Page 62 of Into Ember

“You want a number?” Her laugh comes out with no air in it. “I don’t have a number. I have… you moved in on a Tuesday. That’s all I’m saying about that.”

It was a Tuesday. I remember.

“And I never said anything, because men like you don’t—” She stops. Starts again anyway, and I stand very still because I need her to keep talking. “I never thought you would ever be interested in a woman like me. Okay? There. It’s out. Blame the steam… Or something.”

“A woman like you.”

“You know what I mean. All of…” one arm moves from where it’s covering her to gesture at herself, “…this. You’ve met me, Erik. Repeatedly.”

“Years, Ella. Right across the hall.” I keep her eyes. “How many women did you ever see me bring home?”

“I don’t know.” Defensive now, chin coming up. “Probably dozens. You’re you, Erik.”

“None.”

She stops.

“None, Elara.” I take one step, close enough that her crossed arms brush my shirt. “Because none of them were you.”

I watch the fight go out of her.

Staying away isn’t an option anymore, so I close the last of the distance and put my forehead to hers. Her breath is quick. Just like mine.

“I’ve dreamt of you more times than I’d like to admit,” I tell her. “And unlike Rayner, my dreams are my own.” Her eyes come up. “But this. You. So much better than any dream I’ve ever had.”

She makes a small wrecked sound, and I help her into the bath before I stop being able to.

I watch her sink in up to her chin and groan, long and unguarded. Worth every bucket somebody hauled. Petals ride the wave of her, and I roll my sleeves and kneel at the side of the tub, and she watches me do it with her eyes going soft and suspicious at the same time, which is my favorite combination.

“What are you doing now?”

“Washing you.”

“I know how to wash myself, Erik. I’ve been doing it for years. I’m considered gifted.”

“I know.” I pour the first water over her shoulders. “This isn’t about what you can do.”

I take my time. Her shoulders. Her arms, one and then the other, her fingers, the inside of her wrist where her pulse gives her away. Soap that smells like the gardens outside. Her hair, which takes two pourings and earns me a sound I intend to remember on bad days. I work through it slow while the steam climbs, and my hands drift lower before I can stop them, working out the knots the Vestry put in her shoulders one at a time.

Some of those are probably from me too.

She’s melting into it. I can feel it under my hands, one muscle at a time.

“There’s a story,” I say, somewhere in the middle of it. “An old one. Mothers tell it to dragon children when they’re small. Mine told it to me.”

“Mm.” Her eyes are closed. “Is there a version where the girl gets eaten? Because the night’s been long.”

“No one gets eaten. There was a male dragon, wounded in a war and left where he fell in the mountains, too broken to fly and too far from anyone who cared whether he lived. A female found him there. This was long ago, when the world still had them. The war wasn’t hers and she could have left him to die, but she carried him to her cave instead, and she fed him from her own hunts, and at night she slept against his side so her fire could keep the cold from finishing what the war had started. She guarded his sleep like that the whole winter. He was too broken to give her anything back, and she never once asked him for anything, and that was how he knew.”

“Knew what?” Quieter now.

“What she was to him.” I wash the back of her neck. She lets me. “So when he could finally stand, he didn’t bring her a trophy or a hoard, because she had no use for either. He went down to where the hot springs run under her mountain and carved a basin into the rock, wide enough for her, right where the warm water rises, and then he bathed her in it. Washed the whole winter off her, every scale, as slow and as careful as she had been with him. He never spoke a vow and he never made a claim. Just his hands, and the water, and the time it took. That was his answer.”

Her breath has gone slow and careful, listening hard and pretending not to. Her hand found my forearm somewhere during the story. She hasn’t moved it.

“That’s the whole story?” she asks. “They fixed each other and took baths?”

“Dragon stories are short. We’re a practical people.”