“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.
NINE
Pia was running for the sheer joy of it.
The wind played in her hair. The moon looked down from its throne in the royal purple sky and smiled at her. The night was brighter than she’d ever seen before, a velvet carpet strewn with stars that winked diamond bright and sang faint ice-cold snatches of song, of distant journeys and enchantments in other realms. The magic in the land nourished parts of her that had been crippled and half dead. She felt stronger, freer and wilder than she ever had before. She leaped high and reached up to tickle the edge of the moon, who laughed in delight.