Prologue - James Wylder

No one is coming to save you.

That's what her mother always said, but it was always a hollow warning; she never thought anyone was going to. No, being saved was something that happened to other people, not to her. Maybe her mother just saw how she stared up at the night sky from her bedroom window, as though a shooting star would come down and reach a bright hand down to lift her up to something more. And so, they thought she was a dreamer, when she said she was waiting for someone who would come back for her. She drew him on her tablet, a strong man with blonde hair in blue armor, like a heroic knight, only his face was as comforting as a teddy bear.

“She has such a big imagination,” they'd say. And the girl would lower her face ashamed that none of it was her imagination at all. “How cute,” they’d say, and it wasn’t a compliment.

Her dreams were just a passing whisper. She'd grow up and grow out of dreams, as though those two things were opposites. Because no one was coming to save her, the adults said, and they'd smile at each other wistfully, remembering with bittersweet fondness when the sparkle had been snuffed out of their own eyes.

But the grownups didn't know anything.

They’d already let her down. They sat there, musing on her innocence and their own wisdom, forgetting that they’d already left her to deal with all her struggles on her own. But that only strengthened their convictions. Sure, she’d suffered, sure, she’d been through some horrible stuff. But she’d get over it. And she’d be just as miserable as them, and that was a comfort.

Because they were wrong, and the girl was right.

There was someone out there, a bright and shining hero who stood out taller than the most looming shadows. And he would come back for her. And even if they laughed at her, she held onto that bright star in her sky, riding its tail through the doldrums of life.
He had taken her hand, and she knew that there was a world bigger than herself. Whenever she looked up at the sky, she knew the stars weren't just lights, they were beacons. Calling her to something beyond her day to day life at school.

“Are you drawing him again?” her friend had said, sighing.

The girl nodded. “It's nothing,” she lied.

“You're just going to be disappointed. You've made up a bunch of stuff in your head. He's just a character from those books you read.”

“He's not,” she mumbled. But she didn't press the issue. It wasn't worth fighting.

Time kept passing, and every day she looked more foolish to her friends, to her family, and to her teachers. A little girl caught up in a fantasy that some man was going to take her away from her ordinary life.

But she wasn't sad. Because all her classmates, all her teachers, and all her family were wrong.

The man was coming back.
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And she was going to be ready for him.

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