Chapter 22 - Isi
ISI
The minxpip lifted from my shoulder without a sound. No triumphant screech. No final nudge. Just an unfurling of wings, vibrant and soft and downy, and then it was in the air, darting up through the opening in the stone canopy.
It didn’t look back.
Not once.
It fled from me.
Maybe it had only bonded out of duty. Or worse, out of pity.
I stood on the cold, blood-stained stone floor, my chest still heaving from the raw ache of the bond.
My hands hung limp at my sides. I couldn’t breathe right.
Couldn’t speak. My pulse thundered in my ears, demanding I do something.
But I didn’t know where to go. How was I supposed to follow it when it had flown away?
Maybe I should wait. It might come back.
It didn’t.
And the longer I stood there, the crowd whispering and hissing around me, the more horror unfurled inside me. I wanted to run.
Cry.
It wasn’t coming back.
A sound from above snapped my attention sideways.
Trew was striding toward the arched exit with Kira at his side. His pace remained easy. He tilted toward her in that casual way people did when they didn’t have to pretend. She said something. He smiled. And I abhorred how watching them together landed like a bruise.
Because I wanted all his smiles to be mine.
He didn’t look back, and a pang jabbed through me, sharp enough to leave me breathless.
I hated that I felt it. Hated that I’d somehow found myself caring.
Shaking off everything—including him—I stiffened my spine, made my quivering muscles obey me, and strode across the arena and through the big open gate.
The moment I stepped into the long hall outside, the arms of my friends smothered me.
“Isi.” Lexie launched into me like a bolt of sunlight, wrapping around me with a sob-laugh. “You’re alive. You bonded. By the fates, you bonded!”
More or less.
Derren whooped and grabbed my arm, pumping it. Kerralyn clapped my back, her usual reserve cracking into a tired grin. Even Maddox gave me a chin-tip, though his eyes darted warily toward the arena.
“She did it,” Bryson crowed, his usually stern and stoic voice ragged with relief. “Isi did it.”
They circled me with joy I couldn’t feel. The arms, the noise… It was too much. Too bright. I tried to smile, afraid they’d see how hollow I felt inside.
Where triumph should’ve sparked, I’d been emptied out.
“Where’s your little guy?” Derren asked, glancing around. “She looked weird. Like, uh, a squirrel and a butterfly had a baby.”
I shrugged. “Gone.”
“Where?” Lexie pulled back, her brows pinching.
“I don’t know. She flew off. After.”
“Oh,” she said, then brightened. “They come back. They find you later in their littler forms.”
What would my minxpip come back as then, a beetle?
“How do you know they return?” I asked.
She tapped her temple. “He told me.” A smile tugged at the edge of her mouth. An inside secret I wasn’t part of. “Well, more or less. They don’t talk to you in their minds; they kind of send impressions. You know what I mean.”
Because I didn’t, I looked away. My minxpip, if I could even call her mine, was not communicating in any way with me. Although, that wasn’t quite true. Her disappointment had come through quite clearly.
Nia appeared nearby as if conjured, her dark robes sleek and unmarred by the day. Regal, imposing, unreadable. Her tiny gray mouse rode on her shoulder, clutching a shank of Nia’s hair in one tiny clawed hand and an impossibly small flower in the other.
Her gaze landed on Kerralyn, and I swore she hid a smile.
“Time to bathe,” she said. “Rest, though only briefly. We have things to do.”
“Things?” Lexie asked. “We just survived the Rite of Bonds.”
“So did the remaining recruits. Warriors, actually. Congratulations.”
“What do we still have to do today?” Derren whispered.
“A celebratory feast is being prepared in your honor,” Nia pushed through pinched lips.
Who could eat after all this death? Although, my belly reminded me it couldn’t recall when it had last had food.
“We live. We eat.” Nia’s expression didn’t flicker.
With a twitch of her fingers, magic hummed through the air, and an archway opened behind her.
“This way.” She strode through the opening, and after sharing a heavy look, we followed, emerging into the castle’s main foyer. The same black-stone floor, the same columns etched with silver ornamentation. But this time, we weren’t herded into the dormitories.
Nia led us up the stairs. One floor. Two. Down a long hall and around a corner. Across yet another hall that led to a spiral staircase, where we ascended once more, exiting out on what I believed was the fifth level of the castle with a floor covered with etched tiles.
“You’ll remain a team,” she said as we followed her through a series of archways. “But you’re bonded now. One of us. All the bonded have private rooms.”
Each of us was led to a door. A name shimmered across mine in curling silver script. “Isi.”
Lexie’s was on my left. Kerralyn’s on my right. The men were placed across the corridor.
“The bell will chime when it’s time for you to join us for dinner,” Nia said. Her mouse, still clutching her hair, waved its flower in the air as if conjuring a spell. “Do come down at that time. Dress…nicely, please.”
After nodding to my friends and Nia, I stepped into my room, and the door clicked softly shut behind me.
I collapsed against the back of the panel, my body quivering with exhaustion, before I blinked at my new quarters.
At home, I was a princess. I had a lovely suite, one of the finest in the castle. This room could not compare. Few rooms could. But still…
It was beautiful.
Soft golden walls. Thick woven rugs. A carved wardrobe on the opposite wall, a deep bookshelf on my right that even held books. The massive bed waited beneath a high, arched window, piled with pillows and covered in a soft-looking blanket dyed deep garnet.
Warm. Safe. Nothing like home but nothing like the screaming jungle that had tried to torture my soul.
I took one step forward. Then another. When I saw my boots were leaving dirty prints on the floor, I shucked them off and continued in my stocking feet.
An archway on my left led to the bathing chamber.
And there, in the center, sat a tub big enough for three or four people. Steam rose from the water in lazy curls. The scent of citrus drifted through the air.
My groan rang out, my body aching to feel the blissful pleasure of a bath once more.
I stripped off my leathers. Blood smeared my thighs.
Mud clung to my ankles. A jagged bruise had blossomed over my right hipbone.
The cut on my arm was healing nicely, thanks to the herb, and a pivot and glance in the tall mirror showed my lash marks had faded to lavender-tainted yellow.
A flex of my shoulders told me I’d suffered through the worst and was on the other side.
My fingers trembled as I unbuckled the last strap, letting the stiff tunic smack onto the floor. My pants, undergarments, and sweaty socks soon followed, and I stood naked. Wonderfully, gloriously bare of the pain and horror of what I’d gone through.
I took the short stairs to the top of the tub and stepped down into the water, sitting and sinking up to my chin. It hit like the sweetest memory. Heat and comfort, and a breaking open deep in my chest.
Sliding over to the side, I let my head fall back against the rim.
The vaulted ceiling had been painted with constellations, but they blurred.
Sobs shook me, taking over everything. I cried for what we’d gone through. For Fara and Jaxon.
For myself.
Finally, I was able to regain control.
Thick, golden soap, smelling of orange peel and cardamom, rested on a pretty plate alongside the tub. I took it and scrubbed my skin raw. Tangled leaves and dried blood and something sticky I didn’t want to name peeled off me in curling streaks.
My arms stung.
My knees were sporting bruises already.
My back still didn’t like me leaning against it.
But I was alive.
I was alive.
When the water cooled, I rose. Streams slid down my body, catching in the hollow of my spine, the curves of my thighs. I took the stairs to the bottom and peered around, blinking through the haze.
Where was the towel?
A soft sound behind me made me freeze. A breath. A floorboard shifting.
I turned, expecting Lexie or, perhaps, a servant.
My breath caught like a trap in my chest.
Trew stood in the open doorway.
His gaze glided down my wet body, slow as honey. Not hurried or one bit bashful. A deliberate assessment, like he was committing the sight to memory.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t speak. I didn’t cover myself either. Because for a second, his mask slipped. And what I saw in his eyes wasn’t mockery or smugness or disdain.
I found hunger. Sharp and unflinching.
His jaw tightened. His hands curled at his sides. Then he stepped further into the room.
My pulse jumped.
He reached past me, grabbing a towel from a hook on the side of the tub, and held it out to me.
I didn’t take it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, my voice low and scratchy.
He tilted his head. “You’re right.”
“Then why are you here?” Even I could hear the dare in my voice.
“I brought you clothing. For dinner. The celebration.”
What king delivered clothing to a freshly spit-out warrior? Did he run out of servants?
If this is some royal version of flirting, he was doing a damn good job of confusing me instead.
A pivot, and he was gone, leaving me alone again, wrapped in steam and silence, clutching a towel like armor, trying to convince myself I hadn’t wanted him to stay.
Telling myself that he hadn’t looked at me like I was already his.
After drying, I left the towel on the tub surround, a few droplets of water still gliding down my legs. The bath let out a quiet sigh, water vanishing with a whisper of steam. No pipes. No drains. The castle simply took care of it for me.