Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
He does need it.
Esk’s sacred springs are tea-scented and delightfully hot, curling clouds of steam between mossy banks and winter-bare oaks. He leaves his Luminary robes with a bright-eyed nightingale and dons the thin linen of a bathing robe instead.
By the time he is changed, Sabine has joined him. Her robe clings to her body with the damp air. Ethram is nearing thirty, but Sabine never fails to make him feel like a young man on the cusp of making a fool of himself.
“Shall we choose a natural pool?” She leads him to a private stream beneath an arch of damp-dark trees. “It’s better under the sky.”
There isn’t much sky to see through the steam drifts, but Ethram is glad for it. It gives some illusion of privacy as he sinks into the water. Gods, he hadn’t realised how much he’d been aching. Tension melts away from him like butter on toast. Had he been clenching his jaw that hard?
Sabine laughs, and the water ripples as she slips in beside him. “That is a blissful expression,” she says. “I remember that face fondly.”
He opens one eye. She’s as beautiful as she ever was, and just as amused as he remembers her being. “I am glad I was enough to be memorable,” he says, though he is pretty sure he’d been too green and too cautious back then to have truly matched a woman like her.
“You were certainly memorable,” she says.
The steam drifts past, carrying a curl of distant laughter from a lower terrace. He can’t help but smile, leaning back against the damp moss of the pool’s bank. “You flatter me.”
“Mm. And lately, Ethram? Are you tiring of a cold bed?”
Is she is offering, or just curious? It can be hard to tell with Sabine. “My bed is far from cold,” he says, because it is the truth. It is not cold, and it is not empty. It is not exactly what Sabine is asking after, either, but that’s neither here nor there.
She raises her brows. “Is that so? Whoever they are, they’re doing a poor job of taking care of you, dear heart. You’re tense right through you.”
He’s not sure why that makes him tense further. He can feel the irritation gather, despite the springs, despite Sabine being everything she is. “He takes care of me just fine.”
She hums, both amusement and disagreement. “If you say so.”
It had been an offer then. Ethram turns his head, considers.
It has been a long while, and perhaps it would make the nights easier if he were to spend some time with her.
The nights where the linens all smell of dried rushes and warmth, and there is a warm body so close that he needs only uncurl a hand to touch.
The way he’ll sometimes wake with a face full of Ky’s hair, his skin aching slightly to be so surrounded by the aether of it.
And the dreams. The dreams that are getting worse.
He can’t even outrun them here. The familiar warmth of the springs reminds him that strange atmosphere that follows Ky, as if Ky is standing only a pace away from him. He sinks down further, letting his breath run right out of him, and Sabine laughs.
“Like that, is it, my dear?” She slides closer, pressing her arm to his. “Have strength.”
A splash of water breaks the silence, ripples jarring across the surface. A young man sits on the bank across from them, one bare foot kicking the water idly. The last time Ethram had seen Madoc Casca, he’d been a youth, all tangle-haired and awkward-limbed. He is not so now.
He’s grown into the same beauty his mother possesses and has a fair chance of exceeding it. His green trousers are rolled up, and his chemise is clinging to his collarbones indecently. Or, it would be indecent in any other setting. The Gardens rather allow for indiscretions like that.
“Mama,” he says, and he’s quicker to smile than his mother. It’s a lovely sight. “There you are. You’ve quite a stir-up searching after you.”
Sabine sighs. “I can’t imagine there’s anything they need me for.”
“Not anymore. It’s sorted.” Madoc’s gaze shifts to Ethram, and Ethram can feel it drift down, across his shoulders and below the water.
Gods, it’s as bad as when the university students stare. The bathing shift doesn’t feel enough, all of a sudden.
“You remember Ethram Hart,” says Sabine.
“I do,” says Madoc. His eyes are even more startlingly green than his mother’s. “I hope your injuries are no longer paining you, Ethram.”
Using his first name is a deliberate provocation. Ethram does his best not to react. “Not at all, though the scars persist.”
“Do they? How curious.” He stands. Water pools beneath his feet. “I shall leave you to your bathing, Mama, Ethram.” His glance flicks once more across Ethram, and then he’s gone, slipping into the steam like he’s just melted away.
“Well,” says Sabine, rich with amusement. “My apologies for my son. He’s become rather a rake of late.”
“Gods,” mutters Ethram and sinks back into the water. “That must be a headache and a half.”
“Oh yes,” she says with the same sort of weariness. “He was such a sweet boy, too. I’m thinking of handing over the Season events to him.”
Ethram gives a wry laugh. “You won’t be sad to see that off your plate.”
“Not at all,” she confides. “And it might keep him out of trouble.”
Ethram suspects Madoc is the sort of man who will seek trouble, and attract trouble, and probably keep extra trouble in his pocket for later. He is suddenly very grateful that Madoc Casca never waded into the world of academia. He’d run rings around the scholars.
“I should get home,” he says, instead of his dire predictions of Madoc’s nature. “It’s been a lovely diversion, but I don’t like to be out after dark.”
“Of course,” says Sabine, because she knows. She saw the worst of it. She may, in fact, be the only reason Ethram survived the aether-wreckage of his body. “Take a Gardens carriage home. I insist on it.”
He does and is thankful for it. It’s getting dark by the time it pulls in under the oak trees by the cottage, the blue-violet of the shadows seeping into true ink darkness.
He can just make out that the garden has shifted in shape again, the soil furrowed and mounded. Ky has planted his seeds, then.
The door opens before he reaches it, and a golden bloom of light ripples out. Ky is there, and there is a lantern in his hand. He smiles, and warmth spills all through Ethram.
“I was just setting out to meet you,” Ky says. The door is so low he has to bend to see out of it, and Ethram has to press close to pass inside.
Ethram has never told Ky that he dislikes the dark, but he supposes Ky has noticed. Ky notices a lot of things.
“I am glad that I came back in time to prevent the effort,” he says, instead.
He places his satchel down as Ky closes the door, and then Ky’s fingers are at his neck, slipping the Luminary robes away.
He goes still. Ky traces along the back of his neck, where his hair is still damp from the springs.
“Ethram,” Ky murmurs, a thread of question in his voice. “Why do you have that scent on you?”
He’s not wearing any scent. He looks up, trying to see the expression on Ky’s face, but Ky takes his chin in one hand and gently angles his face away. And then he’s bending to press his face against Ethram’s neck.
He has to bend right down. It would be comical if it didn’t make Ethram’s heart seize in sudden panic.
“I know this scent,” Ky says, and it’s barely a whisper.
“The springs,” Ethram says. He tries to push Ky away, but Ky is an implacable wall against him. “I bathed.”
A stripe of heat presses across his skin, and by the time he’s realised that the heat was Ky’s mouth, that Ky has traced his skin with his tongue, the damage is done. His body flares up like a hearth fire, and mortification sweeps through him. He pushes Ky away with all the strength he has.
Ky lets himself be moved. He’s not even looking at Ethram. He’s got a thoughtful gaze, a gaze fixed on something distant. Something that is not here. “I know that taste, too,” he says to himself.
Ethram grabs his robes from Ky’s unresisting fingers and flees.
“Ethram?” Ky says, blinking back to the present.
Ethram shuts the bedroom door behind him, firmly enough that Ky will know he’s not to follow. He presses himself against the wood. The skin of his neck is still prickling. Ky’s mouth was so very warm.
He really should have taken up Sabine on her offer. Anything, really, to rid himself of this cursed, inconvenient wanting.