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.

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.

She was in a field miles wide, with all the room in the world to stretch her legs. Distant trees shadowed the edges. A tall dark man with raven hair and gold raptor’s eyes stood in the trees and watched her.

She didn’t care. He couldn’t catch her. Nothing could, not even the wind, unless she let it.

Pia.

She knew that voice. She loved that voice. She turned and saw her mother running toward her. In her true shape, her mother had an incomparable loveliness and shone brighter than the moon who bowed down before her.

Mom? She slowed and turned. She felt like a little girl again. Mommy?