Defender Dragon (Protection, Inc 2)

Lucas let her inside, then led her down a flight of stairs and into a hallway. The interior of the castle was the same blend of traditional lavishness with modern conveniences as she’d seen in the palace. The gold chandeliers had electric lights. As he’d said, it was absolutely empty. Their shoes echoed on the marble floors.

He opened a door to a luxurious suite, moved a painting aside to turn on the heat controls concealed behind it, and then headed straight for the bathroom. Journey started to hang back, but he said, “No, please come in.”

Lucas had walked steadily and held his head high all the way down the stairs and along the corridor. But once he reached the bathroom, he sank down on the edge of an enormous sunken tub as if his legs had given way.

Journey put her arm around his shoulders, holding him steady, and was alarmed by how cold he felt. “You’re freezing. You should take a hot bath.”

“Later. There’s medical supplies in the cabinet, I think.” He gestured vaguely toward it. “Well, there were five years ago.”

Journey opened it. The closet contained an interesting assortment of modern medical kits and witchy-looking wooden boxes filled with mysterious jars of herbs, labeled in spidery handwriting.

She started to reach for a first aid kit, then hesitated. “Do you want bandages and antiseptic, or possibly-magical herbs?”

That got a hint of a smile from Lucas. “Bandages and antiseptic, please. And one possibly-magical herb. Look for a bottle of liquid that says ‘Heartsease.’”

Journey set the first aid kit on the floor, then began searching the witchy boxes for heartsease. “What’s that?”

“The antidote to dragonsbane.” He touched his cheek lightly, then jerked his fingers away as if he’d laid them on an open wound.

“I thought it washed off.”

“It does, but that only makes it possible to shift. The pain remains until you take the antidote.” Lucas spoke calmly, but she could hear the stress in his voice. “I’m lucky none got in my mouth.”

“Is it poisonous?”

“Very. A small amount wouldn’t kill you, but even a single swallowed drop would make you wish you were dead. In olden times it was used for torture.” The tight control in Lucas’s voice implied more pain than Journey liked to imagine.

She searched through the boxes until she finally found the heartsease. “Got it!”

He took the bottle and carefully tipped a few drops into his mouth. Almost immediately, a little color returned to his face, his stiff posture relaxed, and he gave a long sigh of relief. “That’s better.”

Journey stretched, shaking out her own tense muscles. She hadn’t realized how much Lucas’s pain had affected her until she saw it relieved. “Let me get your shirt off now.”

She used a pair of scissors from the first aid kit to shear it off, exposing a lean but muscular chest smeared with drying blood and marked with an abstract pattern in glittering gold.

“You’ve got tattoos!” she exclaimed.

“You sound so shocked,” Lucas teased. “Didn’t you expect me to be... How do you say it...? Tatted in?”

“It’s ‘tatted out.’ And no, I sure didn’t.” She started sponging the blood off his chest, exposing more of the golden tattoo. The intricate pattern covered his left shoulder and the left side of his upper chest. It was on his belly, too, fanning out symmetrically from his belly button.

“It’s not a tattoo,” Lucas admitted. “I was born with it. It’s called dragonmarks. We all have them somewhere on our bodies, but the patterns are different. Unique. Like fingerprints.”

Now that she’d cleaned the blood off, she could see where he was wounded. There was a slash near his right shoulder and another at his right side, but both had already started to close. They looked as if they had been inflicted the day before, not an hour ago.

Dragon magic, Journey thought with wonder.

She began cleaning his wounds with antiseptic. She’d never gotten any formal first aid training, but growing up in Lummox with the nearest doctor an hour’s bumpy drive away, you learned to treat your own cuts and sprains.

His body grew warmer and warmer under her hands, until she wondered if he had a fever. Then remembered how hot he’d felt when she’d danced with him. “What’s your normal temperature?”

“Thirty-nine degrees. That is, one hundred and two Fahrenheit. Dragons run hot.”

“Thanks,” Journey replied. “I know I should be used to Celsius by now, but I have to look it up every time. Well, I think you’re back to normal now.”

He nodded. “The chill was an effect of the dragonsbane.”

Journey taped a bandage over the slash on his shoulder. Intent on her task, she forgot all the other questions she wanted to ask. Lucas too was silent, but Journey only noticed the quiet in the room when she finished and settled back to examine her work.