The Twilight Saga Collection part 2(251)

I didn’t realize someone was holding my hand until whoever it was squeezed it lightly. Like it had before to hide the pain, my body locked down again in surprise. This was not a touch I expected. The skin was perfectly smooth, but it was the wrong temperature. Not cold.

After that first frozen second of shock, my body responded to the unfamiliar touch in a way that shocked me even more.

Air hissed up my throat, spitting through my clenched teeth with a low, menacing sound like a swarm of bees. Before the sound was out, my muscles bunched and arched, twisting away from the unknown. I flipped off my back in a spin so fast it should have turned the room into an incomprehensible blur—but it did not. I saw every dust mote, every splinter in the wood-paneled walls, every loose thread in microscopic detail as my eyes whirled past them.

So by the time I found myself crouched against the wall defensively—about a sixteenth of a second later—I already understood what had startled me, and that I had overreacted.

Oh. Of course. Edward wouldn’t feel cold to me. We were the same temperature now.

I held my pose for an eighth of a second longer, adjusting to the scene before me.

Edward was leaning across the operating table that had been my pyre, his hand reached out toward me, his expression anxious.

Edward’s face was the most important thing, but my peripheral vision catalogued everything else, just in case. Some instinct to defend had been triggered, and I automatically searched for any sign of danger.

My vampire family waited cautiously against the far wall by the door, Emmett and Jasper in the front. Like there was danger. My nostrils flared, searching for the threat. I could smell nothing out of place. That faint scent of something delicious—but marred by harsh chemicals—tickled my throat again, setting it to aching and burning.

Alice was peeking around Jasper’s elbow with a huge grin on her face; the light sparkled off her teeth, another eight-color rainbow.

That grin reassured me and then put the pieces together. Jasper and Emmett were in the front to protect the others, as I had assumed. What I hadn’t grasped immediately was that I was the danger.

All this was a sideline. The greater part of my senses and my mind were still focused on Edward’s face.

I had never seen it before this second.

How many times had I stared at Edward and marveled over his beauty? How many hours—days, weeks—of my life had I spent dreaming about what I then deemed to be perfection? I thought I’d known his face better than my own. I’d thought this was the one sure physical thing in my whole world: the flawlessness of Edward’s face.

I may as well have been blind.

For the first time, with the dimming shadows and limiting weakness of humanity taken off my eyes, I saw his face. I gasped and then struggled with my vocabulary, unable to find the right words. I needed better words.

At this point, the other part of my attention had ascertained that there was no danger here besides myself, and I automatically straightened out of my crouch; almost a whole second had passed since I’d been on the table.

I was momentarily preoccupied by the way my body moved. The instant I’d considered standing erect, I was already straight. There was no brief fragment of time in which the action occurred; change was instantaneous, almost as if there was no movement at all.

I continued to stare at Edward’s face, motionless again.

He moved slowly around the table—each step taking nearly half a second, each step flowing sinuously like river water weaving over smooth stones—his hand still outstretched.

I watched the grace of his advance, absorbing it with my new eyes.

“Bella?” he asked in a low, calming tone, but the worry in his voice layered my name with tension.

I could not answer immediately, lost as I was in the velvet folds of his voice. It was the most perfect symphony, a symphony in one instrument, an instrument more profound than any created by man. . . .

“Bella, love? I’m sorry, I know it’s disorienting. But you’re all right. Everything is fine.”

Everything? My mind spun out, spiraling back to my last human hour. Already, the memory seemed dim, like I was watching through a thick, dark veil—because my human eyes had been half blind. Everything had been so blurred.

When he said everything was fine, did that include Renesmee? Where was she? With Rosalie? I tried to remember her face—I knew that she had been beautiful—but it was irritating to try to see through the human memories. Her face was shrouded in darkness, so poorly lit. . . .

What about Jacob? Was he fine? Did my long-suffering best friend hate me now? Had he gone back to Sam’s pack? Seth and Leah, too?

Were the Cullens safe, or had my transformation ignited the war with the pack? Did Edward’s blanket assurance cover all of that? Or was he just trying to calm me?