rough on her newly formed feet?
Fingers brush my chest, leaving trails of sparks in their wake.
The room resolves into a familiar place. I recognize the bars and the walls, and most of all, the man with his head bowed over me, green eyes shadowed. He’s tending to me. Working at something on my side. White gauze and sterile tape. Whatever he’s doing hurts and an echo of the pain reminds me not to grit my teeth so hard.
“We keep meeting this way.” His eyes flick up to my face, widening at my dry, raspy voice. Relief flashes there, but it’s as quick as lightning. “In dark basements. Behind bars.”
There’s a sound in my throat. A soft whimper of recognition.
“Starting to feel like home, isn’t it?” The corner of his mouth twists. “Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe you wish you’d wake up somewhere else. Sorry about this next part.”
What next part? Then he’s doing something to raw flesh, and I sob at the newly cutting pain.
“Shh,” he murmurs, sympathy thick in his voice. “I’ll be quick.”
I wish I could sink into the cot, but no matter how hard I press against it, it doesn’t open up and swallow me whole. Maybe that dragon was real. Maybe it’s breathing again, because sweat beads along my hairline and my eyes burn. A tear slips out along my teeth and now Elijah curses, his face dark with fury and guilt.
The expression he wears hurts almost as much as whatever he’s doing. I have the strongest urge to look but I can’t move my head, can’t tip my chin down, don’t want to see. Oh, he blames himself for this. It’s written in every line of him. In his furrowed brow and the set of his shoulders and his teeth set tight together. His anger highlights the hard cut of his jaw. He’s so gorgeous it hurts.
I want to reassure him, lift my hand to his cheek to follow the lines and curves there. Lifting my arm seems like too much work. Telling him I’ll be fine would be an obvious lie. And besides, I’m not sure I could speak. I can’t imagine how I could get up from this cot and walk away.
It’s not so urgent, is it? Elijah doesn’t seem to think so.
“Here,” he says. “Drink some water.”
There’s no time to tell him no, that I can’t, that the liquid would burn my cuts all the way down. There’s already a glass at my lips. He tips it up, and water sluices down my throat. I gasp at the sensation. Tears sting my eyes.
“More.” He’s merciless.
I yank my head away, sending a splash of water over my cheek, down my neck, curling at the nest of hair beneath me. It’s biting cold against my overheated body. Ice against the sidewalk on a summer day in Paris—melting, melting. “No.”
He wants to argue with me. I can sense that in the air, but he relents. Instead there’s warm metal on my tongue. Salt. Broth. The soup goes down easier. I swallow, closing my eyes.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Thank you,” he repeats, his voice dry. Dry enough to be a desert. Dry enough to be the cracked skin across a large body covered in scales. “You’re almost dead, and you’re the one thanking me. Of course you are. That’s our pattern. I get you killed, you thank me.”
The words rush over me like a breath of too-hot air. They feel like fire. I know there’s something in them I should argue, something I should protest, but the logic won’t form in my mind. All I know is that I’m hurting, and so is he. We’re both aching.
We’re both becoming someone new.
“Are we in France?”
A quirk of his lips. He hasn’t shaved. That’s the only thing that registers. I want to run my fingers across his jaw to feel the bristles, the bite. “No. We’re far away from France.”
I force the sounds past my swollen lips. “Italy?”
“No, sweetheart. We’re a lot closer to home, and in more danger than we ever were overseas. Would that we were still in a French prison or in a gunfight through the Italian countryside. Those places would be infinitely safer than this.”
My mind feels sluggish. Maybe it’s the effects of the transition, flesh ripped apart and then sewed back together. Maybe this is what mermaids feel like when they’re on land.
No. That’s not right. I realize that now. I’m not a mermaid. That was a fever dream.
In reality I’m a woman,