Page 262 of A Dance of Water

"Yes. My dragon, we are…" Vale growled softly. "We both understand the importance of what she needs right now."

Tharen turned his head slightly, staring at Vale, who had drawn nearer to the bed. The mage studied Vale, finding no slitted pupils or onyx scales on his skin.

"If you cause problems, Bastian will make you sleep," Tharen warned. Hearing no rebuttal, he started to untangle Graves’s cloak from Luella’s legs, leaving her entire body bare, save for the scraps of her gown covering the soft swell of her backside. In her fitful rest, she flinched away from his touch.

Azgorath growled. "Don’t you fucking hurt her."

"That little warning goes for all of you," Tharen spat. "The last thing I need right now is to be distracted. It’ll only make me fuck up and hurt her—which I’m sure you don’t want?"

The demon’s hands curled into fists by his side. His knuckles were busted, coated with dried blood. But he remained quiet.

As did the rest of them, after Tharen’swarning.

That left the mage with uninterrupted focus on Luella and the weight of what came next.

He was used to broken things—loved piecing them back together. But the sight of her… It was different.

But that didn’t matter right now.

Tharen got to work. Because he had to.

To preserve her modesty, he folded a sheet over her lower half. He normally wouldn’t care, but something about her so vulnerable and fragile made his heart fucking twinge in his chest, and the only way to get it to stop was to cover her as best as he could without hindering his view of her bloodied back.

In warning, Luella’s heart rate increased.

Then she gasped softly, fingers curling in the sheets by her cheeks as her head started to lift. An ear-splitting crack of lightning echoed outside the castle walls.

She was waking up, dammit.

Digging into his satchel, he grabbed a small glass vial of deep purple liquid, uncapping it and pressing it to her lips. She gagged, eyes watering, as he tipped the contents into her mouth, and he quickly pinched her nose, giving her no choice but to swallow. The effects were instantaneous. Her lids drooped; her struggling limbs weakened.

Luella’s blue eyes grew hazy with the potion. "Tharen…" she breathed thinly, fingers curling weakly into the sheets.

"Don’t try to stop it," Tharen muttered, words reminiscent of their time in the Temples—had it truly been just a day ago he had her underneath him on the altar?

Finally, her breathing evened out, and he released a held breath with relief.

Tharen swallowed down asorryas he gently grasped the bottommost part of her left wing, unable to stop his sharp intake of air at the softness of the feathers. Even crusted with blood, it was the most delicate thing he had ever felt. Surprisingly light, too. The wings were tucked close to her back, the long pointed tips at the bottom curling around her upper thighs. Her breathing picked up at his touch, but she otherwise didn’t stir, so Tharen grew bolder, taking her wing and stretching it out. The muscles in her upper backtwitched, and he felt some resistance, so he laid her wing down against her back, once more. That wasn’t good—he didn’t know much about wings, but her muscles were obviously weak.

An angel who couldn’t fly. Looks like her wings wouldn’t need to be clipped, after all.

Tharen shifted his focus to the gouges on her back where the wings had broken free. At the base of each wing, her pale flesh was angry and red. No fresh blood; she was healing.

For a moment, he simply stared at her, feeling out of depth; though, he’d never admit it aloud.

He allowed his Body magic to seep out of him, feeling her out. Her heartbeats were a steady thrum in his ears; he could sense no internal bleeding or injuries. That was better than he had anticipated.

First step: clean the blood away. Then, he would try to speed up the process of her healing. After that… he didn’t know.

Fuck.

Grabbing a cloth from his supplies, he used his Aqua magic to dampen it, tiny droplets falling from his cupped palm as he settled the cloth against the small of her back and started methodically wiping away the blood.

She was so soft under his palms, and his mind kept returning to how she had felt on his lap, then under him. He wanted to be inside her so badly. Gods, it was wrong—fucked up—but the ache stole his breath. She was so soft, so warm beneath his hands, and all he could do was clean her up like he didn’t know how she sounded when she shattered with pleasure.

Luella’s breath hitched sleepily as his fingers brushed against her spine. White wings fluttered softly as he worked—the picture of innocence.

This would be a long fucking night.

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