing that would eventually lead to the valley road. The air was crisp. A few birds chirped above. Peaceful.
Too peaceful.
The first arrow flew past her cheek, slicing her mask open.
She spun, eyes widening. Her mask — her shield — cracked and slipped from her face. A second arrow grazed her shoulder.
Figures in black poured out from the woods like shadows come alive. At least ten of them. All silent. All armed. Swords. Knives. Poison-tipped darts.
She didn't know who they were.
In a glass-walled room far away, Leonard Yurman, the late CEO's brother, stood by a fireplace swirling cognac in his glass. The heir had risen. His plan to claim the family fortune had collapsed — all because of one woman.
"The healer," he said to his man. "Make it look like an accident."
"What about Yurman?"
"If you hurt Yurman, healer will save him again. Let's get her out first. "
---
Valerie fought like a woman possessed. Her sleeves snapped with needles, her fingers lit with strikes of chi. She ducked blades, snapped wrists, took two men down with a spinning heel.
But the numbers. The numbers.
A sword cut deep across her thigh. Another slashed near her ribs. Blood bloomed from her tunic. Her breath grew ragged.
She took the last man down with a final lunge — jamming a needle through his throat.
Then she staggered.
And ran.
She didn't know how long she moved before she collapsed at a riverside — mud-caked, bruised, bloodied, half-conscious. She scooped water into her hands, trembling, trying to clean the wound on her abdomen.
Her body gave in. She fell against a stone, panting.
Then...
A ship's horn blared.
Not far away, on a private dock along the mountain's edge, King Albanian stood beside his favorite vessel — his house nearby, his solitude kept secret from even his closest aides. It was where he came when nothing made sense.
He had just disembarked, hands in pockets, when he saw it.
A limp body.
Near the rocks.
A woman. Bleeding.
"Wayne!" he called sharply.
The man beside him turned. "Sir?"
He didn't answer. He was already moving. Jogging. Then running.
---
He knelt beside her, turning her gently.
Blood. Cuts. A torn sleeve. Her face scratched, her eyes closed. His pulse quickened.
Something was... strange. Familiar.
But he couldn't place it.
"Get the med kit," he barked to Wayne. "Now."
He didn't know that the woman he had just saved — whose face now lay exposed to him for the first time — was the one he'd been searching for in secret. The ghost that haunted his senses. The girl from the hotel suite. The calming pill. The scent he couldn't forget.
Because back then — she wore a mask.
Now, she lay vulnerable at his feet, and he still didn't know.
Not yet.
Perfect — let's begin Chapter 17 with King Albanian bringing Valerie into his private sea-view villa after rescuing her, still unaware of who she truly is. Her scent, her presence, the serenity she brings despite her unconscious state—all stir something deep within him.
---
The sea whispered softly outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of King Albanian's cliffside villa, a place carved into nature for moments of solitude he could never truly afford. The air was tinged with salt and the scent of pine from the surrounding woods, but tonight, a different scent lingered in the room—soft, faint, and inexplicably familiar.
She lay unconscious on the leather chaise near the hearth, her arm freshly stitched and wrapped, her leg immobilized in a brace he'd improvised from what little he had in his emergency kit. He had carried her through the forest like a man bewitched—feet bloodied, breaths shallow, but her will refusing to die.
Now, under the flicker of warm light, she seemed peaceful. But King… he wasn't.
He stood beside her, staring.
The woman's face was uncovered—finally visible. Her mask, cracked and cast off during the battle he'd missed by mere minutes, lay beside her bloodied coat. She was ethereal, though pale with pain. Her cheeks bore fading bruises. Her lashes were long. Her lips were parted slightly, as though mid-thought. King had no idea who she was. Not truly.
But there was that scent again.
He turned away sharply and poured himself a glass of whisky, his fourth since he'd cleaned her wounds. Still, he couldn't shake the sensation pressing down on his chest.
"Why… do I feel like I know you?"
Her presence didn't just unsettle him—it quieted the chaos that usually roared inside his head.
She reminded him of the girl.
The girl who vanished like mist.
The one who left only the calming pill and a question that haunted him day and night. The one whose trace had faded from his suite, but not from his memory.
He glanced back at the stranger. She hadn't made a sound. But even in silence, she felt like that woman.
He dragged a hand through his hair, his heart ticking like a bomb. The coincidence was too sharp. Too strange. But it couldn't be her. She wore no mask. She looked different. Still…
Her hand twitched, her brows tightened. She murmured something in her sleep.
King stepped closer, watching.
Then it hit him again—that inexplicable calm.
A balm.
Exactly what he felt that night in the hotel suite.
His voice was low, conflicted. "Who the hell are you?"
He didn't know, but he couldn't walk away. Not until he got answers.
---
Meanwhile...
Outside, a dark figure lingered near the outermost cliff path, a scope in hand. A man in a grey coat spoke quietly into his comms.
"We lost her," he said. "But she's with someone. Can't see the face. Working on identification."
Far away, in a luxury suite in Paris, Yurman's uncle listened in silence. His lips curled into a cruel smile.
"No matter. She can't disappear again. Keep an eye on them."
She was burning up.
King stood over her with a damp cloth, his sleeves rolled up, the flickering lamp casting a warm hue over the room. Her breathing had become labored, her skin flushed with heat. A fever had crept in like an enemy under the cover of night, determined to steal her away.
He didn't call a doctor.
Not because he couldn't—he could summon the finest in minutes.
But because he didn't trust anyone with her, he didn't know his story not when she is this hurt. It is so clear she has been attacked and probably
Because something inside him refused to let anyone else touch her.
He soaked another towel in the cold basin, wrung it out, and gently dabbed her forehead. Her skin sizzled beneath the cool fabric, but she didn't stir. Her lashes twitched. A soft, painful sound slipped from her lips—a whimper, faint and broken.
It stabbed through his chest.
Why does it hurt to hear her like this?
He pulled a chair close to the side of the bed—his bed, where he'd laid her hours ago—and sat down, cloth in hand, keeping vigil.
The woman wasn't just injured. She was fighting for her life in her dreams, just as she had clearly fought those assassins earlier. Her body bore the bruises, the slashes, and now this fever—as if it were the final toll.
He whispered something under his breath. A curse, a prayer, a demand that she stay alive. He didn't even know her name, but it didn't matter.
He had to keep her alive.
The hours dragged into the depths of night. At some point, his whisky glass sat forgotten on the table. He no longer reached for it. Only the sound of the waves crashing against the cliff kept time with his breathing.
Every hour, he replaced the cloth.
Every hour, he wiped the sweat from her brow and whispered hoarse reassurances she couldn't hear.
Her lips moved once in her sleep.
"...water…"
King poured a glass and gently held her up, helping her sip.
"You're safe," he murmured, though she couldn't hear him. "You're safe now."
He didn't sleep. Not even for a moment.
He sat by her through the night, his hands steady, his focus absolute. He didn't remember the last time he'd stayed up for someone else. He never had to.
But she wasn't someone else.
And though he didn't understand it, her presence here... somehow felt like a turning point. Like fate had paused its spinning to give him a second chance at something he hadn't dared to name.
When the first light of dawn broke over the sea, the fever finally began to fall.
Her breathing eased.
Her body, once aflame with heat, cooled to a livable warmth.
Only then did King lean back, rubbing his eyes, fatigue dragging at every limb.
But his eyes never left her face.
Not even once.
---
Perfect. Here's the next continuation of Chapter 17, where Valerie slowly regains consciousness and instinctively senses safety—but doesn't yet realize who her mysterious caretaker is. The tension builds, the recognition teeters just out of reach, and the emotional current thickens.
---
A faint scent of salt and pine drifted through her senses.
Valerie stirred. Her eyes fluttered beneath their lids, her body heavy, sluggish—like waking underwater. Her mouth was dry, her limbs sore, but the sharp pain that had gnawed at her side was dulled now, replaced by something gentler. Something... human.
Her lips parted, breath shaky.
She didn't know where she was.
Not yet.
But her first conscious thought wasn't of fear.
It was safety.
A blanket tucked to her chest. Bandages, freshly wrapped. The unmistakable sensation of someone having watched over her. Not clinically. Not out of duty. But... care.
Who?
She opened her eyes.
The room was softly lit by the early morning sun streaming through white curtains. A sea breeze fluttered in. The place was unfamiliar—clean, modern, but touched with old-world richness. Beyond the large window was a glimpse of water, cliffs, and sky.
Then she saw him.
A man in a dark linen shirt, now half-asleep in a chair beside her bed. His head leaned back, his brows furrowed slightly even in slumber. A glass of untouched whiskey on the table. A discarded towel in a silver basin.
Her breath caught.
His profile was strong, his jaw shadowed with stubble, his hands still loosely clenched as if he'd fought sleep the same way she fought death.
She didn't recognize him.
But something in her chest did.
That same stillness. That same... hush in the air she'd felt in the hotel room. The one that had calmed her. Like her soul had exhaled in his presence.
Her eyes stung.
Why does he feel familiar?
She tried to sit up.
The sound was soft—a rustle of blankets—but enough to stir him.
His eyes snapped open, sharp, alert, the way only a man trained by violence could be. They landed on her instantly, and for a moment, neither moved. Time stood still between two heartbeats.
"You're awake," he said quietly.
His voice. Low, smooth, laced with exhaustion. And something else.
She didn't speak. Her throat was too dry, and her brain too foggy.
He poured water from a glass jug and brought it to her lips without waiting for a reply.
She hesitated.
Then accepted.
He watched her drink, his hand steady even as hers trembled. When she finished, he lowered the glass, but didn't move away.
"You've been unconscious for almost two days," he said. "You had a fever. Deep gash to your ribs. Your shoulder was nearly dislocated. There was blood in your lungs."
She looked away.
Foolish. She'd underestimated how many they were. How long she could last alone. But she couldn't show weakness now.
Still, she murmured, "You saved me?"
A pause. His gaze didn't waver.
"I was at the dock. You stumbled out of the woods like a ghost. Collapsed right there at my feet."
Valerie turned her face to the window, blinking rapidly.
A ghost. That's exactly what she'd become.
But why... Why did her body ache to stay near him? Why did the scent of the room, of him, settle her pulse?
"Thank you," she whispered.
He didn't reply. Instead, he reached for the basin and changed the towel, placing it once again on her forehead with such gentle precision it nearly broke her.
The Healer in her knew she should be resisting. Asking who he was. Planning her escape.
But something in the way he moved made her chest tighten.
She didn't know his name.
He didn't know hers.
And yet, somehow, in this quiet morning light, between the ghosts of fever dreams and the scars of battles fought in silence, they both understood:
This wasn't their first meeting.