Page 45 of Dark Princess: Shadows
If he listened intently, he could hear her heartbeat and the soft sound of her breathing. Maybe that was what had alerted him?
Brandon glanced at the monitors to see if there had been any changes, any spikes that would indicate that something was going on, but it didn't seem like anything had changed significantly. The graphs were moving up and down all the time, and unless they went haywire, he assumed that nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
Yet something had shifted. He could feel it.
Brandon stood and moved to lean over Morelle's bed. Her features were serene, almost luminescent in the soft lighting. She was pale, but her lips had good color, and they almost looked like someone had painted them with rouge. Without conscious thought, he reached for her hand.
Her skin felt cool against his palm, her fingers delicate and unresponsive.
"Hey, Princess," he said softly, "would you be offended if I kissed your hand?"
Was that the ghost of a smile touching her lips? No, it had to be his imagination, a trick of the light, or his own desperate wishful thinking. And yet...
"If you can hear me, and if you're willing to grant me that small liberty, could you give me a sign? Just a twitch of a finger or a flutter of your beautiful eyelashes?"
For a moment, nothing happened. Then…
Was that movement?
The faintest pressure against his palm?
Brandon held his breath, afraid to trust his own senses.
"I would love to take that as an invitation to kiss your hand, but could you do it again so I know it's real?"
This time, when he felt the light flutter against his palm, there was no doubt. One of her fingers definitely moved.
His heart leaped into his throat.
Brandon lifted Morelle's hand to his lips and pressed a gentle kiss to the nearly translucent skin on the back of it.
"I need to tell Bridget about this," he told her, still holding her hand.
As if to confirm she'd heard him or maybe to stop him from leaving, her finger twitched again.
Brandon's chest felt too tight to contain the hope swelling within it.
"Bridget!" he called out, eyes fixed on the security camera in the corner. "Bridget, please come in quickly!" He then remembered to deactivate the device hanging around his neck and repeated what he'd said.
The doctor entered the room a moment later. "What's going on?"
"Morelle moved her finger," he said, trying to keep his voice steady despite his excitement.
"Involuntary movements are common in coma patients."
"She hasn't moved anything before, and she only did it after I asked her to give me a sign."
Bridget lifted one red eyebrow. "A sign for what?"
He was embarrassed to admit what he had asked for, but the doctor needed to know. "Permission to kiss her hand."
Bridget smiled. "That's sweet. I didn't know you were such a romantic."
"Given what I've been doing for a living for the past seventy years or so, it should have been obvious."
She chuckled. "You were promoting the clan's agenda, and sometimes you included the message we wanted to promote in romantic movies because it was easier for the public to swallowwhen delivered with a spoonful of sugar. That does not make you a romantic. I would say it makes you pragmatic."
That was a nice way to describe what most of his fellow council members thought of him. He had a reputation for being a shark, and it was well deserved.