She had to stop talking. She didn't want to weep in front of a dragon.
There were soft sloshing sounds; water lapped the edge of the pool. Tess looked up to see that Verd was sitting up now, one arm propping him in place while the other drifted loose in the water beside him.
"Two years ago, he said?"
Matter-of-fact. No overt displays of sympathy, no attempt to hug her or offer false comfort. His calmness made it easier to recover her own composure.
"Yes. He was sick for a while, but he got better, and we thought ... except then it started getting worse again. We were in Greece until just recently, hoping the oreiads could help, but they wouldn't even talk to me." She stopped and took another breath. That was a pain she couldn't touch right now, not on top of the fresh rawness of her fear for David. "And he'd burned bridges with the Hunters. Coming to you was all that we could think of."
"Faith?" Verd said, his voice wry.
"Desperation."
"Mmm. Sometimes the two are much the same."
"I didn't come here to play games." Her voice cracked. "If you ever loved David, if you still feel anything at all for him—he's dying, Verd."
"I know." His voice was unexpectedly gentle. "Come here."
She frowned at him, sitting in the water as he was. "What?"
"Come here." He swished a hand through the water. "Swim with me."
"We don't have time for—"
"When you're in the water, I will know you. Let me know you, mate of David Monaghan."
It was a small thing, in exchange for David's life. She couldn't exactly turn him down. Except— "In case you've forgotten, you might be able to survive swimming in nearly boiling water, but I can't."
"It won't be." Verd swirled his fingers in the water, turning his hands in a graceful loop underwater. "This is my place; the waters do what I want. Come in."
Tess leaned down and cautiously brushed the water's surface with her fingertips, then dipped her hand. He was right; it felt like pleasantly hot bathwater. She could feel the cooler currents he was stirring; occasional searing heat rippled painfully across her knuckles.
Putting herself in the water placed her entirely at his mercy. He could roast her alive with a stray thought.
You were the one who insisted on coming here. Isn't David's life worth some risk?
And there was more risk in backing down, anyway. She didn't know a lot about dragons, other than their mutual enmity with her kind, but one thing she'd learned from years of fighting supernatural predators with David: you must show them strength, not weakness. This was a challenge. By meeting it, she might earn Verd's respect—which, she realized, she wanted very much, and not just for David's sake. Back down ... and she might leave the cave alive, if he was feeling charitable.
But two could play that game. She was not totally helpless, even here on the lands of a dragon.
She stepped barefoot off the rock, and began to strip. She shimmied out of her jeans, folded them neatly, and followed them with her shirt. Looking up as she undid her bra, she saw that Verd's eyes were fastened on her in surprise and ... was that a veiled hint of appreciation? She hadn't been sure whether he enjoyed the sight of female bodies as well as male ones. Now she knew.
She unfastened the bra, stepped out of her panties, and folded both atop her pile of clothes. Naked as the day she was pulled from the roots of her parent tree, she stepped into the water.
It was painfully hot at first, stinging her feet and ankles, but like stepping into a hot bath, she acclimated quickly. She waded in to her knees, then to her thighs. The water lapped up her skin, climbing towards her sensitive places.
In the water, I will know you. How much did he know?
On her home mountain, she and her fellow oreiads could sense the tread of every hiker and goat-herd who climbed those peaks. Could Verd feel these waters caressing her thighs, stroking the backs of her knees, rising ever higher on the soft skin of the insides of her legs?
From his slight smile, she thought he could.
Well, if this was a challenge, so be it—she would give him something to feel.
She let herself fall and the hot water caught her, swallowed her, turning the world to deep blue-green silence. It was deeper than she'd thought. She kicked forward; her fingers brushed rock that was slick with algae, and she twisted around in the water's embrace. She didn't swim often, preferring the feeling of her feet on the ground to the uncertainty of the water's uneasy grip, but she had forgotten how light and graceful it felt to be fully submerged in water. There wasn't normally much grace to her; she was a creature of the rocks, solid and sturdy, not delicate. Underwater, she spun like a dancer and then splashed to the surface.
Verd had drifted deeper into the pool, watching her. He was smiling—a real smile, not that sideways sardonic quirk of his lips. "You are brave," he said.