Dead King's Sword (Old Draft)

13. All Disasters Come to an End

Erin

***

There were so many questions I had to ask her, but instead, I watched Zeren gather a basin of water from one of the barrels on the second floor and take off her cloak. I studied the skin by her neck; the scorched flesh was black near the edges and pinkish-white in the center after losing its top layer. Zeren dipped her head and rinsed her face, cleaning her nostrils and behind her ears.

"Wait." I walked over to her, took the rag from her fingers, and dipped it into the water. I started wiping her back first, changing the water once it got too brown, then I did her shoulders. She watched me through half-lidded eyes as I drew the cloth over her breasts, then she laughed.

"I never pictured you would be helping me clean like this."

"Only because I feel sorry for you."

I cleaned underneath her left boob, drawing a semi-circle across her skin. Zeren gulped, gripped my wrist, and took the rag from my fingers. "I can do that; turn around, would you? My body is much too sacred to be seen by such perverted eyes." Though she was trying to play it cool, her ears were purplish red with embarrassment.

Unable to avoid teasing Zeren one last time, I kissed the tip of her steaming ear, then did as she asked, listening to the cloth sliding across her skin and the water droplets hitting the ground. When Zeren finished washing everything, including her hair and had donned her cloak, she said, "You can face me now." Water slid down her jaw, and I found it unbearably distracting. I wanted to squash the bubble with my thumb and streak her skin with its remains but restrained myself.

She smiled innocently. "Where did all the guards go?"

"We scared them off last night." It wasn't exactly a lie. The remaining prisoners and I had killed whoever Zeren had left behind. We had also placed defensive and offensive runes around the compound after I taught the ex-prisoners the basics of using rune chalk. Surprisingly, the prisoners knew little about the magic that flooded their veins. Hanuc's children's suppression had forced them to live in hiding, and many of their ways had been lost.

As the night went on and Zeren recovered by sleeping, I had also taught the ex-prisoners the basics of elemental manipulation and body hardening, but not the creation magic Zeren used. That required an engineer's eye. An understanding of how various elements combine to form a bigger picture.

I kissed her cheek, then walked off to explore the second floor, and she followed behind me, stuttering, "W-what was that?"

"I think some people call it to kiss."

In the room next door, we found some clothes in a locked storage box; old T-shirts and a long rectangular piece of beige cloth that Zeren showed me how to turn into a skirt. After we changed, we looked less conspicuous. So, we went back into the room with the balcony and leaned against the railing. For miles, all we could see was sand, except for a few areas where small trees grew with a scattering of grass beneath them.

Zeren pointed to one of the trees. "That's a gao. It draws nitrogen from the air and helps to fertilize the soil. For most plants, growing under a tree means they won't last long. But with the gao trees, the leaves fall when it rains, allowing the crops beneath to gain sunlight when they need it the most." She smiled smugly at me. Her black shirt, a tad too tight, clung to her chest and abdomen. I had to force myself to look away, avoiding naughty thoughts and the tell-tale sign of my fangs pressing against my lower lip.

"And where did you learn that from?" I asked, allowing her to bathe in the happiness of knowing something I didn't.

"Before I came here, I researched Niveria and Virah."