Dragon Bound

EIGHT

What followed next was ugly. She couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned.

They dragged her out of the wreckage first. She kept her gaze trained on the ground as one punched her in the stomach. When she lay curled on the ground trying to breathe, they kicked her. Over and over again hard-toed boots slammed into her, interspersed with harsh Goblin laughter as they taunted Dragos, until she no longer kept silent because it was the smart thing to do. She was silent because she couldn’t get in a deep enough breath to scream.

She caught one blurred glimpse of Dragos standing in the grip of two Goblins every bit as huge as he was. His aggressive, dangerous face was blank, gold eyes as reflective and emotionless as two Greek coins.

A lifetime later, several Goblins with drawn swords walked Dragos through the squat stone fortress. One Goblin grabbed her by the hair and followed behind them. Another brought up the rear, still kicking at her now and then, although without much interest.

The group of Goblins guarding Dragos marched him into a cell. Her Goblins passed it by, down to an intersection in the corridor and to the right. Once they were out of Dragos’s line of sight, their manner became businesslike and uninterested. They took her by the arms and dragged her into another cell. They threw her onto a pile of rancid straw.

One Goblin said something. Chop chop. The other laughed. They left and the grate of a key sounded in the cell door lock. Sounds faded from the corridor.

She lay on the horrid straw for a while. Then she crawled a few feet, then collapsed and lay on chill, dirty flagstones. She may have blacked out. She wasn’t sure. The next thing she became aware of was a blue-black beetle walking across the floor.

She tracked its progress. It fell headlong into a crack and got stuck. She dragged herself over and watched it some more. It managed to get turned around so its little head poked out of the crack. Feelers waved and its front legs worked, but it couldn’t get enough purchase to crawl out.

Her fingers crept across the floor until they found some straw. She took a shallow handful. She wiggled the ends deep into the crack and lifted up. The beetle popped out and waddled on its way.

When it disappeared, she sighed, rolled over onto her back and levered herself into a sitting position. Her thinking came back online.

Do one thing at a time. Take one step.

She crawled to the wall. Step.

She got first one foot underneath her, then the other. Step.

She straightened her shoulders. When she was pretty sure she had her balance back, she opened the locked cell door and walked out.

The dragon lay spread-eagled where they had bound him. He was chained twice, first with the magical black shackles. The second set was attached in four points to the floor. He stared at the ceiling, thoughts weaving in a serpentine path. Every few minutes he would pull at the floor chains. He ignored his bleeding ankles and wrists. He could feel a weakness growing in the chain on his left arm and concentrated on that.

His cell door opened. He turned his head, the serpentine path turning lethal.

A battered, filthy Pia backed into the room, and Dragos became sane.

He began to shake. He watched her listening at the cracked door for a few moments before she pulled the door shut. She turned around. When she caught sight of him, her shoulders sagged.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” She rolled her eyes. “Two sets of manacles? Now I suppose we need two sets of keys. This day keeps getting better and better.”

“Come here,” he said. He gave the chain anchoring his left arm an enormous wrench. The chain groaned but didn’t break. “Come here. Come here.”

She cocked her head, her weary gaze becoming very sober. She limped across the cell and collapsed to her knees beside him. “They beat you too,” she said. She touched his ribs with a light gentle hand.

His shaking increased. Talking to her before the Goblins took her had been easy. He had explained to her with his usual calm ruthlessness how he thought things might go. Overall she had seemed to take it well. He approached the confrontation as he always did, ready and focused to meet any upcoming challenge.

Then that first Goblin had driven his fist into her stomach, and he had gone bat-shit crazy. Every kick, every blow she suffered was like corrosive acid in his veins. He wanted to howl and rage. The dragon strained to rip their hearts from their chests while they watched.

He had clung to his self-control by the merest thread, by the realization of how much worse it could get for her if they got the reaction out of him they were searching for.

They hurt her. They hurt her, and that hurt him inside somewhere, in a place he had never been hurt before. He had sustained physical injury and pain many times before. It meant little to him. But this new hurt—he was in shock. He had never realized just how invincible he had been until it was ripped away from him.

He studied her with a hungry gaze as she knelt beside him. The brightness of her hair was dulled with dirt. Her tattered T-shirt was now gray, and the shortened capri jeans were no longer blue. Her pallid skin was mottled all over with swollen bruises so deep they were a purple black.

And underneath everything, all of it, was remembering how just before it happened, he had made her cower from him. He had never before hated himself, but he thought he did at that moment.

“Come here, come here,” he whispered. Her beautiful eyes went from sobered to worried. She leaned over and put her cheek against his. He turned his face into her and her hair fell over him in a light canopy.

She was murmuring in his ear as her hand stroked his cheek. He focused on it. “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“What?” he said. “What are you saying? Stop talking that way. Shut up.” He brushed his lips along her skin, breathed in her presence. Underneath the dungeon filth and the stink of Goblin, he found her delicate, indomitable fragrance. Something cramped and injured in his soul expanded again. “I snarled at you. I didn’t mean it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; of course you did.” She stroked his hair and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“You cringed from me. Don’t ever cringe from me again.”

“Dragos,” she said in a sensible voice. “If you turn on me and snarl like a wild animal when I’m not expecting it, I think I might cringe again. Call me a girly girl if you want, but that’s just how it is.”

“I won’t do it again,” he whispered. He was so quiet she almost didn’t hear him. He concentrated all his attention on the featherlight trip her fingers made across his face until she touched his lips.

She sighed and let more of her weight rest on him. “Locked things can’t hold me caged, but that doesn’t mean I can pull these blasted manacles open. How the hell am I going to get two sets of keys with Goblins running all over the place?”

The frayed self-control in her voice sent him a little bit back into crazy. “You’re not,” he said.

She lifted her head and scowled at him. He was relieved to see she hadn’t broken down. “What else are we going to do?” she asked. “We can’t just wait around until the Dark Fae King, or the Joker or Riddler, or whoever the hell it is, shows up.”

His mind clicked into gear again and became crystal clear. “This is what’s happening,” he told her. “I have very good hearing. Most of the Goblins have gone to have their evening meal. There are a few guards left in strategic places. I can hear where they are.”

“That’s handy to know,” she said with relief.

“And this is what we’re going to do,” he told her. “You know how the corridor tees and they took you to the right?”

She nodded.

“If you go straight instead of right, there’s some kind of room they use down that way. I think it’s a guardroom. I could hear them in there talking about going to supper. There was the sound of metal clanking, which I hope was weapons, and the scrape of chairs, so it’s a place where they gather. There’s no one there now. I want you to go look for keys that might fit these floor chains or something straight and thin to use as a lock pick. Failing those two, try to grab an axe. Be quick.”

“Dragos,” she said, eyeing him in doubt. “I don’t know how to pick a lock. I’ve never had to learn, duh.”

“You won’t have to. I know how to pick a lock,” he said. He had learned to pick locks as soon as locks were invented. People liked to lock up all kinds of pretty things that he wanted. He rattled the manacle on his left wrist. “There’s a weakness in one of these links. I’m going to break it.”

She looked at his arm and her forehead wrinkled. She said with concern, “Your wrist is a mess.”

“Don’t be such a girly girl,” he told her. Her gaze met his and lit with reluctant laughter. “It’s nothing. You’d better hurry. We don’t know how much time we’ve got while they eat supper.”

“Right,” she said.

An echo of the pain and rage came back as he watched her struggle to her feet without any of her usual grace and he could do nothing to help her. He had paid special attention to the ones who had beaten her. There were going to be a lot of dead Goblins before he was through with this place.

But for now he turned all his considerable attention on to the weakened chain and yanked.

Pia crept down the corridor again, this time comforted by Dragos’s reassurance that she wasn’t in imminent danger of running into a Goblin. She found the guardroom he was talking about since the door was open. She looked inside and recoiled.

“Ugh,” she muttered. “Filthy creatures.”

She jumped, then put a hand to her sore ribs when Dragos whispered in her ear, “Are you all right?”

“Oh, of course you can hear me,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine. It’s just there’s moldy food scraps on the table, and it stinks in here. They’re disgusting.”

“They taste bad too,” he said.

“You’ve eaten Goblin!” she exclaimed.

“No,” he said, “I’ve bitten Goblin.”

He sounded a little strained. She bit her lip. She hoped he wasn’t damaging his arm too much.

Relevance, Pia. She shook herself and hurried through the room as fast as she could. The place was positively medieval and not in a sanitized-Hollywood-movie kind of way. Was that urine in the corner? Ugh! She tried as much as possible to avoid touching things.

She was disappointed she found no keys. But she did find a switchblade that fit into her pocket and a stiletto knife. The manacles weren’t precision made. The stiletto looked like it might be thin enough to fit into the locks if he could bend the tip a bit.

She grabbed the end of a battle-axe from the rack of weaponry. It was too heavy for her to lift, so she had to drag it back to the cell. The sound of the axe scraping along the corridor floor made her uneasy, so she hurried rather faster than her abused body wanted. She was sweating and in pain by the time she propped open the cell door with one hip. She bit back a groan as she heaved the axe inside.

Dragos looked from the axe to her as she leaned back against the doorpost, panting. He held up his left arm where part of the broken floor chain dangled. She held up the stiletto.

He smiled. Game on.

After she gave him the thin blade, she leaned against the wall nearby and slid down until she was sitting. It was comforting to watch him work and let her mind drift, to know there was nothing at that point in time that she could or should be doing.

He did bend the tip of the knife by sliding it between two flagstones and pulling on the handle. He had to twist at the waist, strain to reach the floor chain manacle on his right wrist and hold steady as he worked at the lock.

She admired the strength and grace of his long body as he worked. To hold his twisted position he had to tighten those striking abdominal muscles. They rippled and flexed as he took in controlled, steady breaths. The line from his broad shoulder slid around into that clenched waist. His jeans were as filthy as hers, but the buttock and long masculine leg they sheathed were mouthwatering.

Come to think of it he looked pretty damn sexy chained to that floor. Especially if this were her castle. She would send her servants in to wash him (all male heterosexual servants, and they would of course clean up this disgusting cell, scatter candles around, put a mattress under him with silk sheets, oh, and maybe leave a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses), and afterward she would come down and tease him to madness by mounting him and rubbing her scantily clad body all over that sizzling hot torso.

Except there was no castle. She had no servants. His wrists were bleeding, which looked painful and was no fun at all, and everywhere she went it stank like Goblin. Oh yeah, and their lives were in danger.

“Still not right in the head,” she muttered.

He sent her a gleam of that machete smile over his shoulder. “You are going to explain what you mean by that very soon now.”

She felt a blush warm her cheeks. “Not likely.”

He removed the manacle, sat up and stretched, then slid forward and started working on his ankles. He was matter-of-fact about it, but she had to cover her mouth to muffle her squeal. She sat up straight and clapped excitedly. His smile deepened. Soon he had his ankles freed, and he took a moment to pick the lock on the manacle on his left wrist and fling it into a corner.

Then they both looked at the other black metal manacles and chains with the repulsive magic. They were two simple shackles, one hobbling his arms together, the other at his ankles, which kept him from being able to walk in his normal long stride.

“Somehow I don’t think this is going to be as easy,” he said. He was right. No matter how he worked he wasn’t able to pick any of the four locks. “I think these won’t come off without the matching key. I bet that’s part of their magic.”

Her excitement plummeted. “What do you think they do besides feel slimy?”

“Well, the Goblins didn’t know I got shot by the Elves, did they?” he said. “Or if they did know, they wouldn’t have wanted to trust it since it is going to wear off at some point. These feel like they do the same thing the Elven poison does—limit my strength and prevent me from changing. Otherwise there would have been no hope of those”—he jerked his chin at the other set of chains—“keeping me prisoner.”

“So now what do we do?” She threw up her hands. She could feel somewhere inside there was a crack that was getting wider. It was just a matter of time before she fell into it, like the beetle, only she wasn’t so sure she would be able to crawl her way back out again.

“You’re going back into your cell.” He crouched over her and put a hand over her mouth when she started to protest. He snapped, “Did you or did you not promise no arguing?”

“Fuck you. You’re not the boss of me,” she mumbled against his palm. She wrapped both hands around his wrist, careful of the bruised torn skin. “You keep forgetting that.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he said, gold eyes glinting. “You promised not to argue when you don’t want to argue. Is that it?”

Was he amused? Mad? She couldn’t tell. She said, “Of course.”

He barked out a laugh, put his hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet. He held on to her until she steadied. “Okay, girly girl. You’re going in the cell, I’m locking the door behind you and all the fuck-yous in the world aren’t going to change that. It’s the safest place for you. If for some reason they get back before I do, they’ll never think you got out. They’ll think that I did all this.” He gestured around the cell.

“I don’t want to separate.”

“Tough,” he said. “I’m going hunting and you don’t want to be there.”

He hefted the battle-axe in one hand like it was made of Styrofoam and placed the other at her back. Despite his callous tone, he was careful as he led her down the corridor. Between her injuries and his shackles, they went at a slow pace.

She stepped inside and turned back. She couldn’t look up at him. She focused instead on the floor as her lips trembled. “But what if they come back?”

A heavy silence lay between them.

Long fingers slid under her chin and coaxed her face up. She bit her lips as she looked up at his sober expression. “I won’t leave you alone for long. I’ll be quick as I can.” A fat tear splashed onto his hand and he looked as if it had seared him. He swore under his breath. Then he bent his head and brushed her mouth with his. “I swear to you, Pia, they will not hurt you again. You have to trust me.”

She nodded and jerked her head away, swiping at her face with the back of her hand. “Go.”

He stood there looking at her. For a moment he seemed like he was about to speak, but she turned her back on him. She thought she felt his fingers brush the back of her neck, and then he was gone.

All the vitality that had been surrounding and sustaining her drained away in his absence. She looked around the dingy, horrible cell and felt so lonesome she could have lain down and died.

She sat in the middle of the floor and made herself into a small package, with upraised knees and forehead resting on her forearms. How did she do that trick before, when she went blank as soon as the Goblins took her? She hadn’t meant to. It had to have been some kind of defense response to too much horror when those monstrous hands had touched her.

Now the minutes trickled by with agonizing slowness and she had no insulation from it. She wanted to check out, to disassociate and go somewhere else in her head, but she couldn’t figure out how to do it again. It took everything she had not to give in to panic and walk out that cell door.

She remembered every turn they took. She knew she could get to that outside door again. Which was no doubt guarded by a couple of those skanky bat-faced freaks. She muffled a groan and squeezed herself into a tighter package.

How did I get here again? It’s like I had a grocery list of all the things I shouldn’t do, and I went right on down it, checking off things as I got to them. I’ve been very thorough about it. Live very quietly, her mom had said. Leave everything behind on a moment’s notice. Don’t get too attached to people. And don’t tell anyone anything about your real self. Simple, simple stuff.

I’ve got to give myself one thing. Mom never did tell me not to steal from a dragon. No doubt she thought it was too flaming obvious to mention. It should have been added to that Jim Croce song. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off of the ole Lone Ranger, and you don’t steal from Cuelebre.

Think I might have destroyed any hope of living anonymously? Numskull.

A small sound sent her into a panic.

A key scraped in the lock.

Her body shrieked in protest as she pushed to her feet and backed against a wall. She pulled the switchblade out of her pocket and pressed the spring. The blade snicked open. She hid it along the length of her thigh, staring with a dry mouth as the door opened.

Dragos slipped in, his massive fighter’s body moving with liquid grace on quiet cat’s feet. He carried a leather pack on one shoulder. The black metal shackles were gone. Leather harness straps crossed his chest. The hilt of the battle-axe and what looked like a sword were strapped to his back. Knives in sheaths were laced on his forearms, and the sheath of another short sword was buckled at his waist and tied at his thigh. His chiseled features were calm. Holy cow, he made Conan the Barbarian look like a wimp.

Relief almost brought her to her knees. Black stars danced in front of her. In an instant he was in front of her, hands on her shoulders, bracing her back against the wall.

“Damn it, you look like you’re going to pass out,” he said.

“Well, I didn’t know it was going to be you, did I?” She showed him the switchblade she was holding against her thigh.

His severe face lit with a smile. “Surprise number one hundred thirty-four and counting.”

“You made that number up,” she accused. She pushed the blade against her leg. It closed with a snick and she slid it back into her jeans.

“Are you sure?” he said, sounding amused. “You know how to use that thing?”

“Well enough. I’m not really a fighter, though.” It was sad but true.

“No, your nature’s too gentle for that, isn’t it?” He stroked her hair and pulled her with care into his arms.

She leaned against him, her world settling back into place. On a deep level she didn’t have time to examine, it was a very disturbing experience. His body warmth drove the chill away. She put her arms around his waist and hugged him tight.

“I’ve had a lifetime of classes, but I haven’t had to use any of it in real life. Yet.” She forced herself to breathe deep until the lingering dizziness passed. “Just give me a chance to stick one of those two-legged cockroaches though, and I’m there.”

“They’ll have to get through me first.” He gave her a gentle squeeze and stepped back.

“You were faster than I was afraid you might be.” She looked at his new acquisitions. “It looks like you found a lot.”

“I located the key to the shackles, but I didn’t find the Goblin captain. I found his rooms instead. He’s a greedy son of a bitch. He had all kinds of loot. Half of it looked untouched.” He moved back to the door, listened for a moment and opened it. “We need to hurry now. There are more Goblins moving about. It sounds like their evening meal is finished.”

He led the way and this time he moved much faster. She struggled to keep up but fell several paces behind. He slowed as he reached the final turn that led to the outside door. He stalked to the corner, completely silent as he reached for the battle-axe and unsheathed the short sword in a simultaneous motion.

She caught her breath at the sight. He was an über-warrior, magnificent and terrifying. Hey, when he could shift into a dragon he was his own tank and aerial force all at the same time. Add to that his magical capability and he was virtually a one-creature army. She had known he was one of the premiere Powers in the world, but as she saw him in motion, she began to get a glimmer of real understanding what that meant.

She eased closer but was careful to leave plenty of space between them. He glanced at her, leaning back against the wall. He nodded to her in approval. He pointed the sword at her and mouthed, “Stay put.”

She nodded back. She wanted to obey that one.

He stepped into the corridor and twisted on one foot, bringing his big body around as he flung the battle-axe like a Frisbee. Continuing in the same smooth turn, he hurled the short sword in an overhand throw with as much ease as tossing a dagger. Without pausing, he drew the long sword and one of the knives and lunged forward out of sight.

She crossed her arms and gripped her elbows, tapping her toes and flinching at the sounds of battle.

Not that it was much of a battle. It was over in seconds. A moment later, Dragos stepped around the corner and beckoned her forward. “None of these grunts have keys. Now it’s your turn to do your stuff. It’s ugly,” he warned her.

“I expect so,” she said, looking at him round-eyed. She rounded the corner.

At first she couldn’t make sense of what she saw. When she did, she wished she hadn’t. There were four dead Goblins strewn about the end of the corridor. Or at least she counted four heads, not all of which were still attached to their bodies. And not all the bodies had all their limbs. Black blood had sprayed the stone walls and great pools of it dotted the floor.

She gagged, her empty stomach twisting. Dragos strode forward.

“If you’re going to vomit, make it quick,” he told her in a matter-of-fact voice.

He yanked the battle-axe out of the Goblin it had almost split in two and wiped the blade on the Goblin’s leggings. Moving fast, he collected the rest of his weapons, cleaning the blades on the corpses and sheathing them again when he was done.

She focused on the great metal door, not the carnage, and gained control of her gag reflex. She stepped around the pools of blood. She paused at one spot and tried to figure out how to get across a large patch of Goblin blood. It looked like a greasy oil spill had spread between two sprawled bodies. If she weren’t injured she would have leaped over it without a second thought. Her dilemma was solved as Dragos grabbed her by the elbows and gently swung her over to the other side.

The door had been barred, but he had already moved the thick wood plank. She grasped a thick lever with both hands and pulled down. The heavy door was hung well. It swung open on silent hinges.

They stepped outside into deepening dusk. The air seemed incredibly sweet outside the Goblin stronghold. The flatbed with the Honda was still where the Goblins had stopped. She shook her head when she saw the mangled wreck. It was a wonder she had survived.

“Now we have to haul ass,” said Dragos.

She looked around at the alien, wild landscape, and just like that, she fell into the crack. “That’s it,” she croaked. “I’m done.”

His head whipped around, eyes narrowing. He said, “What?”

“I said I’m done.” Lead filled her hollow limbs. She swayed and blinked, but he kept blurring out of focus. “I . . . I haven’t eaten well or slept well in over a week. Then there was the wreck and then the Goblins. I’m spent. I don’t have anything else. You’ll have to go without me.”

“You are a stupid woman,” he said. He sounded furious. Why was he so mad at her? The world tilted as he swept her into his arms. “I’m not done.”

Holding her tight, he started to run.

She tucked her head under his chin and fell into a halfwaking state. Afterward, she never did remember much of that run. She remembered it went on for hours. Dragos never faltered, never slowed. He broke into a light sweat, but his breathing remained deep and even. His steady grip cushioned her from any shocks.

She did note one thing and murmured a question when she realized he was not taking them back the way they had been brought.

“Hush,” he told her. “I’ll explain later. You just have to keep trusting me.”

That seemed to matter a lot to him. He kept bringing it up. She turned her face into his neck. “Okay.” It wasn’t like she had any choice at the moment.

“Good,” he said gruffly. His arms tightened.

That was the last they spoke for a long time.

At last he began to slow. She roused from her doze and struggled to lift her head and look around. They had left the barren, rocky landscape and Goblin fortress far behind and stood in a small clearing. He had run the rest of the day away.

The moon shone brighter than she had ever seen before. It hung huge and low and witchy over murmuring trees. The silverlimned and intensely shadowed edges of the clearing shifted with a fitful breeze, the rippling contours so lifelike, hidden faces seemed to peer out at them, whispering news of their arrival.

Running water trickled nearby. Dragos knelt and placed her on the ground near the water. It was a small brook. He put a hand at her shoulder blades and supported her as she struggled to sit up.

“The water’s safe,” he told her. “Drink as much as you think you can. You’ve got to be seriously dehydrated.”

He moved to the water’s edge a few feet downstream from her, laid on his stomach and ducked his head all the way in.

Pia fell forward, desperate to provide relief for her parched mouth and throat. She scooped up cold handfuls and sucked them down. When the need to drink eased she splashed water over her face and arms, desperate to get the stink of the Goblin dungeon off of her. She scooped up more to drink and sighed.

Dragos came up for air at last, flinging back his head in a wet spray that sparkled in the moonlight.

“That’s got to be one of the best things I’ve ever tasted,” she said.

It wasn’t just thirst talking. The water was crisp and alive somehow, more nourishing and satisfying than anything else she could remember drinking. She could feel her wilted resources soaking it up greedily. It soothed the cramped, starved part of her soul into something resembling peace. Already she felt steadier than she had in a while, the sick sense of crisis brought on by exhaustion, injury and stress easing.

He grinned. “It’s being here, in the Other land. The heightened land magic makes everything more intense. If you like that, just wait until you see what else I have for you.”

She pushed back on her knees and sat up. “What is it?”

“I found some food you can eat. I got you other things too, but nourishment comes first.” He opened the leather pack and pulled out a flat leaf-wrapped package and handed it to her.

She took it with obvious reluctance. “Dragos, I don’t think I could stomach anything you found in that hellhole.”

“Don’t jump so fast to conclusions.” He nodded. “Go ahead, open it.”

She pulled the leaves apart and the most mouthwatering aroma escaped. He broke off an end of the wafer she held and coaxed it between her lips. When the piece hit her tongue, it began to melt. She chewed and swallowed with a moan. It was indescribably delicious.

“Elven wayfarer bread,” she breathed. Vegetarian, nourishing in a way that fed the soul as well as the body and imbued with healing properties. “I’ve heard about it, of course; who hasn’t? It’s legendary. But I’ve never had the chance to taste any before.”

He broke off another piece and fed it to her, watching as she closed her eyes and moaned again with delight. “Eat every bite of that. It’ll do you good,” he told her. “I found a dozen wafers. We have plenty.”

She stared at him. A dozen wafers would fetch a fortune on the black market. Most people couldn’t beg, borrow or steal the wayfarer bread. Oh. She looked down at what she held and her enjoyment dimmed. “You found it in the Goblin captain’s rooms?”

“Among other things. Remember I said half the loot was untouched?” He frowned. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“Oh, I will,” she assured him. She broke off another piece. “It’s too precious to waste, and I need it. It’s just hard to enjoy someone else’s misfortune.”

He smiled a little and touched the corner of her mouth. “For all you know, some Elf suffered a minor annoyance when his or her pack got stolen, and they’ve forgotten all about it by now. You go ahead and relish every bite.”

“That’s true.” The unknown Elf hadn’t necessarily been hurt or killed. She took a deep breath. “Aren’t you going to eat any?”

“Not my kind of food,” he told her. “I’ll go hunting if I feel the need.”

Right. Carnivore. She went back to her meal.

He reclined on his side, propped his head in his hand and watched her enjoy the wayfarer bread. He waited until she had put the last piece in her mouth. Then he started to pull other things out of the pack and lay them in her lap. A light woolen Elven blanket, a tunic and leggings, a packet of soap—soap!—and a hairbrush. She stared at the treasures.

“I know how much you hated it in there,” he said.

“Oh. My. God.” She looked at him, teary. “I think this is one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me. Aside from the fact you saved my life I don’t know how many times.”

“You saved me too, you know,” he said. He sounded thoughtful.

The need to wash became a crisis. “I’ve got to get clean.”

“Pia, you’re weaving where you sit. Why don’t you wait until you’ve slept a little? We’re going to rest here while I keep watch.”

Her hands started to shake. “You don’t get it. I can’t stand another minute stinking like them. It makes my skin crawl.”

“Okay,” he said, frowning. “If you need to get clean, you need to get clean. It’s going to be cold. I’ll gather some wood while you wash, and we’ll have a fire.”

She paused. “We’re not going to worry about the firelight being visible?”

He shook his head and uncoiled from the ground. “I’ll hear anyone long before they get near enough to be a problem.”

She turned her back to him and knelt at the stream, already consumed with the thought of scouring the Goblin stink off her body. Self-consciousness tried to take over as she stripped off her ruined T-shirt and filthy bra, but she squashed it. At least it wasn’t broad daylight. He had no doubt seen thousands of naked women before. (Thousands? No, definitely not the time to go there.) Nothing mattered more than getting that stink off of her.

The soap was Elven made too and heaven sent. It softened fast, lathered well in the cold stream, was gentle on her healing cuts and had a delicate fragrance that had her sighing with pleasure.

She washed and rinsed her torso and pulled on the clean tunic. She stripped out of her capris, anklet socks and sneakers. The anklet socks were especially awful. She had bled into one of her shoes, and one anklet was crusted with dried blood. They joined the pile of clothing that was going into the fire as soon as Dragos lit it.

She pulled the blanket over her shoulders and let it drape behind her in an attempt to preserve a little privacy and finished washing the rest of her body. Her body was racked with violent shivering by the time she yanked the leggings on, but nothing was going to stop her from dunking her head in the water and lathering and rinsing her grimy hair at least once.

She dunked her head underwater, gasping at the sharp chill. She was bent over the stream, struggling with shaking hands to work the soap through her wet hair, when Dragos’s hands came over hers. “Let me,” he said.

She leaned on her hands and gave herself over to his ministrations. His long hard fingers massaged her scalp and worked the soap with patience through the long wet rope of hair that trailed in the stream. Her teeth were chattering by the time he finished scooping enough water to rinse through the length.

He wrung out her hair and slipped an arm underneath her waist to lift her to her feet. She scooped up the dirty clothes. “Over here,” he said. He had laid campfire kindling, which was waiting to be lit. As soon as she threw the clothes on top of the woodpile, he flicked a few fingers at the woodpile and it blazed alight.

“Cool trick.” Her teeth clicked together.

“Comes in handy.”

He wrapped the blanket around her. He had her sit with her back to him. Then he brushed out her hair.

With the fire in front, wrapped by the blanket and Dragos’s heat enveloping her from behind, she was toasty warm in no time.

“I’m crashing and burning fast,” she told him.

“I’m surprised you held up as long as you did,” he replied, setting the brush aside.

He pulled her onto his lap, wrapped his arms around her and coaxed her head onto his shoulder.

Her eyelids felt cased in cement. She couldn’t hold them open. A great big pile of questions, doubts, thoughts and issues had piled up, but they were being held at bay by the oncoming coma that came toward her like a black train.

She made a huge effort and opened her eyes one last time to stare up at Dragos. His dark face was always going to be hard, always have an edge of the blade to it, but as he watched the fire, he looked as peaceful as she had ever seen him.

He was wicked bad, by far the scariest creature she had ever met, yet as she rested in the circle of his arms, she felt safer than she ever had in her life. His body was as strong and stable as the earth. Her eyelids drifted closed.

“You’re right, I am a stupid woman,” she mumbled. “I don’t understand you.”

“Maybe you will someday,” he said, even though he could sense she had already plunged into sleep. He traced the elegant curve of her brow with a finger, followed the delicate arch of her ear. Her still-damp hair fell over his arm, an extravagant waterfall of moonlit gold.

Maybe you will someday, just as soon as I understand myself.

The dragon held her sleeping figure closer. He lowered his cheek to her head and looked around the clearing in bafflement, as if the quiet, peaceful scene could tell him who he was.