Pia Saves the Day (Elder Races #6.6)(14)

He waited for her to do it, and in the process discovered he savored the anticipation, but she didn’t follow through with the gesture. Disappointment darkened his thoughts.

“Go back up to the clearing,” he said. “I’ll bring firewood.”

Carefully, she pulled away from his touch and straightened. Still without looking at him, she told him stiltedly, “Thank you.”

He lowered his head, watching her shadowed figure as she climbed back up to the ledge, still carrying her useless bundle of twigs. If he didn’t like her walking away from him, he liked her pulling away from his touch even less.

They would have words about that. They would most definitely have words.

For now, he turned his attention back to the pile of deadfall. The frame of the fallen tree lay underneath a scatter of forest debris. With a few strong kicks, he splintered the dry wood and gathered several sturdy pieces. When he carried his load back to the clearing, he found that she had gathered rocks into a circle for a makeshift campfire ring.

Wordlessly, he stacked his load a few feet away from the ring, and went back for another load. When he returned and added the second armful to the stack, he found her squatting in front of the ring. She had stacked the sticks she had gathered, and she worked at lighting a handful of dry leaves with a small, handheld lighter.

Folding his arms, he watched. Even though he could have lit the fire with a single glance, she didn’t ask for his help, and he didn’t offer it. If she wanted to do it by herself, so be it.

After a few minutes, she had a small fire started. Tiny flames licked eagerly at the sticks, and the growing circle of light contrasted with the darkness around them.

Only then did she look up at him. She appeared calmer, more composed. She said, “It’s a good sign that you remembered your human form. It’s promising.”

“Is it?” He tucked his chin and considered her from underneath lowered brows. “I suppose it is.”

A powerful cascade of emotions made his mood uncertain, and apparently she picked up on it, for her gaze turned wary. “Don’t you think so?”

The delicate skin around her eyes was shadowed with dark smudges, and she looked exhausted. Still, the firelight loved her, burnishing the warm, healthy tan of her skin. The pale gold of her hair shone.

Her hair.

He didn’t look at his wrist.

“Perhaps it is a good sign,” he conceded. “I find I have more questions as time goes on, thus more frustrations.”

Feeding another stick to the fire, she nodded. In profile, her expression was grim, settled. She looked as though she were set upon a long journey requiring endurance.

Deciding to test her, he said, “I’m surprised you’re still here. Once you realized I had no knowledge of your mate, I would have thought you’d have given up by now and left.”

Anger flashed in her eyes, a deep, pure sapphire violet. The very best sapphires had that same intense, almost purple blue. “If you think I would give up searching for my mate, just because I’ve had a bad couple of days and a few setbacks, you’re badly mistaken. I didn’t mate for those times when it was convenient or easy for me—because, believe me, none of it has been convenient or easy. Not since the very first day.”

The fire in her response was delicious. He wanted to bask in it, to eat it all up. And not once, since she had arrived, had she ever spoken a lie. Everything she had told him was the truth.

Still standing with his arms crossed, holding himself at a distance, he heard himself ask, “Tell me of this time before, when you claimed to have healed me.”

There was a slight pause, as she adjusted to his change in focus. She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t just claim to have healed you—I have healed you, three times now. The first time, last year, you were poisoned.”

He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t that. He drew in a breath between his teeth, on a slow hiss. “How?”

She paused, clearly searching for words. “It was a complicated situation, and I take a lot of responsibility for it. It was when we had first met, before we had grown to trust one another. Essentially, I provoked you into breaking some border treaties with the Elven demesne. They shot you with a poisoned arrow so that you couldn’t shapeshift into the dragon while in their territory. You still have a scar on your chest where the arrow struck.”

Reflexively, he rubbed the broad flat, muscled area of his right pectoral. Immediately, as if his fingers remembered more than he, they found a small indentation in the flesh. “And the second time?”

A dark expression shadowed her delicate, triangular face. “The second time you almost died. Again, the story is complicated, but basically you, along with some allies, fought a battle against an invader, one of the elder Elves who had come from a place called Numenlaur. You had several broken bones, and probably sustained other internal injuries. You couldn’t defend yourself against the attacking army. Luckily, I was able to get to you in time.”

The Elves again. Always, so many of his problems seemed to come down to the bloody Elves.

Going down on one knee, he added larger pieces of wood to the fire. The dry wood caught almost instantly, and the flames leaped higher, bringing light and heat to the cold night air.

“Now you’ve healed me again,” he said. “It seems to have become something of a habit.”