by Alisa Woods
He’s there. Holding a coffee cup, one hand extended like he was reaching for the door. “You’re up.” He’s startled. It’s so different from his normal expression—calm and serious, wise with the strength of the Universe—that I just gape for a moment.
Then I’m so glad to see him, I bumble out, “You were gone.” The last word catches, and I have to cough through it, but my throat feels almost normal again.
Pain washes across his face—it stuns me to see it—then he says, “I just stepped out for a moment.” Like he’s apologizing.
Which makes no sense at all. “No, I… it’s my fault…” I step back to give him room to come in, but I’m feeling suddenly light-headed, so I clutch the edge of the door.
“There’s literally nothing that’s your fault, Daisy.” The deep timbre of his voice settles me, like the sound of the ocean on a bright summer’s day. He steps closer and offers his arm. I clutch that instead of the door. “No matter what else you might think, don’t ever think you’re to blame for any of this.” The strength of his arm—it’s like steel under the thin cotton of his tailored white shirt—is even more reassuring than his words. I know getting kidnapped by the dark elves wasn’t my fault. I’m not the kind to take personal responsibility for the vagaries of the Universe. But I also know you have to do your part when it sends you an opportunity. I don’t even know what opportunity the Master has to offer, but I know the Universe brought him.
“Don’t give up on me,” I say as we shuffle back toward my bed.
“I’m not. I never would.” His words are a balm against my fears.
Before we reach the bed, the nurse comes bustling in behind us. “Oh, you’re up, Miss Daisy!” she sings. She’s a lovely Hispanic woman who seems unnaturally cheery all the time. Some people are just like that. The nurses cycle through like crazy, and I can’t track them all, but this one’s name is Lucía, and I love the sound of it, so it sticks in my scattered mind like taffy. “It’s time for your shower, lady! Let’s get you all cleaned up.” She scurries around my other side, opposite the Master, and takes my arm. “We’ll just be a little while,” she says to him, but it’s clear she’s not taking no for an answer. And given I’ve had nothing but sponge baths since I woke up—and probably for a long time before that—a shower sounds like a small slice of heaven.
“I’ll be right here,” the Master says, releasing me with a small smile.
It feels like a benediction.
Lucía hustles me to the bathroom with that gentle-yet-firm way the nurses have. I try to cooperate, and my unsteady legs are waking up, so we make it inside, and she closes the door.
“Arms up!” she says, showing me by example like maybe I’ve forgotten how.
“I can get it off.” But when I try, she has to help me anyway. My limbs all have a certain awkwardness to them like they’ve forgotten how to bend or fold or do the hundred motions one does without thinking but which apparently atrophy away when you lie in bed for weeks on end.
Lucía starts the shower and steam fills the room. I work off my panties, which fall to the floor, and I let her get them only because I’m not sure what to do. Or whether my balance is any good.
“Okay, dear.” Her hand is in the spray, testing it for me. “You can do this. But you need to use the handholds. Don’t make Lucía come in after you and mess up my pretty hair.” She jauntily pats her utilitarian updo, long deep-brown hair pragmatically tied up in a bun.
“You’re very nice to me, Lucía.” I grab the handhold outside the shower and step inside while she holds back the curtain. The warm spray prickles my skin as I ease into it.
“Now, just take a seat,” she instructs then waits until I settle on the smooth plastic protruding from the wall. It’s chilly on my bare bottom but heating quickly. “Everything you need is on the shelf, okay? Shampoo. Soap. I will be right back. No acrobatics, sí?”
“No acrobatics,” I promise.
“That’s my girl.”
Before she can draw the curtain to give me privacy, I ask, “How long have you been taking care of me, Lucía?”
She stops and gives me a kind look. “How long have you been asleep, tía, or how long have you been awake?”
“Yes.” I let my eyes plead with her.
“Two days since you woke up,” she says, more serious now. “Three weeks before that.”
I nod.
She smiles and draws the curtain.
I carefully soap up my whole body. I’m usually on the lean side, but my arms and legs are painfully thin. Part of that’s the starvation while being tortured by the elves. Part is sitting in that bed in an apparent coma. Three weeks. Thank the Universe I had some muscle-tone before all this, due to my handy work. Running up and down ladders, hauling around my toolbelt, hanging curtains and painting doors… all of it built up strength that feels like a memory now. I take a deep breath and hold onto the shower’s handrail to haul myself up from the seat. Standing full in the spray now, I let it cascade over me, rinsing away the soap and drenching my hair. I give it a good washing, but that takes all the energy I have left. I sit back down before I earn Lucía’s ire. She returns with a towel and helps me dry off. She’s brought new clothes too, but they’re folded and wrapped in a ribbon, which seems strange.
Lucía notices my stare as she helps me with my panties. “Those are from your boyfriend.”
I whip a look to her.
She shrugs as she tugs my panties up into place. “Or whoever Señor Hottie is.”
I laugh a little. The Master is undeniably beautiful. I realize how ridiculous it is that I don’t know his name. “He’s just watching out for me.”
She stands and picks up the wrapped clothes, cocking a skeptical eyebrow. As she unwraps the ribbon, I see it’s a dress similar but not identical to the one I was wearing while captured—a simple, spaghetti-strap white-linen thing that’s probably less substantial than the nightgowns I’ve been cycling through. It occurs to me those weren’t the kind any hospital carries as stock-issue. He’s been providing me clothes all long.
“I could be wrong,” Lucía says as she bunches up the dress to slip over my head. “But this is not the present of a man who wishes only to be friends.”
I see what she means as it slides into place. It’s really two layers—a solid sheath underneath and a more diaphanous layer that floats on top. The top dips down enough to be slightly sexy in an innocent way while the skirt is short enough to expose a whole lot of leg above the knee. The sundress I wore while captive was simple and utilitarian. Plain cotton and simple construction. The best part of it was the flowing skirt, which felt freeing after wearing my normal, heavier work pants and shirts all week long. But it wasn’t feminine the way this one is.
Lucía towels my hair as I peer down at the dress. “Your brush is by your bed,” she says. “Let’s go get you settled.”
“I’d like to stay awake for a while.” I’m exhausted, but I don’t want to fall back asleep right away. I have questions. And not for Lucía.
“Sure, tía.” She swings open the bathroom door, and I emerge with bare feet, towel-dried hair, and this dress that moves when I walk, creating a rippling flow around my legs. I actually like it, a lot. But it’s so pretty and delicate—unusual for me.
The Master scrambles to his feet, his eyes drinking me in.
That flush covers my entire body.
“I will check back on you later, tía!” Lucía sings on her way out the door.
It closes behind her.
The Master is hurrying over to offer his arm, but I hold up a hand to stop him. “I just want to sit for a while.”
He hesitates then goes back for the plastic chair he was sitting in. I take a seat facing the bed. I expect him to stand or find a seat on the bed opposite me, but instead, he goes to the dresser and rummages in the top drawer. I close my eyes and rest for a moment, just breathing and sitting upright without support. A simple shower was exhausting. How long will it take me to recover from th
is? The nurses have said I’m a miracle case—they don’t know why I was in a coma, and they don’t know why I’m not in one now. They’re not treating me for anything but exhaustion. At some point, I should be able to leave. It’s hard to think that far ahead.
Suddenly, a hand is on my shoulder.
My eyes fly open.
The Master is behind me. His hand slips into my hair, and something tugs on it—gently. It takes me a moment to realize: he’s brushing my hair. His hands are strong but infinitely careful. He’s running his fingers through the long strands, finger-combing them, then following with a bristled brush I glimpse out the corner of my eye. His strokes are slow and luxurious, and he cradles my head to counter the motion. It’s like a scalp massage and hair brushing all in one. I close my eyes, letting him move me as he wishes. Then just as suddenly, his hands slip away.
I open my eyes again, but before I can turn to look, a rumbling sound starts up behind me. A hairdryer. His hands are back in my hair again, lifting the still-wet locks away and blowing the hot air across them. I close my eyes again, just enjoying the touch and heat. Every inch of my skin is goose-bumped from the contrast of the hot air and cold traces of wet hair across my back.
What is happening here? Am I being the Fool once again, letting the cards lead me into trusting a man I don’t even know? There’s a sexual promise in this slow, careful tending. In the loose yet suggestive dress. I’ve had lovers before, on occasion, and I’m not oblivious to the warmup signals and sexual tension that seem to spring from nowhere between people. The Lovers card speaks to the essential duality of love—between the Lover and the Beloved. I thought the Emperor card was beckoning me to follow, to finally meet that purpose the Universe had yet in store for me.
Maybe it was just what my mind needed to conjure at that moment. To wake up.
The hairdryer cuts off. My hair is weightless now, soft and gently floating about my shoulders. The Master gives it several more strokes with the brush, and then he comes around and kneels in front of me and the chair, bristle brush still in hand, his eyes glowing and earnest as he peers up at me.
“Thank you,” he breathes. A small smile sneaks out. “For allowing that.”
“Who are you?” A question I should have asked long ago.
Again, torment fills his face that I don’t understand. “I want to tell you,” he says, “but I don’t think you’ll believe me.”
My hands are gripping my knees, just below the hem of this short skirt. Now that I’m sitting, I realize how revealing it is. My arms are locked, a defensive shield of sorts, against the powerful card he is. “Because you’re made of magic.”
The shock opens his expression, but he quickly recovers. “You remember.”
“Of course, I remember.” Am I not supposed to remember the torture I endured at the hands of magical creatures? Or the endless waiting, hovering between the realms? I remember my past lives—recalling what’s just happened in this one is not a stretch. My agitation is making my arms shake. I grip my knees harder. “Tell me who you are,” I demand, more harshly this time, because my greatest fear at this point is that I haven’t broken free of being the Fool. That my urge to regain my child-like innocence, before I knew of evil magic in the world, has led me to put trust in yet another dangerous man. He’s refusing to answer, so I put it more plainly. “Are you in league with them? The ones who tortured me?”
“No!” It’s so forceful and sudden, breaking through whatever torment he has, that I’m compelled to believe him.
“Then what?” I press. “Because those beings were made of magic, and you haven’t denied that you are as well.” And I’ve seen you. I might mistake a card’s meaning, but I can’t conjure a being out of nothingness. I’d never seen this man before he appeared in the card above the lake. That means something. It has to.
“All right.” He stands up from where he was kneeling in front of me and takes a seat on the bed, a little further away. I narrow my eyes. He suddenly needs distance for this? Why? “My people are dragons. We can take human form, but we are not human. We were nearly wiped out two hundred years ago by the dark elves—the Vardigah—who tortured you. They hunt us still.”
I nod because this makes perfect sense. “Why do they hate you?”
He gives an elaborate, open-palmed shrug. “We’re ancient enemies, the source of the conflict lost to time. For thousands of years, before even our recorded history, there was a separate race of elves—the light elves—who kept the Vardigah contained. Or at least kept them from attacking us. Then one day, they nearly wiped us from the face of the earth.”
“Two hundred years ago.” A long-standing war. He’s the Emperor, after all. Sometimes, the cards are literal. That can be the most surprising turn of all.
“You’re taking this extraordinarily well.” The look on his face is almost comical.
I scowl at him. “I was psychically tortured by dark elves.” I mentally high-five myself for guessing what they were correctly. “Vicious magical creatures attempted to break my soul. The fact that you’re a dragon is not exactly strange by comparison.”
He nods, but it’s tentative, and his expression is still bound up in surprise.
Trickles of fear are working through my body, pooling at the bottom of my stomach. “Why me?” I whisper. “I’m not one of you. How did I get caught up in your war?” And why are you here? I also want to ask. But I’m not sure if he’ll tell me the truth now. And I’m feeling the Fool even more for trusting him at all.
He leans forward, giving me a soft look. “They tried, and nearly succeeded, to find every human woman who was destined to be our mates. They wanted to break you in order to destroy us.”
I lean back. Mates? “I don’t understand.”
His shoulders drop. There’s a certain terror in his eyes that makes me reflexively fold my arms in front of me and draw my knees closer on the chair. “You’re my soul mate,” he says. “Your soul and mine are two halves of a single soul. If they could destroy yours, I would perish as well. And that is the Vardigah’s goal. To wipe us from the planet.”
I blink. My mouth slowly falls open. The shock feels like I’m made of glass that’s suddenly shattered and avalanched down into a pile at my feet. It’s truth. I can feel it. But I can’t even begin to wrap my mind about what that means.
My head is shaking no before I can even form words.
“Daisy, I—” But he stops at the horror on my face.
My hands itch for my cards. If I could do a clean draw—an honest draw, not one depending on my untrustworthy imagination, my Fool-ish nature—maybe I could understand the meaning of this. See a path through all of it. But right now, it’s too much.
My body unfolds from the chair. I move past him to climb onto my bed. The blanket is thin, and the sheet is too, barely any warmth in this suddenly cold room.
I burrow under them anyway, drawing them up to my chin. My back is turned to him. He’s risen from the bed, and I hear the sigh, even though he tries to keep it quiet. I don’t hear his footfalls, but I sense him moving away like there’s some tether between us that’s being stretched.
The sound of the door opening jolts me. I turn under the covers and fling out my hand. “Wait!”
He pauses at the door, his face stricken.
“Don’t leave,” I mumble. My hand’s trembling, so I draw it back under the covers. Then I turn away again because I can’t explain it. I don’t know why I would try to make him stay.
The door closes again, but I know he’s on this side of it. I hear the chair scrape as he takes a seat.
I close my eyes and let myself escape into the darkness of sleep.
Four
Akkan
I’ve spent a lifetime dreaming of this.
Meeting my soul mate. Making it sweet. Earning her love. I’ve spent the last few weeks half in despair that she’d never awaken, half in terror she would—and I’d blow the entire thing.
That second half knew me better.
>
Somehow, I’m completely fouling all of it. Yet… she told me not to leave. A tiny flame of hope still sputters in my soul. Maybe it’s not too late to fix this. Daisy’s sleeping hard, going on twenty hours now. Meals have come and gone. I tried dozing in the chair but discovered long ago that was impossible. I left for a short while to try sleeping in the visitor’s lounge, but it was nothing but fitful nightmares of her hand slipping from mine as she fell off a cliff. It’s morning again, back in the room. She’s still curled up in the dress I brought, huddled under the blankets like they might shield her from reality.
A reality I dumped on her like a metric ton of wet cement.
I should have waited. That she believed every word caught me off guard. That she so thoroughly accepted the unimaginable lured me into thinking that maybe my luck had finally turned. That all this waiting would finally pay off, and something would go right in this arena of my life. I’ve loved other women—I know relationships are never easy, that you have to work at them—but having my literal other half before me raises the stakes... and the promise. It has me off-balance, terrified of the return of that pain, the one that’s shadowed me all my life. Devastating Loss. Losing Daisy, or simply having her turn me away, will hurt like nothing else has. And I already know what it’s like to lose everything and everyone.
I’m gazing out the window at the threatening early-morning rain when I hear her move.
She stretches, her bare toes slipping out of the covers as she elongates her body, eyes still closed. She’s a beautiful woman—that goes without saying—but she’s still so thin. Maybe this is her normal shape, but I fear the ravages of the Vardigah have marked her. I’ve felt the weakness in her arms the few times she’s let me help. But when she opens her eyes, they’re clear. Her face has more color in it every day. Patience, Akkan. The poor woman is still recovering bodily from a terrible trauma.