Dragon's Key--Complete

Chapter Fifteen

Awareness returned slowly, easing gently into full consciousness.  I savored the silence for several seconds, inhaling the scents of the room around me.  I assessed my body: the stiffness, the muscle aches, the bruises and the lingering stabbing pain in the abdomen I had felt before as an aftermath of the gunshot wound.

My energy certainly wasn't up to the usual level, but I felt a well of fortitude that had been completely missing on my earlier awakening.  The soreness and aches were almost gone, faded with the power of rest and though I could not feel the weakness in my midsection as before, there was a tingling awareness remaining.

I lifted my eyes to assess the time of day through the curtains that were still closed.  Bright, dark eyes looked back at me in the darkness and I nearly jumped back off the bed.  A low chuckle echoed in my ears and I recognized the voice as I recognized the face.

“Peter?”  My eyesight was much better in the darkness than it had been weeks earlier and I was able to make out the amused twist of his lips.  “What are you doing here?”

“Checking on my patient, finishing the healing,” he said in a low voice that curled around his light Hindu accent.

There was a hint of something else in the way that he pronounced his consonants, something that was not in the least bit Indian.  I couldn't identify it clearly, however.

I watched him quietly for several seconds, trying to decipher the exact differences in his accent.  “I'm sure you speak a ton of languages fluently, but I detect something there in your speech.  It's almost as if Hindi isn't your first language.”

He looked Indian.  His complexion was swarthy, his eyes bright and shining and I suddenly got the feeling that he had created the accent to match what people expected to hear from him.

“You are observant.  So like your mother,” he said softly, the tones of his words measuring out to a more American way of speaking.  “I could never hide a thing from her either.”

“You knew my mother?”  He'd surprised me deeply.  My mother was such an enigma to me.  I only had stories of what she was like from my father and they hadn't been together for many years before we both had lost her at my birth.

I sat up gingerly, tucking up the pillows so that they would support me as I leaned back.  I took a deep breath, feeling the effort that it took, but uncomfortable sitting and chatting with this unknown man in my room, especially laying prone, I needed any advantage I could get.

At that thought, the adjoining door opened and Aaron's head peeked around the corner.  He looked mussed, sleepy and entirely too adorable.  Peter turned to look at him and as Aaron saw that it was only the two of us, he frowned and stepped through, closing the door behind him.

“I thought I heard voices,” Aaron said as he approached the bed.

Peter was sitting in a chair on the side of the bed closest to me and so Aaron came around the other side and climbed right onto the bed.  He sat beside me and pulled me into his arms.  I went willingly.  I felt properly chaperoned with Aaron there, I didn't feel comfortable being alone with Peter any more than I would have any man I didn't know.

“What was that about Sofie's mother?” Aaron asked after he'd kissed the top of my head and his gaze returned to Peter.

I could fairly feel the weight of Aaron's disapproval to have the other man in my room alone with me, doctor or not.  He obviously hadn't been doing any healing.  The man had been sitting there, watching me sleep.

“I was just telling Sofie that I knew her mother.  She was just discovering that with those in the world of the Hidden Ones, all is not always what it seems,” Peter informed Aaron with some amusement.  “May I give you some history, Sofie? Perhaps that will help clear up the confusion.”