^^Above, the Hudson siblings: Ellie Bamber (pictured as Cosette in BBC's Les Miserables) as Naomi, right; Louis Partridge (pictured as Lord Tewkesbury in Netflix's Enola Holmes 2) as Wells, left.

(Note: Words in parentheses and italicised mean a strikethrough, since WP doesn't have this function.)

The Private (and I mean private) Thoughts of Wells Hudson

If you're reading this, and I mean you, Naomi, you've gone too far.

19 March.

Langdon Wilkes is an idiot.

Langdon Wilkes is a fool.

Langdon Wilkes is someone (I love to hate) despise.

(I hope he never sees this) I hope he knows it.

And I guess I need to get on with everything following the vampire attack and stop dwelling on how much I hate Langdon Wilkes.

We got the two of them out of Southwark. Those poor little Institute boys — entitled and well-off, the both of them — didn't know their way around and it was clear they'd gone to the vampire den in King's Bench Street without knowing what they were getting into. Before we'd left, my sister and I had checked to see that it was indeed a feeding night. The workhouse would be empty of the entire family except the mother, the father, and the very young who didn't know how to hunt yet.

"You do realise the King's Bench Family is one of the oldest, don't you?" Naomi had said on the way there. "It's said the father alone is over seven-hundred years old. A knight killed in the Crusades, apparently."

"I know, Naomi," I'd snapped back at her. She was the research end of our hunts, because I could never crack a book to save my life. I was more concerned with things like strategy, technique, weapons. That wasn't to say my sister wasn't a good hunter. She actually was, probably better than me. But just like most other things, the hunting world was another that was mostly men.

After we too left Southwark, and were safely on our way back to our row house in West Hampstead, I sat and stared straight ahead while Naomi wept silently next to me. I couldn't understand why she was crying over that boy. He'd gone in there unprepared. It wasn't her concern, after all.

But she was my sister. I couldn't help but feel a small twinge of sympathy.

"He didn't know what he was getting into," I said. "It's not your fault."

"Yes, but if I could have..." She wiped at her nose, then her eyes. "And poor Langdon, the look on the boy's face..."

"Poor Langdon?" I said sharply. "This is about him?"

"I saw his face, Wells, you didn't." Her voice hardened. "And just because your heart's made of stone, that doesn't mean everybody else's is."

"He is an inexperienced, blundering nitwit," I said, liking the way those words sounded together. "He could have gotten himself killed."

"His friend explained why they were there," Naomi fired back, "in case you care to listen. Or are you too busy thinking of new insults for Langdon?"

"Fine." I scowled and crossed my arms. "What did Wilkes's friend say?"

She tells me the story: that Wilkes, Isham — the friend we got away with — and Gifford — the one we didn't — were going out vampire hunting for supposed practise. They ended up at the King's Bench Street Family's lair on a tip from Wilkes's father, the headmaster of the Institute. I snorted at that, because it confirmed why I didn't like Wilkes. Naomi continued anyway — either the older Wilkes was misinformed and sent them there unknowingly, or he knew they would have no success. No matter what the reason, the fact remained that an Institute student was now in the clutches of the vampires, and there was nothing they could do to get him back. I knew for a fact that the father wouldn't let the boy go. Any negotiation was a non-starter. Nothing would happen.

We got home in a tense, heavy silence. Our hunts had never ended in death, or capture. We'd never left the other behind in a dire situation. But Naomi had been acting different, ever since we'd first rescued Wilkes.

"Naomi," I said, as she headed up the stairs the second we stepped inside. "Wait a moment."

She turned to look at me. Even though she was eleven months younger than me, she had gotten our late mother's beauty: curling flaxen hair, pretty, delicate features, expressive china-blue eyes, and flawless porcelain skin — that last thing made her appear older, like a grown woman eligible for marriage. It was no wonder she turned heads as she passed.

"You've been behaving differently," I said. "After last night."

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow. "Different how, dear brother?"

"You're fluttery. Distracted. And I saw how you looked at Wilkes. I don't like it. Not to mention you call him Langdon."

"He's my age," she shot back. "Why shouldn't I call him by his name? Just because you hate him doesn't mean I have to."

"He is a Wilkes, Naomi. Listen to yourself. Once he finishes at the Institute, his training will put us out of a job."

"I know you don't really believe that." She crossed her arms and scowled at me. "You said so yourself he'll never make a good hunter if he always needs to be rescued. By you. Which means you will still have a job."

I snorted again. "Rescuing him? He couldn't hunt his way out of a sack."

"Well, I like him," she said, her tone final. "And I think he's dear. I know how you are about boys like that."

She turned away and disappeared up the stairs. I stayed rooted to the spot in the dark hallway. She'd certainly hit my Achilles heel again. The fact was, I was attracted to boys. I always had been. The law said I wasn't allowed to be, and this line of work left no time for anything but the next job to be planned and executed, or the previous job to be filed away and documented. And besides, I was not attracted to Langdon Wilkes. Not his messy chestnut hair, or his bright curious brown eyes, or his inquisitive shy manner. The fact that he was even good-looking was the last thing I wanted to think about.

Neither I had ever acted on my feelings before. I'd never met anyone who could have returned them anyhow.

—

21 March.

Which was why I was even more confused a couple days later, pacing across the street from the Institute's front gates. I wasn't sure why I was here, or even that I wanted to be. But I had to tell Wilkes what I'd found out about his friend Gifford.

A bell tolled, and within seconds the courtyard inside the gate was milling with students. They all wore ridiculous-looking uniforms, black and gold things in an imitation of morning suits. I knew, because I'd seen it on Wilkes, that they weren't flattering.

Then the gates opened and the students began to trickle out. Most walked in the direction of a large grey building on the next corner — likely the dormitories for those from out of town. Fewer went the other way, towards whatever posh house they lived in with their equally posh parents. I spotted Wilkes emerging as the crowd thinned. He was walking slow, his head down, a sheaf of hair falling over his forehead.

"Wilkes!"

He stopped in his tracks, head snapping up and scanning the street. At first, his eyes jumped right over me. Then, in a somewhat comical double take, they found me, standing in the shade of a nearby tree. He glanced both ways, and as he did I saw the two deep scratches from the vampire's claws on one cheek. Seconds later he was trotting across the street to me, pushing his hair out of his eyes. As he stopped to catch his breath, it fell right back into place.

"Wells?" He seemed barely able to believe his eyes, that I was here in front of him. "What are you...? I thought..."

"Come on." I caught his sleeve and pulled him across the park grass, not stopping until we reached Rotten Row. Then I turned and let go, waiting for him to catch up to me.

"Wells, I don't—" he began, but I interrupted.

"There is a reason why the vampires took your friend," I said, and I heard Wilkes's step falter.

"His parents don't even know," he said. "We've been trying to think of how to tell them..."

"Their numbers are dwindling," I went on when he trailed off. "It's been happening for a couple years now, but since they all live in poverty, no one pays attention."

"Is there any explanation for...why?" Wilkes tugged at his black-and-gold necktie.

"Besides their wanting to swell the ranks? No. I've found nothing. So far it's only vampires that are shrinking, but I'm sure if we look at the other creatures, they are too."

"And we can't get him back? There's no chance?"

"No. And I doubt they'd want to give him up either. A healthy, strong boy like him could turn numerous other humans into vampires in no time. They would value that in him, and making him into one of their own would certainly give them the advantage they want."

Wilkes ran his hand through his hair and looked away, and it took all my effort to suppress the urge to fix it. The way he wore it, so casually tousled, pricked at my conscience in a not entirely unpleasant way.

"If there was something that could be done, Wilkes..."

"It's not that, it's..." He sighed heavily. "I always knew my father didn't like him."

That took me by surprise, so much that I stopped in my tracks. "You aren't saying what I think you are...are you?"

"Father wants me to become a vampire-hunter like he was," Wilkes said. "The pride of a Wilkes, he told me. He kept bringing up the fact that Gifford was a bad influence on me."

"Your father cannot possibly be that evil, Wilkes." Although it is possible, now that I thought about it. One of our most horrific hunts to this day was a father who had turned his own daughter into a werewolf and then pushed her out onto the streets during her first full moon. Naomi, who'd shot the silver bullet into the girl's heart, refused to speak of it even to this day.

"Up until a couple days ago, I would have agreed," he said. "But now that I think of it, I'm not so sure anymore."

I didn't know why I even agreed to what happened next. I'd already told Naomi I hated Wilkes and although I didn't like it, there was nothing stopping her from throwing herself right at him if she wanted to.

"We could look into it for you," I said. "So your father doesn't get suspicious."

It was Wilkes's turn to be surprised, and he turned to me with an incredulous expression on his face. "I couldn't ask you to do that."

"You're not. I'm offering."

"I mean..." He rubbed the back of his head, then pushed his hair out of his eyes again. "It would take away from everything else you're doing."

"My sister would apply herself to it," I said, because when it came to Wilkes, I knew she would. "She would be able to suss it out."

"Right. Well..." Wilkes cleared his throat. "I suppose...yes, then. Thank you."

"Don't thank me, Wilkes. Thank her."

"Still. I appreciate it. Truly I do."

His gratitude was so bloody genuine I couldn't protest.

—

I didn't get a chance to bring it up when I returned home. For one thing, we had a werewolf hunt to prepare for tonight, and for another, Naomi was helping our father down the stairs as I walked in. He wasn't an old man, but he was frail, having survived one too many hunts and seen too many things. His mind had been invaded by too many ghosts at once, all victims of a serial killer, and was now permanently disabled.

"I can make the rest by myself, Juliette," he was saying. "I'm perfectly able."

"I'm Naomi, Papa," Naomi said. "Mama's not here, remember?"

"When will she be back?"

That question made my chest ache. Before the ghosts turned him into this, our father had once told us about how much he loved and worshipped our mother. He'd seen her for the first time at her debutante ball, in a confection of white and pink, and he'd fallen in love instantly. Within a week he was one of her suitors, and once the two years of courting had passed, he asked for her hand in marriage. She hadn't even thought about it, he'd said. She'd accepted right away.

"Not for a long time, Father," I said.

He missed a stair and suddenly went pitching forward. I was there in a flash, not remembering how, and caught him. I staggered as his full weight fell into me, and together Naomi and I righted him again.

"You should have waited to get him down here," I said to her as she settled him in his chair next to the fire, tucking a blanket around him.

"I didn't know what else to do, Wells," she said, her voice hard. "He was being so insistent. Calling me by Mama's name...saying I wasn't myself and that he was perfectly capable of doing things himself."

I looked closer at our father. He was dozing in his armchair, head lolling sideways. "It's getting worse, isn't it?"

"You wouldn't know, you barely ever see him," Naomi said, sounding deeply hurt.

"That's hardly fair. I work just as hard as you do to keep him comfortable."

"No, you don't." Her eyes shone with tears. "You were gone all afternoon, and now we've got a hunt and no one will be here to watch him. Where on earth were you, anyhow?"

"I was..." I stopped myself before the words came out. How was I thinking about Wilkes again? "Scouting."

"You were gone a while longer than a usual scouting trip." Naomi crossed her arms. "I know you're being untruthful, Wells. Where were you?"

"I..." I stopped again, even shorter this time. I thought of the conversation I'd had with Wilkes — especially the suspicions he had about his father. "I was...at the Institute."

"At the Institute?" Naomi echoed. "What were you doing there?"

"Well..." It was hard to say it, but now that it was out, I had to finish the story. "I was talking to Wilkes."

"You went to see Langdon?" Some of her hurt was replaced by curiosity. "Why?"

"I wanted to tell him what I found out. About the vampires' populations shrinking and everything. I thought that might have been the reason why they didn't kill Gifford outright."

"I see," she said. "There's something else. I can see it in your face."

I took a deep breath, and then told her the rest. I saw her expression change, settling on interest. When I finished, she didn't say anything right away. Instead, she motioned me out into the hallway, and didn't stop until we were at the foot of the stairs again.

"Do you believe Langdon's father would have done something like that on purpose?"

"I don't know," I said, which was the truth. "But given what Wilkes told me, it's possible."

"He will never forgive his father for this, if it's true," she said.

"I know," I said. Wilkes looked very much like someone who hadn't had to endure a single hardship in his life. I wondered what that was like. "That's why we have to do it in secret. So if it does turn out that way, Wilkes isn't entirely blindsided by it."

"I don't like that you volunteered me for it without my knowing," she said, crossing her arms and scowling, but only for a moment. "But because I like him, and he's relatively harmless, I'll do some digging. Only when I'm not looking into our hunting research."

"Thank you, Naomi," I said, and I hoped I sounded like I meant it. "Truly."

—

On our way to Limehouse, where the werewolf had first been seen, I tried thinking of anything else but what had happened earlier today. There were the werewolves, of course. Because like vampires, once a human was made into a werewolf, there was no reversing it. And, like the vampires, they lived in groups — called packs. But there were differences too. To be made a werewolf, the human didn't have to be killed first, just bitten by one. Otherwise they were living breathing beings like us. And for the most part — unless they were in full-wolf or even half-wolf — they looked human too. Most importantly, they weren't usually in full-wolf except for the night of the full moon. That was also the night they were usually the hardest to kill. Especially if you happened to come on the alpha male or female.

"They called him a lone wolf," said Naomi. "A rouge. He doesn't even need a full moon to change into full-wolf."

"Now that's unusual," I said. "Those are rare, from what I've heard."

"They are," Naomi said, her businesslike tone a little more forced than before. "If you're cheeky, you can call them moonlighters. But most others know them as rouges."

"Moonlighter." It was a cheeky term. "Because they don't need full moonlight?"

"I don't know." Naomi slumped against the back of the hackney. "Ever since you told me about Langdon's father, I can't think about much else."

At least she wasn't the only one who was distracted. "Neither can I."

"Do you think..." She ran her hands over her face once, then again. "Do you think anyone's capable of being that evil?"

"Yes," I said, knowing better than to bring up the werewolf she'd killed. "Wilkes might not know it. But it takes a certain amount of evil to want suffering for others. In Gifford's case, eternal suffering."

"As a vampire," said Naomi, and I nodded. "I read somewhere that their appetite is insatiable. That's why they have to constantly be hunting, searching for warm human blood. Even as they're drinking it they know it'll never be enough."

"Almost as insatiable as a zombi's desire for human flesh," I agreed.

Unlike all the other creatures we'd encountered in our hunts, a zombi was the most unfamiliar. They were also the most terrifying. They were strong and fast like vampires, looked mostly human like werewolves — except for their eyes, which were an eerie blank white, lacking their pupils — and once one got its sights on you, that was the end of you. There was only one way to kill them that I knew of. First fire, because for some reason they were afraid of it. If you could get close enough after that, they had to be entirely decapitated and burned. Head, legs, arms, torso. The more pieces, the better. Naomi had spent the last year or so trying to track down a definitive and informative book on the subject written by someone more famous for his other work: Mr Charles Dickens himself. Apparently his time spent traipsing the streets of London hadn't just been for his novel research. He'd been hunting zombies too. But so far, she'd had no success.

"Do you ever wish our whole lives weren't spent killing other things?" she asked, after a long silence. "There'll always be vampires, werewolves, zombies, everywhere you go. What's the point of killing them if there'll just be more tomorrow?"

"We don't just kill them to kill them," I said. "We kill them when we have to. To save someone's life. And besides...it's the family business."

It was — our family went back generations hunting the creatures we did now. In fact, the silver dagger I carried with me now was one of our ancestors', an heirloom passed down across ages of hunters. It was rumoured to have killed one of the most powerful alpha werewolves in the last century.

Once we disembarked onto Commercial Road, we fell into the old rhythm: Naomi led the way, holding her own weapon out in front of her — a crossbow already nocked with a silver-tipped arrow — while I brought up the rear, one hand gripping my dagger and the other in my pouch of silver powder. If thrown directly into a werewolf's eyes, it could blind them and buy a few seconds' time.

It was a fairly standard hunt by all accounts. We wove through the crooked alleyways, avoiding dark humped shapes slumped on the ground and large puddles of dirty water. Some of those held baby kelpies, and we hadn't brought anything to fight them off.

We found the rogue in a narrow, squalid street that dead-ended into the canal. Even from here I could smell what was in it — human and animal waste, rot, and decay. The rogue was in half-wolf, yellow-eyed and claw-fingered, his ears elongated and hairier than a normal human. But when he saw us he quickly changed — at will, Naomi had been right — to full-wolf. All human features disappeared, and we were faced with a bristling, snarling, pitch-black wolf that had already made a kill. Naomi shot him, and even in the near-darkness her aim was spot-on. The arrow struck the rogue in his shoulder, and he squealed in pain. I dug out a handful of silver powder and flung it straight at him, making him stagger backwards, yelping. Then we ran, before he could recover.

He caught up to us again in the St Dunstan's churchyard. We dove behind headstones, and I weakened him with the silver powder, throwing clouds of it into his face whenever he opened his mouth.

"You've got to get him at least to half-wolf," Naomi panted as we pressed our backs up against the chapel's far wall, hidden from the rogue's sight for the moment. "I know where a human's heart is...not a wolf's."

"How do you suggest I do that?" We both knew a werewolf was at his strongest, even wounded, when he was in full-wolf.

"You know that better than I do," she said. She had a scrape on her cheek, and her curly blonde hair was escaping her braid all over the place. "Weren't you the tactician out of the two of us?"

"Yes," I said reluctantly. It meant I would have to sneak up on him and jump on his back, and press my blade into his neck until he changed.

"Go on, then," she hissed, jerking her chin at me. "While he's got his guard down."

I grumbled about it but snuck out anyway, hearing him snuffling around at the chapel doors. I pressed my back into the wall, peeking around the corner occasionally. He was whimpering softly, probably because of the arrow still embedded in his shoulder. Naomi had once said the touch of silver to a werewolf was like white-hot metal, straight out of a fire, pressed to a human's skin. A painful, searing burn.

I slid along the wall as he continued across the grass, nose buried in it. He hadn't seen me yet, although I knew he would the second he turned his head. I felt my palm turn clammy inside my glove, and I gripped the handle of my dagger so hard it hurt.

Then, just as he lifted his head to scent the air, I charged with a Viking yell that was more for my benefit than my enemy's. The rouge's head snapped around right as I pounced, wrapping my legs around his middle and locking my arms around his neck. He yipped as his arrow wound stretched, which turned into growls as he snapped at me and tried to throw me off. I pushed the point of my dagger into his lower jaw, digging in just hard enough to hurt.

"Change, you bloody dog," I hissed.

He resisted for a moment. His entire body trembled under me, and his sides heaved with exertion.

Then, suddenly, he did — he shifted from full-wolf to human in an instant, a youngish bearded man with shaggy unkempt hair. I let go of him and shouted "Now!" in Naomi's direction. She was there in an instant, and I heard the hiss of her arrow flying from her bow. The rouge collapsed with a muffled thump on the grass, sightless eyes open in shock.

"Why do you always yell?" she asked me as she joined me, glancing at the rouge's body with a mingled anxiety and curiosity, as if she expected him to get up and change again.

"Element of surprise," I said with a shrug, then nodded at the rogue. "We can't leave his body here. The peelers might find it."

We each took an arm and began to drag him across the grass. If we could get him to a deserted snicket, he wouldn't be discovered until he started to smell. And we'd be long gone by then.

That was when the normalcy ended. We heard a soft moaning from the other side of the mausoleum we were currently passing, making us freeze. I heard Naomi's short, sharp breaths next to me, and my own breath wasn't much better. It didn't sound like someone wounded, nor intoxicated.

We listened hard to the other being's progress. It seemed to be walking with a strange shuffle-thump gait, like a limp. Naomi's arm trembled against mine, and I knew she was genuinely afraid. She almost never showed fear, even when the situation seemed dire. But nothing seemed normal anymore, not since Langdon Wilkes had entered our lives.

That was when we saw it: a zombi, making its way towards the chapel. It was dragging a foot, bent at an unnatural angle, as it walked, and swung its arms like the large apes that I'd seen at the zoo.

We took one step, and then two. We could leave the churchyard without the body and hope other hunters were blamed for the silver arrows in it, and avoid a fight with a zombi. Or we could try to hide the body and risk being seen.

We took two more steps, now almost to the edge of the churchyard. Almost home free until my boot heel came down on a twig and snapped it in half with a noise as loud as a gunshot in the silence.

The zombi turned. Its blank white eyes seemed to glow, even in the faint moonlight, and I felt a cold dread trickle down my spine as they found us.

"Run," I whispered.

We left the rogue's body and bolted. I had absolutely no plan, and I hadn't even counted on battling a zombi tonight. I had a sharp curved sabre that would easily cut off its limbs and its head, but it was at home, in the weapons room.

We skidded around corners haphazardly, pelting headlong down the streets we'd been soundlessly prowling less than an hour earlier. Impossibly, I could hear the zombi's shuffle-thump behind us, even over all the other noises of the slum.

Just for a moment, we managed to lose it in a group of boatmen entering a pub. Naomi caught my arm and spun me around to face her, breathing hard and face flushed. Her eyes were wide and frightened, which made her look more her age.

"What'll we do?" She sounded desperate, and her grip on my elbow was tight. "It won't stop until it's had its fill of us."

My mind raced. I didn't know Stepney or Mile End as well as I claimed to, or if we posed a threat to its residents. We weren't poor, and could almost certainly be called low middle-class. Better-off than these wretched sods, anyhow.

"We have to find a blacksmith," I said then. "There's probably plenty of sharp objects there."

"And a fire," Naomi said, and I could see her visibly calming down.

We began to run again, because now that the boatmen were mostly gone, the zombi could find us. I knew it would be able to, even if it didn't have eyes on us, and for the life of me I didn't know how.

We found the blacksmith's deep in Bethnal Green, in a close we couldn't find the name of anywhere. The shopfront door was locked, but I got through it in a matter of seconds, right as the sound of the pursuing zombi rounded the corner. I shouldered it open and we found ourselves in the middle of the smith's workshop — a large gaping forge empty and black like the mouth of a massive beast on the far wall and an array of tools and in-progress work everywhere else.

There was a thump at the shop door, and I knew the zombi had us cornered. I heard Naomi squeak in fear, then instantly clap her hands over her mouth. I searched the smith's tools, glancing over the ones hung on the walls and scattered over the worktables. Then my eyes landed on a sharp-looking scimitar-shaped blade, with a crude wooden handle.

"Naomi!" I hissed. "Catch!"

She whirled and I tossed the blade to her. Expertly, she snatched it out of the air like she'd been expecting it all along.

There was another thump, a little harder this time, and a moan. I spun towards the opposite wall and searched some more. Alarm crackled down my nerves like lightning, just as the zombi rammed the door a third time and it splintered inward.

"Wells!" Naomi cried, and before I could react the zombi's hand clamped down on my neck and slammed my face into the wall. I felt its breath, hot and putrid, against my cheek as it sniffed at me.

Then, with a wet-sounding chunk, the zombi lurched sideways, smearing me along the wall as it did. After that came a sucking noise, and I knew it was Naomi, already trying to get the zombi off me.

I kicked backwards, into its shins. The zombi moaned, but didn't let go. In fact, its grip only tightened.

"Get off him!" Naomi screamed, punctuated by another chunk. "Let go, you monster!"

Suddenly the zombi did, clumsily bashing my head into one of the wooden posts supporting the roof. I clung to it, stunned, as the zombi lurched towards my sister. I could see her, backing away with the blade held out in front of her, pure terror on her face and wide eyes shining with tears.

I spotted the weapon just in time, seconds before the zombi could make a grab at her. It was a rusty bayonet, still attached to an old rifle. I jumped at it, yanked it off its hooks, and charged at the zombi from behind, running it through and pinning it to the wall just as it had done to me. Naomi screamed again, in surprise and in fear, as the zombi hit the bricks.

"Go for its head!" I shoved the bayonet in harder, feeling the zombi lurching and bucking against its pin. "Now!"

That was the first time I'd ever seen my sister hesitate. The scimitar trembled in her hands, and tears streamed down her face.

"Naomi!" I bellowed. "Now! I can't hold it forever!"

She suddenly seemed to come out of her trance, and with a howl like a banshee's, she swung the blade at the zombi's flailing arm, severing it at the wrist, elbow, and then shoulder before slicing down straight through its neck. Its head went thudding to the ground, and suddenly all the resistance drained out of its body. I yanked the bayonet out, and it collapsed. Naomi stood over it, breathing hard, her face spattered with the zombi's black blood.

"Naomi—"

She dropped the blade and threw herself into my arms, burying her face into the front of my coat as muffled sobs came from her. I held her tightly, not sure if the trembling I felt was hers or my own.

"I t-thought..." she gasped, between sobs. "I t-thought...it was g-going to...to k-kill you, Wells, I j-just..."

"Me too," I said, kissing her hair and resting my cheek against it. "I saw it coming for you, and I thought..."

Naomi's hold tightened, and she hid her face again. I cupped the back of her head and kissed her hair a second time. I wouldn't let this happen anymore. I vowed to myself that I would keep my sister safe, for as long as I breathed.