Had she freed him only for him to return to a wasteland beyond saving?
The winds howled their mournful sound across the sands.
It was the first time she shivered, drenched in the rain from the storm called to life by his emotions. He felt the tremors that worked through her body where she pressed against him, no fire in her heart to keep her warm, even banked as his now was in response to her assertions.
Ouros bent and lifted her into his arms.
She gasped at his motion, choked on the rain water that filled her mouth in her shock, offered no more protest as he returned them to her house and the shelter of the old timbers.
He placed her in the chair before the fire.
No desert plants left.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The dragon, for even if he wore a human’s form he could never be mistaken as anything but a dragon, paced the tiny cabin.
What was it, exactly, that she had said that had set him to worrying a path in her floorboards?
He’d seemed distraught at the truth of the desert, but, surely, he must have known given that there was no rain without a storm, and no storm without him to call it into life?
She pulled her knees into her chest, rocked on the edge of the chair where he’d sat her, watched him drip water onto the wood while the heat of the fire dried the drops from her skin.
Skin that was wet from head to foot.
The cloth she’d wrapped around herself lost to the deck where she’d dropped it in needing to feel the rain against her flesh.
And now naked in the room with a creature who hated her as much as he needed her.
No, had needed her.
Now she was a liability, the only one able to return him to his watery prison.
She wouldn’t blame him if he reneged and claimed her life to ensure the safety of his own.
He paused, the orange-ruby of his unblinking stare found her, only his neck moving, as serpentine as the khan, though her dragon held none of the snake in his body language. “What about Ealsa? Even my oasis is gone to your damn sand storms?”
Ealsa?
The word meant nothing to her, though it was clearly a place of importance to him. “I’m sorry. I do not know of it.”
He jerked back, reeling like she had struck him.
With any other, she would have claimed it was an act to be so surprised.
With him…
The horror on his face was no act.
For a moment, the sound of the rain pelting the cabin stopped. Even the howling of the wind stilled to silence.
It was a heartbeat of time in which horror turned to betrayal turned to agony over his features.
She gripped the arms of the chair, one foot on the ground, half-risen from the seat.
Her dragon tipped back his head, but she did not know what to call the sound that came from his mouth. It was not a roar, as she expected a dragon to roar. A roar held too much violence in the sound. This held only sorrow.
She was moving towards him before his knees gave out and he crashed to the floor.
Where in the rain he had been so strong, she stared at the broken creature he truly was.
Nearly a thousand years caged because he was misunderstood, he was feared and betrayed. Everything he’d known, stripped from him, changed, taken away.
Gone.
His back bowed forward, hands covering his face.
Could dragons weep? Why did the thought make her own eyes wet with tears?
Her fingers trembled as she reached out, a soft caress that brought her hand to his head, stroked slowly through his blond hair, the tips turquoise when touched by the firelight.
“I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”
She didn’t know for what, but she couldn’t stop the words regardless.
Ven stepped close enough that she could lean over him, pull him against her, his head pressed to her stomach, his arms rising to wrap her waist, hold her close.
The heir of his betrayer.
The only one left to offer any comfort.
If it raged outside, she could not say.
She held him, and that was all.
When he calmed, if she could call it calm, he pushed away from her, the red of his gaze unwilling to meet hers, though it was not shame that kept his head turned away.
“It would have been better to have died beneath the seas.”
“Ouros—”
His hand rose between them, halting her words. “There is nothing left for me here.”
“I do not know of your Ealsa. Perhaps it survived. Maybe it still—”
“You took everything from me.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
Now it would come.
Now he would claim his vengeance, his need to repay his imprisonment with death and destruction.
It had been her choice to set him free.
Even if he killed her, it was justice. She could understand his need to rage. She didn’t blame him.
Whatever her great-grandmother had thought she was doing in imprisoning the dragon, the woman had been wrong.
If Ouros was wrathful, it was justified.
He’d shown no sign of it otherwise.
“I understand.” She nodded, closed her eyes and bowed her head. “I release you from your vow, Ouros. My life, for the life that was stolen from you. In repayment of the debt between us.”
She tried not to flinch when the heat of his body drew close, buffeted her.
“I keep my vows, djinn.”
He moved away.
Ven’s breath stuttered in on a near sob.
She turned to look at him, watched as he raided her cabinets, rummaged through the few drawers and shelves in the small pantry the cabin housed.
He made no sound, spoke no words. The only hint to his emotions was in the slamming of a cupboard door, the way he turned to stare at her from the balls of his feet, crouched down in search of she didn’t know what.
“Am I dead? Is this one of the hells? My final damnation after years of being chained for crimes I do not understand, never had chance to defend against? Have you freed me from my prison only to trap me in a new one? No food. No water. No grass and no trees. At least the seas were filled with creatures. Here there are only humans hunting you and hating me.” Ouros stood, and she had no words to comfort him.
He walked past her, ignoring her as thoroughly as she ignored the sand mites that stung at her when digging in the dirt. Nothing more than a nuisance, one he should have always disregarded instead of giving a moment of notice.
His footsteps were sure as he crossed the space of the cabin, moved towards the door that would release him to the world outside.
There was no rain.
There were no winds.
What had happened to the storm called up by his emotions? Anger. Sadness. Grief.
This was numb acceptance, and it was as deadly as if his presence were still trapped beneath the waves.
He reached for the rope handle that would fling wide the wood for him.
Ven caught at his arm, wrapped her fingers around his wrist to hold him back.
He hissed.
The teeth that he bore in his true form were more formidable than the fangs he flashed to her now, but she released him just the same.
He pulled his hand in close to his chest, far out of reach of her grip.
She had not noticed, had not looked closely enough to notice, the marks on his body.
His wrists were raw. The pale flesh of his skin made the red marks stand out brightly. In the glow of the fire, his color had been more neutral, less prone to showing evidence of what he’d suffered, but now that she looked…
It was second nature, to ignore the warning of the wounded animal to go to its aid.
Shara had admonished Ven about the same enough times during her childhood, but Havence had never listened to her mother before, why start now?
He backed into the door when she moved to reclaim his arm, carefu
l to keep her fingers well above the place where the cuff had chained him.
Scabs had formed around part of the manacle’s marking, the flesh likely torn away when he pulled free.
But it wouldn’t have been flesh then.
His beautiful scales, damaged because he had languished for so many years fighting and pulling and trapped beneath the waves.
One hand on his elbow, she held his arm away from his body, looking over his chest, the smooth planes of muscles, the mark over his heart.
When she touched him there, he did not flinch in pain. She caught her breath at the heat that flared against her fingertips.
Her gaze rose to his, lips parted to the dryness of her tongue.
She laid her palm against the marking.
His pupils narrowed, though he didn’t move away.
Ven smiled, shook her head, dared to allow her hand to lead, moving over his skin, feeling the difference where soft flesh met the coarseness of half-formed scales.
He shifted on his feet when she rubbed her thumb along the teal ridged demarcation along his hipbone.
Too close.
Too…
Clinical. She needed to see only the patient before her, ignore the man in him.
Here he stood, naked before her gaze, and it had taken a moment of pain for her to truly look at him, and now she forced her mind to turn away from her perusal, from that kernel settling in her belly that she couldn’t, shouldn’t give in too.
She dropped her grip on his arm to bend closer to his flank.
If she didn’t know better, she’d say that something had taken a bite out of him. The markings that were still raw to her sight were unlike any creature she’d seen on land.
His hand braced on her shoulder, and she wrapped her arm around his hip for balance, fingers pressing against the reddened edges of the wound.
Sand abraded the pads of her fingers. She sniffed, and, dragon or not, she could smell the infection that marked the cruel bite. The heat here was not the same as that which had flared between them when she pressed to his heart.
“How old is this?”
“It’s nothing.”
“How old?” She searched his face, the hard line of his lips, the high ridges of his cheekbones, eyes hard as they met her stare.
“It’s not your concern.”
“Yet I asked.” Ven rose and his hand slid from her shoulder to his side.
If nothing else, the despair in his gaze had shifted forms, was bled with curiosity and wariness when she pulled him across the room and placed him in her chair.
He moved as she directed, the wound turned up as he sat partially on his side.
In his search of the room, he had failed to look beneath her bed.
It was not food, and most of the tonics she’d taken with her to the capital what felt like a lifetime ago, but she had a few dried stores remaining. The oldest of what she’d managed to dry before she left. A small placate of sage. Greasewood, years old though hopefully it would still be of some relief. The small pot of oil she found must have fallen out of her packing for she would never have left it otherwise but was glad for the mishap.
His gaze was hot upon her back, and she was conscious of his watching every movement she made.
Her fingers were steady when she mixed the poultice together into a thick paste.
“And what is that meant for?”
Rather than explain, she reached for his hand, the lesser of his injuries, and raised her eyebrows when he held himself back.
She could have told him what the poultice was for; it would have been easy enough to speak the words.
She waited.
He relented.
It stung, a little, when first applied, before the liniment began working to dull the pain, ease the infection. Deep in his chest, his breath rumbled in a near growl, but she held strong to his fingers, kept working the ointment into his skin, willing the red swelling to ease, the fever to fade.
“This is where you were chained, no?” He nodded, and she moved to his other wrist. “Ankles as well?”
“Yes.”
His voice was soft, the echoing timbre of it resonating in her, soothing.
He did not trust her, and she was not sure she trusted him, but she wanted to.
Ven swiped enough of the liniment onto her fingers to rub around the raw marks on his calves, the chain markings higher than she had expected, hobbling, rather than just binding. She could feel the shape of his muscles beneath her fingers, the way they held to the cruel manacling, had suffered injury from the same.
His bindings had been meant to cripple.
Her throat tightened as her hands moved from soothing to massaging though she didn’t know if either would help.
“I will heal, Ven. I have suffered worse over my many years.”
“More bites, like on your side?”
He looked down at his hip, shrugged. “Sharks attack when they sense weakness, to see if you would prove a good meal. My scales were hard enough that it only struck once. Barely a scratch, really.”
She snorted, the simpler of her treatments complete, and knelt at his side, fingers slick with ointment that she ran gently over the red rimmed edges of the wound. “If it was just a bite, and if I saw scars from similar wounds on your flesh, I would believe you.” His eyes narrowed, lips thinning more as she watched. “But there is sand in this wound, rubbing it raw, and even if you would heal from it eventually, you will be sick and weak until you do.”
“I am not weak.”
Her mouth twitched, fighting a smile. “That is not the type of weakness I mean. Being sick is not weak, Lord Dragon. Illness steals the strength of the body, despite the metal of the soul housed in the flesh. My mother always says that weakness and strength,” she shrugged, “they are just constructs that we can help to treat.”
“Humans. You fret over the smallest of things.”
She turned her eyes to his, held his stare when she pressed against the ragged edge of the shark bite, felt the viscous fluid emerge with her touch.
He growled.
“Tell me you have been bitten before, and I will let it go.”
“I have survived over a thousand years beneath the waves.”
“And how many bites in that time?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He could have argued; perhaps, he should have argued, but she was not wrong in believing the wound infected, and if his grotto was truly gone…
Sharks had attacked him before. The scars had faded, hence why she saw none on his flesh, but he had survived their bites throughout the centuries. There was very little he could not survive.
Fever or laceration, he had faced far worse.
But, Storms save him, he was so very tired of being alone.
And he hadn’t lied, when he asked if he was in hell.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to survive in this world he’d been freed into.
Nothing was as it had been.
Nothing would be as it was, even now that he’d returned.
The woman spoke to him of what she would do, and he listened with half an ear.
Havence.
She should not have freed him.
He nodded, and she spread her lotion against his skin, and what numbing effects it had, proved little when she found a knife and held it to the fire in the hearth, brought the reddened blade to his too-human flesh, and cut away the rotted skin, sealed the wound with fire.
Better that than hiding it in the sand for a century.
She said nothing when he tore the arm off the chair rather than cry out with his pain.
He floated then, not as he did in the sea, the few inches his chains had allowed, when he managed to dig out enough of the sand and stand for a few moments to chase away the ache in his legs.
No, his mind floated away, watched in a haze as she sealed the wound, and worked her medicine into it.
He could see her magic working, the way it infused the liniment through her fingers, not
called by blood, bound by her working of it into his flesh. What ache she relieved was not because of some crushed plant smeared with oil. That she’d never realized the same amused him, even as he pitied her for all that she did not know.
In his time, Snows…
In his time, Amece and her clan had known the basics of what they could do with their magic.
This girl had barely scratched the surface, and yet she gave everything she had in that scratching.
She helped him stand, and he limped where she led him, would have protested being forced to lie upon the bed, but, even old as it was, the mattress lumpy and uneven, more platform than cushion, he was able to lie on his back, to stretch his body fully along its length.
Ouros closed his eyes, lying there with his legs hanging over the edge of the wooden frame.
She moved him to rest more comfortably, the thigh she’d seared, she had him bend at the knee and he opened his eyes long enough to watch her rip apart a sheet taken from a shelf, form a compress smeared with her lotion, wrapped the lot around his wound. “To keep it clean.”
She rose, and it was his hand that reached for hers, that kept her from leaving.
He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t know how to ask.
It had been a lifetime since he’d felt the press of another body sleeping next to his. The last time had spelled his doom.
He shouldn’t want her next to him, and it was all he wanted at the same time, this girl who he knew only the barest of information about, her lineage, little more than that.
She hesitated
He let her go when she pulled on her trapped fingers, closed his eyes rather than watch her bite at the plumpness of her bottom lip, the soft flush to her cheeks.
He lowered his leg to the bed, listened as she moved through the small room.
Metal struck against wood as she stoked the fire. She did something near the door, the sliding of rope against rope, a knot, he thought, to keep it locked during the night.
He did not expect her to return to him.
When she crawled from the foot of the bed to the empty space at his side, he turned his head to meet her gaze, the soft darkness of the room unable to hide the deep blush to her cheeks, the way she looked at her fingers clenching in front of her chest, the white gown she’d pulled on hiding her form from his view.
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