"I'm glad someone finally managed to get them to see each other," Dain said, sounding content. "I made my attempts, but I am not, shall we say, the most convincing matchmaker."

I almost choked laughing at that, and returned to letting the hot water stream through my hair. "God. I can't even imagine." I grabbed a bottle of shampoo and squeezed an extra-generous dollop into my palm. "Wanna come join me?"

"If you don't mind the wet dog smell," he answered, limping over. Dain paused at the entrance to the open shower. "Do you? Mind it, I mean."

"Nah," I said. "Come in. I'll even help you shampoo the blood out of all that fur, if you'd like."

He kept smiling at me with that expression of helpless love, his eyes soft and a smile touching his lips, his ears held low and tilted towards me. "As you desire," he said in a low voice, and stepped into the shower. Dain turned on the other showerhead as I started scrubbing my hair, then stepped into the water with a moan of pleasure. It had to be blisteringly hot; the steam billowed up off of it, and even the pooling water on the floor of the shower got a bit uncomfortable for me.

"For the son of a winter god, you sure love hot water," I said with amusement.

His sopping-wet tails smacked against the floor as his shoulders went tense. "Do you know that, or are you only assuming?" Dain asked, his voice tight. "To my knowledge, she never told anyone. The closest she ever came to telling me is what she said tonight, calling me Faerqen's bastard."

I paused in my scrubbing and regarded him, looking at that expression of tension and pain. "Do you want to know?" I asked, my voice only loud enough to be heard over the shower. "She gave me a pretty thorough confession."

Pain flickered across his face, and his tails struck the tiled floor of the shower again with a heavy, wet sound. "Yes," he said at last, his voice hoarse. "But not right now. Maybe not for a long time."

"Alright," I said, looking at him. "I'll carry it for you until then."

Dain stilled, then relaxed, opening his eyes again and looking at me with a searching expression. "Does it trouble you to do so?"

"No," I said, smiling at him with all the love in my heart. "It really, honestly, doesn't matter to me how or why you were conceived, or who your parents are. The magic and glamor is pretty cool, and I really, really like all of what you've got going on physically, but none of it matters all that much. I'd still love you if you were a plain old ordinary human."