The man raised his head, his face contorted in a grimace of pain. Sophie saw that his clothes were soaked with blood. After a moment of surprise, she recovered her nerve.
"Help me take his shirt off," she ordered James.
She took a pair of scissors from a drawer and, while James held the patient down, she cut off Cain's shirt, or what was left of it: it was torn in shreds. Under it, she saw deep cuts, in part cauterized, mixed with burns. By now, Sophie had seen that kind of injury all too often not to understand what had caused it: dragons.
But Cain never got close to the dragons, Nadia always said so. Perhaps he had been attacked? She had no time to lose on guessing: she had her patient to think about. First she gave him a painkiller, then carefully wiped all wounds, bandaged the burns
