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, an ordinary woman, and this is Elijah. A soldier.
I tried to protect him. What hope did I have of that? Very little, but that didn’t stop me. Love conquers all. That’s what they teach you as a child. That’s what my parents taught me, and it did feel as if their love could hold back the world. They didn’t face bullets from the U.S. Army, I suppose. Love did nothing to block those.
“Sorry,” I mumble, my tongue thick. The pain wants to drag me under, but I’m fighting it. This feels important, this moment with Elijah, his guilt like a phantom in the room.
I’m the one who shot the colonel. I’m the one who should suffer the consequences.
He gives a hard shake of his head. “No. Don’t.”
I’m not sorry I shot him. I’m only sorry I got hurt doing it. “Leave the country.”
He gives me a look like I’m insane. “You wouldn’t even survive the drive to the airport, sweetheart, much less a transatlantic flight.”
“You.”
Grief rips through his eyes. “And leave you here to—what? Die? Be arrested for treason? Fuck you for even suggesting that, sweetheart. No. Absolutely not.”
“My fault.”
Green is the most beautiful color. The color of dragons. Those green eyes watch me with a possessive gaze, as if I’m made of pure gold. “It’s my fault for letting that man within six feet of you. My fault for not killing him years ago. You were a warrior in there.”
“What will we do?”
Uncertainty. It’s only there for a flash. Half a second and then it’s gone. In its place there’s the determination that I’m used to seeing, but it’s too late. I’ve already seen beneath his armor. He doesn’t know how to protect us anymore. “No one knows we’re here.”
“You own?” Does he own the church?
A huff of humorless laughter. “Ironic, isn’t it? A man like me owning the church. You’d think it would have gone up in flames the moment I signed the papers. Just more proof that there’s no god anywhere to be found in those pews.”
He forces more of the broth down my throat until I pull my head back again. This time it’s warm, salty soup that runs down my throat to pool at the hollow there.
His gaze is fierce, his touch gentle as he wipes me up. “No one knows I own this place. It’s buried under layers of shell corporations. It won’t be easy to uncover.”
Not easy but not impossible. And the U.S. government will have resources the average person does not. That means we’re sitting in an hourglass, each grain of sand falling, leading closer and closer to the time when we’re discovered.
What happens then? Nothing good.
“Your brothers.”
“I’m not involving them. This goes beyond what North Security can handle. Even sharing their last name is enough to get them questioned at this point.”
“They would want to help you.” The words come out hoarse, because I want to help him. The same way I tried to help my sister on that urgent plane ride to Paris. Clumsily, armed only with a sense of right and wrong, with a love not strong enough to block bullets.