Soren stood watch over her as she knelt beside it, dipped her head, and let the water’s icy fingers tug at her unbound hair. She was shivering by the time she was done, but the hair at the back of her head was no longer matted with blood, and her scalp was blessedly numb, although the headache caused by the blow still thumped on, in time with her heartbeat. She knelt a moment longer on the river bank and squeezed the water from her hair, watching Soren from behind the thick curtain of it that fell across her face. He’d seemed big and dangerous when she’d met him, his gaunt face and haunted eyes frightening on such a broad, strong frame. He’d been handsome, even beautiful, but in a harsh, forbidding way. If she’d met him under normal circumstances, she would have been afraid to approach him. And she would have been the poorer for it. He had saved her life; risked his own life without hesitation to protect her.
