The injuries weren’t bad. Road rash. No doubt from where he’d been thrown against the pavement following the explosion. It wasn’t just his palms, but one of his knees, too. He could make out a blood stain on the left leg of his jeans.
Tori squirmed. “Stop. I’m fine. It’ll heal.”
“It needs tending, and there’s nothing here to aid with that.” The idea of having open wounds, no matter how minor, in this room made Baldewin shudder. That was just asking for an infection.
Baldewin’s heart couldn’t take much more. It had stopped when he saw the explosion, and he might have lost his temper a bit when it came to taking out those Jaeggi. He was just coming back to his senses, but the mage was injured. A mage under his protection was hurt. Frustration and a deeper ache echoed in his chest. He’d failed to keep Tori safe. The mage had already suffered so much. He needed to fix this.
“We need to take you out of here,” Warin said firmly.
Tori shook his head. “I’m glad you guys stepped in and helped earlier. Truly, I am. That doesn’t mean I’ve agreed to go with you.”
Stubborn, stubborn man. Baldewin wanted to scream. He bit it back and spoke rationally, calmly. “You do not owe us for that. I’m simply asking you. For tonight, please, come out of this room and stay in our hotel. I’ll get you another room, separate from us. You needn’t stay in the same room.”
Warin pitched in, “You gave them your name earlier, correct? On the train? They can use that to track you down here. You need to shift to another place where you’re more anonymous.”
“But won’t they be able to track both of you down by name?”
“We’ll change hotels as well. Warin can gather our bags and meet us somewhere else. If I have Cassie make the reservation, it will be under her name, harder to track. We can continue the conversation about whether you’ll go with us or not there, but we need to move out of here. This place isn’t good for your health.”
Still, Tori visibly hesitated.
Baldewin’s frustration pulsed like a live wire within him. It didn’t help that his dragon had also chosen this moment to lift its head and grumble with displeasure. The beast was demanding that he simply pick up Tori and take him somewhere safe.
For a moment, the words scrambled in his head, and he couldn’t remember the right word for ‘please’ in this language. He defaulted to German and hoped that his posture, still kneeling at Tori’s feet, and his tone, would be enough to get the point across. “Bitte. Tori, bitte, let me bring you out of here. Care for you.”
Tori’s head dropped for a moment, and he seemed to be thinking hard. Slowly, he nodded. “Fine. Fine, let’s go for now. You’re right about this place not being safe.”
“Dankeschön,” Baldewin murmured in relief. “I’ll help you pack quickly. Warin?”
“I’ll head over to the hotel, call Cassie on the way.” Warin stood, already palming his phone. “Should I stop by a pharmacy as well?”
“No, we’ll do that.”
Tori had his mouth open on a retort, only to swallow it back and sigh as if he realized the futility of the argument. It was just as well. Baldewin disliked arguing as a rule, but he’d do it in this case.
It took barely five minutes to pull together what little Tori had. Two sets of clothes—which explained why Baldewin kept seeing him in the same outfits over and over—some toiletries, and the guitar Tori carried nearly every time Baldewin had seen him. The instrument intrigued Baldewin, a music lover himself, and he hoped to use it as an opening to ease them into a better conversation later.
By the time they left the room and returned to the rental car outside, Baldewin’s phone pinged with an incoming message. It was from Cassie and simply read, Check your email. He started up the car first, getting a little heat going as the air was colder now that they were approaching evening, and he was worried for Tori’s sake. The man didn’t even own a jacket.
Tori immediately shut the heat back off.
Baldewin glanced at him with a frown. “You’re not cold? It’s a touch chilly tonight.”
It was his turn to get an odd look. “This isn’t cold. It’s actually quite pleasant.”
“You really don’t find it cold at all?”
“No, the weather’s perfect tonight. Ha! You Germans, you have no blood in you. It has to be -5 Celsius before we stop barbecuing for the winter.”
“I know Finland never gets warm—” Baldewin started dryly.
“It gets plenty warm for us,” Tori negated, smile saccharine sweet.
“—but you can’t accuse me of being cold blooded. Fire dragon, remember?”
“Heh, I suppose that’s true. So, where are we going?”
“Pharmacy first. Cassie’s booked us a hotel on the other end of town.”