“What’s happened?” Alizeh asked, blinking through a sting of tears, her gritty eyes attempting to lubricate. She tried to sit up and gasped instead, her muscles seizing as a searing pain awoke along the left side of her body.
“Oh dear,” said Sarra uneasily.
Alizeh tensed as the woman looked her over with what appeared to be sincere concern; she took Alizeh’s injuredarm in her hand, gentle fingers probing the homemade bandages, then pressed lightly against a stretch of Alizeh’s leg, which triggered an unexpected wave of torment.
The girl bit back a cry.
“I see,” Sarra said softly. “These are teeth marks, aren’t they? Dragon bites.”
“To be fair,” Alizeh said, still wincing, “I don’t think the dragon meant to bite me.”
“No, it wouldn’t have.” Sarra frowned. “Don’t be deceived by their size; they’re quite dear creatures, actually.”
“Well.” Alizeh attempted to breathe through the agony, comforting herself with the reminder of a recent discovery: that her body had some ability to mend itself. “Little to do about it now. I’ve cleaned and wrapped the wounds. They’ll heal eventually.”
Sarra raised her eyebrows. “I take it you didn’t see the line of bites along your leg, then.”
“What?” With some difficulty, Alizeh heaved herself up into a seated position and studied the leg in question. She still wore only the remnants of her twice-destroyed gown, which meant Alizeh was fairly exposed, her bare thigh displaying a neat sequence of puncture wounds, which, she had to assume, were repeated somewhere along her abdomen as well. The visible lacerations had bled and messily clotted, her clear blood making it look as if her skin was slathered in a crusty, translucent jelly.
Alizeh’s stomach turned at the sight.
“He really is quite the monster, isn’t he?” said Sarra quietly.
Startled, Alizeh looked up at the woman. “Who?”
“My son,” she said, her expression grim even as she smiled. “He’s an unforgivable brute.”
Even as the nosta warmed, it felt like a trap.
Alizeh said nothing; she only studied Sarra warily, wondering what to believe. From the first, Cyrus’s mother had been hard to understand, her actions always straying from the path of an obvious logic. Alizeh didn’t know what to do with the woman now. She certainly didn’t trust her.
“What was it you needed to speak with me about?” Alizeh said instead, careful to keep her face placid. “You made it sound as if something was wrong.”
“Oh, everything is wrong, my dear. Everything is wrong.” Again Sarra smiled; again the effect was tragic. “I had hoped, upon your arrival, that together we might change the course of things, and I’d come here to speak with you about just that, only I see now that you do not trust me, which means we cannot even think of forming an alliance until you do.”
“You and I form an alliance?” Alizeh nearly laughed. “You can’t be serious.”
Sarra shot her a hard look before rising to her feet, outstretching a hand. Alizeh studied the woman with a guarded expression.
“Don’t be daft,” Sarra said with a slight shake of her head. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Then what will you do with me?”
“I’m going to help you up, and then draw you a bath.”
The nosta glowed warm at the statement, hope burgeoning in Alizeh’s chest. A bath soundeddivine. “That’s all?”
Sarra gave her a dry smile. “That’s all.”
Alizeh accepted the woman’s hand and gingerly levered herself up; once she’d found a measure of balance she hobbled along behind Sarra, who led the way to the tub. The woman turned taps until the sound of rushing water filled the room; the sight and promise of it all was enough to calm Alizeh’s senses almost at once.
As the jet sloshed reassuringly against the porcelain, Sarra reached for a tray of small wooden bowls perched along a mounted ledge, and measured out precise scoops of what appeared to be multicolored herbs, which she then emptied into the water.
Steadily, the basin began to fill.
“These are medicinal,” Sarra explained, nodding to the tray she was now returning to its shelf. “When the water touches your wounds it’ll burn like hell itself, but if you can endure a bit of pain, there’s little better for helping calm and clean your injuries quickly.”
Alizeh bristled.
