Rowan flipped him to the deck, stood with his foot on the demon’s hand, and said, “Tell your master that his tricks are useless,” before snatching the knife from the wrist and jamming it into the demon’s heart.
Sophea stood next to him, panting. Rowan turned to locate the next demon, and beheld a deck scattered with black blood and bodies. At the far end, the captain was wiping his scimitar on the shirt of one of the dead demons. Two more, their bodies broken, tried to crawl to their weapons, but Gabriel kicked them overboard, and then tossed the demons after them.
Rowan caught sight of the blood on Sophea’s arm and was instantly filled with rage anew. How dare someone harm his mate? He snatched up a napkin from one of the destroyed tables and tied it around her wound. “We will find the ship’s doctor. He must see to your hurt.”
“My what? The scratch?” She shook her head and pulled the napkin from her arm in order to use it to press to his neck. “That’s nothing compared to you. Sit down. You’re losing a lot of blood, and I don’t want you to get excited or you’ll just bleed more heavily. Can you do that healing thing? Gabriel?”
Sophea strong-armed him into a chair that was still standing. “I’m fine,” he protested. “Stop fussing over me and let me attend to your injury.”
“Someone’s hurt?” Gabriel asked, his eyes widening a little when he saw the front of Rowan’s shirt. Rowan glanced down. It was soaked red, from his collar to his belt. “Ah. Just so. If you will let me examine it, Sophea—I am a healer.”
“Are you? Like a doctor?”
“Like a doctor,” Gabriel agreed, taking the napkin from her. He examined Rowan’s neck. “This isn’t too bad, although you got off lucky there. He missed your jugular. You should be able to close the wound yourself, but if it gives you trouble, let me know and I can put a little healing salve on it.”
“I’ll be fine,” Rowan protested again. Sophea was making little worried noises when Gabriel stood up. “Check her arm. She was cut.”
“Scratched,” Sophea corrected him, but she suffered Gabriel to look at the wound. Amusement filled his eyes as he gravely pronounced that Sophea would suffer no ill effect from the injury.
“See? Now you sit right there and concentrate on that wound,” Sophea said, and gave a little shout of annoyance when he started to get up. She plopped herself down on his lap. “You annoying dragon man! Sit here and heal!”
He looked at where her breasts swelled enticingly beneath her tight shirt, and felt an answering swelling in his trousers. “There’s no way I can possibly concentrate on my neck with you sitting there tempting me into doing things that I doubt you want me doing in public.”
“Oh. Good point. Sitting on you makes me want to kiss you and touch you and nibble on your ears, and… and… yeah. Point taken.”
She got up just as the captain strolled past them, pausing to raise an eyebrow at Rowan. “Do you need assistance?”
“No. It’s not a deep wound, and it should heal,” he answered.
The captain nodded and continued past, giving orders to his crew to clean up the mess once the demon bodies disappeared.
He turned back to them, adding with a wave toward the shore, “We are ahead of schedule. Maat has come on board and will proceed with the third challenge shortly. The journey is now at an end, and your trials will soon be over.” His black eyes moved from Rowan to Sophea and back. “Let us hope the ending is one you seek… and not a punishment.”
Eighteen
“Boy, he really is a little ball of sunshine, isn’t he?” I commented as the captain hurried off to greet the goddess Maat and her entourage. “Wait, don’t answer that. You probably shouldn’t talk or move until your neck is healed.”
Rowan came perilously close to rolling his eyes, but instead clearly decided to heed my advice and closed his eyes, his face filled with concentration.
“That really is amazing to watch,” I said, marveling at the way the cut flesh stopped bleeding, then began to seal itself up into a raw, red scar. Judging by his hand, I figured even that scar would fade away. “I wonder if you can teach me to do it.”
“I will try,” he said, his eyes still closed.
I looked down at him, this man who had come into my life and shaken me to my core. “Are you—did you mean what you said?”
His eyes opened at that, confusion fading into understanding, which melted away under the onslaught of little sparks of golden fire in his eyes. “Yes.”
“Oh,” I said, my breath catching a little.
“Oh?” His lips thinned. “Is that all you have to say? ‘Oh’? Not even a ‘how nice,’ or ‘golly, that’s great,’ but ‘oh’?”