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Ashinora has been cold for days. Weeks? She's been cold since the demons came. Long vigilant nights, days of patchy sleep, periods of outright terror; and though she stoked the bonfire on her roof every night, she never felt it warm her.
The Dragon-Blood came back out to the sawmill, days after he'd left. Calibration is over and the demons gone in a flash, and she's left with the empty houses and sawing off those hellish black spines the monsters left all over everything. At least the bodies are gone; the Dragon-Blood pulled them from the spines so she wouldn't have to, and he built a pyre and burned them in his own flame. Still, she won't soon forget the sight of it, her brother, the family next door, the elderly couple who ran the sawmill before, all impaled along the buildings, horrible warnings or decorations.
He comes back, and he tells her that it's safe now.
She follows him to town, like he asks, and they bring the wounded sailor he carried in with him when he staggered in from the forest on the eve of Calibration. She's tended him for days between her watches on the rooftops, and now they hand him off to the healers to care for, and the healers don't ask the Dragon-Blood for a shell for the care. What he has done for Randan could never be repaid. Oh, they do the best they can. They ensure he'll never pay for anything, and they name him pekumi, master of art and war, and they bestow on him his own Lodge, and every craftsman left to the city boils with inspiration for their next work, to commemorate his victory.
And still through the days and nights he works, as if he didn't just fight every day through Calibration, through an army of demons and the demon queen herself. He hauls chains and helps the townsfolk start to tear down the nests of black spines, and he searches houses for lone survivors. He even brings a few back, though mostly he returns with supplies and money from the empty houses. He pulls down bodies from those grisley spikes and he speaks over the bodies and he burns, he burns like a fire that will never go out. Every night he washes off the sweat and ash, and the water (warm when they brought it, but steaming hot when they take it away) turns black with the stains of his work, and he collapses into bed like any man half-dead from labour. And yet every morning he rises with the sun, and he starts again, and before long the smoke rises over the city, the white-hot glow of him visible over the rooftops.
Ashinora comes too, and she helps as she can, and she watches him.
And when the worst of the work is done, the bodies burned and the survivors united, they all rest- for a day, at least. Even then, the Dragon-Blood keeps going. He catalogues supplies and asks for cooks, and plans with them to make a feast, something hearty and hot to lift their spirits after these grim weeks of tragedy. Ashinora joins him- she's the soba girl, after all, or she was before she became a sleepless archer, hewing arrows from the spines of demons to drive them from Randan's border. She hunts down the flour from the sawmill and makes endless noodles for the feast, cutting them thin and boiling them as folks begin to eat. The Dragon-Blood thanks her for it, thanks her, as if he isn't the reason she's alive, as if she hasn't got him to thank for everything she'll ever have again, as if a couple hours making soba is enough to pay him back.
Later, as if that isn't enough, he asks her to be his seneschal. He can't stay- of course he can't stay. He's a man of the Realm and a monster hunter, and he must have a thousand places to be, but somehow she feels the loss of him already, keenly. But he asks her to tend his Lodge while he's gone; not that he has a building yet, but the new Lily Lodge will be consulted in times to come, and he asks her to speak for him then.
"How do I know what you'll want?" she asks him, and he thinks a moment over it.
"If they ask you what to do, just choose whatever will help the most people," he says, and then she's Seneschal of Lily, her, Ashinora the soba girl.
She can't help but ask him if he's sure, and he tells her he couldn't ask for a better choice. And hesitantly, suddenly overawed by the ease of his righteousness, she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him.
He freezes for one terrifying moment, and Ashinora wonders if she's trespassed her place, but a moment later he softens, relaxing into her, and he kisses her back, slow, long, deliberate. The sigh he lets out shudders a moment, and like every night, she remembers he's only one man, who's taken on the weight of a nation.
And then again, he defies it, and he pulls her into his arms with surety. His mouth is so hot on hers, burning wonderfully against her throat and her ear. His hands too, warm in the cool room, parting her jacket and slipping into her shirt, his spear callouses rough against her skin.
There is no urgency; the sounds of the feast carry on outside, but in here it's just the two of them in the honoured room they've given him. They strip slowly and luxuriously, helping each other out of their garments. She feels the weight of his long coat for a moment as she slips it from his shoulders, and he catches it before she has to let it drop to the floor. It's immensely heavy, the jade plates luminous in the firelight like blue amber. How can he bear the weight of it? But she forgets it quickly, unbuttoning his shirt and placing her hands against his chest.
He's so warm, and her fingers feel soft and painless now, tracing the lines of muscle of his warrior's body. He catches one and kisses her fingertips, impossibly gentle, and then up her wrist, her arm, each kiss a burning, blooming warmth against her skin, chilled these many days.
They fumble with her breast binding a moment, until his long fingers get the knot free, and he laughs under his breath, kissing her again, kissing her through his soft laughter and his smile. He is so beautiful, strong and honed, and she is Ashinora the soba girl, and he is a Dragon-Blood, a Dynast of the Realm and the savior of Randan. They call him Spear of Heaven, a gift from the gods in their time of need. And he kisses her, and pulls her close.
He kisses down her body, and picks her hakama tie free, unfolding them around her. Then his mouth is on her, like liquid flame licking at her pearl, hot and wet and curling, coiling, stroking her and stoking her to burning. Though he's slow and his mouth sensual, it can't be long before her pleasure overflows, the Dragon-Blood's tongue like a volcano's heart between her legs. She cries out- not loud, but long and low, as her pleasure peaks, and slowly ebbs.
He holds her, arms strong around her. She never thought she'd feel good again; she never thought she'd feel again, but his fire has caught in her. She is warm and she is safe- maybe the warmest and safest she's ever been, here in the arms of the Dragon-Blood.
And when she takes a deep breath again and pulls him up to kiss her again, he pulls her wooden comb from her hair, the tulip comb her brother carved her, and her long hair falls around her and splays over the pillows. He sheds his trousers and she has a moment to admire him, long legs lean with muscle, and he can see in his bright eyes how beautiful he finds her. And then he's seated below her and somehow, he asks her,
"Is this alright? Do you want this?"
-as if she could say no, as if she would ever want to say no to this man. And he slides into her, burying his spear deep in her, and Ashinora lays back on the luxurious pillows and silken sheets they've given him, and feels the flame in her stoking higher again, again. His skin is still so hot, burning nearly as much as his mouth against hers. He rocks into her, and he buries his face in her hair, and he moans, his breath briefly heating her throat, and she remembers again, just for a moment, that he is only one man, standing alone against an army and plowing through hardness day after day.
It only lasts a moment; for a second he is the haggard man who stumbled through the woods to her door, for a moment he is just himself, just Zyden, alone and starving for companionship, and finding it in her, Ashinora the soba girl. But then he is stiffening above her, pulling her close, and he finishes, as slow and drawn out as she did, and the heat and his rod in her are just enough to tip her over the edge again, and she forgets, shuddering in his arms, that he's just one man. He is a dragon, with a woman in his arms, in his flame.
He sleeps afterwards, and Ashinora stays in his arms, almost no need for a blanket with the Dragon-Blood curled around her. She looks at him in the firelight, dark circles under his eyes, and she wonders at him, a dragon one moment, and a man the next.
But then she sleeps, and in the morning he rises first. She watches him buckle his armor on, the jade bright in the sunrise. He kisses her once more, briefly, and smiles his radiant smile, and again, impossibly, he thanks her.
And then he is gone, all dragon once more. But Ashinora stays in his bed awhile longer, and basks in the wonder of being warm once more.