The desert wasn’t the only vast space of loneliness Dominique Valen had traveled—there was the space inside her, the longing to fill the emptiness she had as far back as she could remember. She knew there was more than her insular and hyper-focused world, but she could never shake, and never wanted to shake, the pull of foreign lands and their danger. She knew she was addicted to the adrenaline rush of being close to death. She also knew she was running away from something—from the truth of who she was, for she could never shake the opposite experience either—where she’d imagined herself belonging to a tribe. She’d dreamed of living among nomads in deserts with abilities to heal. It was a rich fantasy life. And while she believed it was a child’s fantasy, she believed there was a deeper truth in it. That’s why she was here, for almost two years now, sitting in her usual place by the metal-shuttered windows, inside the never-closed American Bar in the Green Zone, Mosul, Iraq, waiting to make her next move—either closer toward death or a healing—to end the loneliness.

That’s when the scent of roses drifted in with the morning sun and shocked her from her reverie.

Dominique first smelled roses that weren’t there when she was a child. Tuberculosis had brought her close to death when she was three years old in Pittsburgh. But she knew her soul wasn’t ready to leave and knew she would survive—because she smelled roses.

Dominique knew the scent of roses was the presence of God. For whenever she’d been in danger it had come to her and she knew she’d be protected. It was something she’d never told anyone, because she believed she didn’t deserve it. That the roses came to her now, deepened her awareness and heightened the buzz that danger was closer than it had been since she’d first set foot in this land. It also reminded her that what had almost taken her life, as a child, had branded her with wanderlust and daring, and birthed in her the courage to use her pen as a fearless sword to speak truth to power. That was a confidence hard to shake. So was the fact that she believed she was a fraud. But now, at thirty-three, and as comfortable on a fashion runway as in a foxhole, she was one of the most magnetic and respected journalists in the world. So, she must’ve been doing something right all these years. Her life had been a pinball machine, blasting from one corner of the world, and her mind, to the other. Writing and alcohol helped ease the paradox. And the pain.