“Take the mossrock and the cove and add it to the water.” He pulled out several dried flowers, no bigger than his finger. “Crumble these up to bind the materials and mix it. The water will turn green when it’s done.”
“Is that all?”
His lips curled. “Unless you’d like to add some of your blood to strengthen it. Human blood is wanted for a reason. Your essence is anathema to the mist, however, nothing can remain pure in this place, as everything that is enveloped in it changes. Soon the mist will bind you to itself. Our focus now is to make sure that it does so with your mind and spirit intact.” Aldora stopped swirling the bowl for a moment at his words, and to his shock, pulled the dagger from her boot. She winced as she slid the blade over her palm. The blood dripped into the mixture and made it a murky brown.
“Is that enough?”
Vedikus stared at the mixture, hungering. “Yes,” he rasped. “More than enough.”
Aldora cleaned his wounds then ran her hands across his back, bringing the sodden cloth with them. Her touch was gentle and the water was cool against his heated skin. It wasn’t marked with pain or torment which he so readily felt, but of something else, something he hadn’t known in many years. It calmed him. The water slithered off him to pool on the stone floor around his hooves.
He could feel her pure blood seeping into his cuts, destroying the rot and empowering his body.
I should not let myself get distracted.His chin hit his chest.Just because we are safe now, does not mean we will remain safe.His hands loosened at his sides.Don’t let them...win.
“They’re healing,” she gasped. He barely heard her through the fog. She caressed her fingers over his spine. “Faster than my own wounds.”
“Your blood.”
“That can’t be it. Blood is blood. If human blood was truly magic, Savadon wouldn’t spend it so freely.”
“Woman, if only you knew.”
***
Vedikus turned on heras he rose to his feet. He gazed down at her with eyes darker and fuller than before, with no white in them at all. The sudden change left her uncertain. The hair on her neck rose.
He won’t hurt me.She’d come upon that realization after he touched her. That they were both changing the longer they were together. Aldora pressed her hands to the floor, still gripping the cloth. It had numbed her fingers and softened her pads. Years of hard work, skin calloused from tending her mother’s farm, had been reversed in minutes.
A plume of steam rushed from his nostrils. It rose up in white tendrils over his eyes and around his horns, lapping at the razor-sharp bone. He made no move toward her, and her eyes slipped down briefly to where his shaft poked at his loincloth. She could still feel it press against her sex, feel it wanting entry into her, could feel the pressure radiating off him in waves. It made it hard to breathe, hard to think clearly.
It was a threat that lingered in the space between them. Her thighs clenched. There wasn’t an hour now that she didn’t imagine the burn of his body penetrating hers.
“Is my blood that powerful?” She swallowed around her words.
He released another bout of steam to play at his horns. Her hands ached to touch them, to wipe the condensation building along their curves.Will our children have horns?The thought stopped her. Sweat formed on her brow.
“Yes.” His voice came out hoarse. The fire crackled.
Aldora rose slowly to her feet, wincing from the lingering stiffness in her frame, and faced Vedikus head on. “Do you want more?” she asked, trying to figure the monster out.
The darkness in his eyes cleared abruptly, and his breaths cleared of heat. The tension wafting off him vanished as if it had never been there to begin with. “No.”
She watched mutely as he downed the water in the bowl and licked the remaining drops off the edges. Aldora glanced at her sliced palm but blood no longer seeped from it. She wrapped the wet cloth around her wound.
In minutes they had broken camp. The herbs made their way back into pouches that now hung on his hips, his weapons were sheathed, and the fire was stomped out. Small, dusty slivers of light fell from cracks farther down the corridor leading away from their camp, and Vedikus moved toward them.
“Are you going to leash me again?” Aldora asked, catching up to him.
“Is it necessary?”
“No.”
“Then I will not.”
The light brightened and the air warmed as they walked further from their space. When the sting of her eyes adjusting began, Aldora glanced back at the shadows she was no longer within. The mist pooled around the corners of her vision but only small tendrils quested towards her. The bulk of the mist remained just out of reach. Waiting. Biding.
She brought a finger to her lips and dabbed at it with her tongue, already knowing what she would taste.
