9. Purely hypothetical, of course
PURELY HYPOTHETICAL, OF COURSE
ENORA
Those two objects seized my attention inarguably. The temptation to haul off the bed, don my father’s necklace, and inspect the remnants of my Frost was brutal. I didn’t think I was above licking the inside of the bag for any traces of the relief it might bring, but, to my surprise, I never budged.
I didn’t mean to nod off, but I woke up with a start, slumped over on my side on the plush duvet. My neck and back gave achy protests as I straightened, and my suspicion that I’d been asleep for hours was confirmed when I wandered over to the closest window.
The spotty cloud cover from earlier had dissipated, and the sun had already moved on from its apex in the sky.
At least now, I knew Grimmoria had proper sunny days, though I wasn’t sure why that mattered.
Had I been feeling a little braver, I would’ve tried opening the window to see what kind of warmth came with that sun.
But Maksym’s vague warning of guards beyond my sight lingered in my mind.
Instead, I turned my attention well away from the scenery that was pointless to appreciate and approached the dressing table.
I grabbed the velvet pouch from its surface, letting out a shaky breath at the weight it still held, and I chucked it right into the bottom drawer. I slammed it shut with a little more force than needed and stalked straight into the adjoining bathroom.
Out of sight, out of mind, hopefully. I needed my wits about me for a few days.
Was the king making a dig when he suggested I bathe? Probably.
But he also wasn’t wrong, and it only took one overlong glance in the large bathroom mirror to confirm that. Never mind being a little gaunt and sickly—I was filthy.
At least Grimmorians seemed to appreciate the art of bathing as much as my people did.
There was just the simple matter of figuring out how to fill the ample basin, a tenebrous stone beast set into the wall opposite me and framed by frosted window panes.
In Odessa, our tubs were simple. A dial for fire-heated water, a dial for fresh spring water. A single spigot for the water to flow from, and a single drain in the base to carry it away when you were done.
This was nothing like that.
There were levers and dials and spigots all over—coming from the tub, the walls, and even one from the floor.
The lever closest to me stirred a rumbling in the pipes, but not a drop of damned water in sight.
My next two attempts yielded just a little.
On the fourth, I let out a shrill shriek as water poured from holes I never noticed in the ceiling, splattering off the basin and all over me as I leaned halfway across the tub to reach the damn dial.
I shut it off as quickly as I’d opened it and sat back with a huff.
“Fucking dark fae,” I mumbled. “Can’t even make a goddess-damned bath simple.”
A few profanity-laced attempts later, I had a stream of lukewarm water from a bronze spigot shaped like a fish, and I left the tub to fill while I undressed.
I wasn’t sure if I had the luxury of another change of clothing—and didn’t feel like rummaging around—so I left my skirt, blouse, and vest draped over the end of the bed, my boots beside it.
My horrifically matted braids took a healthy few minutes to unwind, but a brush left on the bathroom counter helped me work through them.
I just ignored the crumbles of mystery crud that dusted the sink after and rinsed it all away before I climbed into the tub. My ass barely touched the stone bottom before the water took on a murky tinge.
There were plenty of soaps along the bath edge, though, and I set out scrubbing every inch of my body, including my mottled scar of a shin that I tried to ignore.
After three rounds of scrubbing, draining, filling, and scrubbing again, the bathwater was clear, and my skin had a slight floral scent to it that was a welcome change.
I wrapped myself up in a soft robe hanging near the tub, took a towel to soak up my sopping hair, and got settled back out at the dressing table.
To my disappointment, I hadn’t been able to wash away the hollow shadow clinging to my eyes.
But I shoved that depressing thought aside and reached for the comb—only to go stiff when I glanced down.
I blinked for good measure at where I was positive I had left the comb, and only the comb, not something I had written off as lost.
Goddess, take me. My journal.
Its leather cover was in rougher shape than I remembered, and it smelled a little of ash, but a cursory glance left me relieved its pages were still intact.
But that begged the question—where the hell had it come from? It hadn’t been on the vanity before I’d gone into the bath, or in the hours I’d spent sitting there before.
I had heard no one enter or leave while I was bathing, though there was a chance I was too preoccupied to notice. Still, I didn’t love the idea of some strange dark fae handling arguably one of my most personal objects, and I was quick to flip through it.
Nothing obvious was missing, but a folded piece of paper was wedged in like a bookmark I didn’t remember placing. It marked the page with the last date I’d crossed out—four days after we left the fortress.
The day we made camp on the edge of the Wastes.
That made no sense.
And no matter how many times I flipped back to that page, I couldn’t parse what was staring back at me, or the marker clearly placed there with purpose.
There was no fucking way that was the last time I’d opened it and crossed out the date like I did every damned day of my entire adult life.
Our camp was found on Grimmoria’s border, weeks of travel away from Odessa, not days.
What in the hell could have led me to disregard one of my most ingrained habits for that long? Misplacing it could have been one simple explanation, but that clearly wasn’t the case if it had made its way to Grimmoria with me.
I closed the journal and scrubbed my hands over my face—I could start worrying about what day it was when I hadn’t decided if I was going to die first or not.
Even after raiding every cupboard and drawer I could find to try to fight off my creeping sense of dread and equally frustrating boredom, I came up empty-handed.
Dried-out cosmetics, sparse accessories far too delicate and feminine for me, and a couple of pieces of clothing in an armoire—that was it.
Unfortunately, the clothes were tailored with a bigger bust and smaller hips in mind, so I changed back into the outfit Maksym had brought me to wait out my fate.
The rattling knock on my door startled me at first, but I was relieved my dinner escort had finally arrived. When I hauled open the door, Eilir was hovering at my eye level, their beady black eyes glinting as they beamed a grin full of blade-sharp teeth.
“Good evening, Princess Enora,” they said in their soft, squeaky voice before extending their branch-like fingers to me. “I’m here to take you to dinner.”
It took a moment to realize I was smiling, though it dropped when a realization crept into the back of my mind.
“Thank you. I…” I set my hand in theirs and let them lead me into the hall. “Was it you who left my journal on the vanity?”
Eilir grinned.
“It was. I thought you might feel more at home if you had it. But don’t tell Max I borrowed paper from his study to make a marker for you. He and the mage are terrible at keeping track of their days; they could learn something from you!”
A lump built in my throat that I fought down. “That’s very kind of you. And that was…this week you left the marker on?”
They nodded eagerly. “I almost crossed out the dates just like you do, but that seemed like it might be rude of me.”
Thank the goddess I’d gulped down another slimy cure-all tonic before I left, because my stomach had half-knotted itself even with it. While I might not have trusted the same information coming from Maksym or any of his cabal, the sprite struck me as painfully honest.
And that made me desperate to change the topic to something less damning.
“Well, thank you for that.” My voice was shakier than I’d hoped, but Eilir was still beaming. “Are you going to join us for dinner?”
“Oh, no,” they chuckled. “We don’t need to eat like you walkers do, and Maksym doesn’t like it very much when I talk his ear off at mealtime.”
Walkers.
My poor mind. I was being accosted by something new every few hours in Grimmoria. At least this bit of information was a welcome distraction, and an easy one for me to hold on to.
“Is there anything the king does like?” I scoffed, because it certainly didn’t seem like there was much that pleased him.
That morning, when he was bringing me from the dungeon, there were moments the king felt downright hospitable. I thought I even saw him smile, once directly at me. But it left as quickly as it came, and I wasn’t counting on seeing it again.
Eilir hummed over that, still guiding me with their entire hand wrapped around two of my fingers as we moved up a half-set of stairs, through a door, and into another hall.
I was a little over the dark stone and blue nytefire already.
“He likes sweets,” Eilir finally said. “And…and…”
I slid a glance over at the sprite, whose tiny hand had trembled around mine. They grimaced and looked up at the vaulted ceiling of the hall.
I chuckled. “And…?”
Eilir sighed. “And lots of other things I’m not supposed to tell you.”
Ah, of course.
The king was clear he wanted me to make an informed decision, and one would think something as simple as knowing the likes of my proposed captor-turned-husband would be included with that.
But I shouldn’t have been surprised Maksym would be hard at work in the background, setting boundaries—likely clearly telling Jasper and Gallan to not tell me what damned day it was.
That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try to squeeze every bit I could out of this little sprite, though. “Like what?”
I’d never known a piece of animated wood could wear such a scandalized look.