21. Harlow #2
Finally, he meets my gaze and grins, sliding his pants down as I shimmy out of my lace underwear. I stand in front of my husband-to-be, naked, trying not to let my eyes stray any lower than his chest, even as I feel his unapologetic predatory perusal.
He makes a low sound like a hum, then steps into the pool. He might have been ready to fuck someone else the other night, but it’s clear I have his full attention now .
There’s a ledge a few feet down that he uses to slowly lower himself into the steaming pool.
Staring down at the water, I try to summon the courage to step in. What if it hurts me? What if these waters are like the ones at home and they’re only carrying me on a current toward madness?
The longer I stand here, the more questions I’ll raise in his mind.
I force myself to walk toward the water, silently praying to any of the Divine who will listen to let this be a well that will heal me and not drive me toward madness.
Praying that this secret holy water that appears to be even closer to the source won’t be the thing to prove once and for all just how broken my body is.
I pause with my foot hovering over the water. I hate myself for that one second of weakness. I cannot afford to be weak here.
Breathing in deeply, I step down onto the ledge. The hot water feels amazing on my aching calves. My whole body has been clenched in pain for so long. Perhaps, at the very least, the heat will help ease the tension.
Henry takes my hand and helps me down.
The water comes to just below my breasts, so I sink lower, holding my breath—I don’t know why. It’s not as if the relief is instantaneous at home. It usually takes at least fifteen minutes of soaking. I typically stay in longer.
Questions bounce around my brain. What if being closer to the source means the madness comes on faster? What if it makes the pain worse? What if Henry sees?
I swish my hands along the surface of the water as if I can shake the rogue thoughts free.
Henry watches me from the far side of the pool.
We’re separated by ten feet of aqua water, but he still feels too close.
His aura is stretched wide, pulsing slowly and steadily. He’s calm and comfortable in here.
“How often do you soak?” I ask.
He shrugs noncommittally. “After every hunt beyond the walls.”
Mentally, I calculate how often that is from the book he gave me on the basics of life in the fort.
Several times a week, hunter parties, made up of the calmest and best-trained people of Mountain Haven, venture beyond the fort walls to hunt game.
It’s dangerous work, though not as dangerous in daylight.
“You work in shifts, right? ”
He nods. “It works out to be two to three times per week, depending on how many people are healthy and able to go out. I try to go a little more often for appearances.”
“Always a slave to appearances, aren’t we?” I sigh. “How do you usually feel after? I’ve only ever been in the Family Well and the Blood Well.”
Henry looks down at the water. “It’s usually subtle at first—just a feeling of being refreshed. It’s not until I’m climbing out and walking back up to my room that I notice how much less stiff and tired my body feels.”
We fall into a heavy silence, and I use the time to look around the space.
It’s not very large, and there’s only the one way in and out.
I should probably be more nervous about that than I am.
At least Gaven knows I’m down here. If I don’t come back out, he’ll know who to blame and where to find the body.
“Why the ice?” Henry asks.
The question startles me out of my daze.
“Excuse me?”
“While you were in meditation.”
Think. Think. Make any excuse.
“Pain tithes.” It slips out, and I immediately regret it.
Henry’s dark eyebrows shoot up. “To which of the Divine?”
“Harvain, of course.”
“You pay pain tithes to your patron Divine by using ice?”
“Of course,” I say.
“To bless our marriage?”
I laugh. I’m so startled by the question that I can’t help it. There’s no way he would believe that. I have to give some kind of half-truth.
“I pay them to help me control my magic or—” I tip my head back and groan.
“Or to take it away. I know that sounds ungrateful. Maybe it is, but I’ve never completely understood why I have this particular gift, and while I’ve found good use for it with my hobby , I’d love to be able to live a normal life without being afraid I might accidentally kill someone I care about. ”
It’s partly true. The best lies always are. I used to wish for a cure to my cruel magic. But I stopped wishing when I stopped hoping for better and started making myself worse. If the men of Lunameade needed repercussions to behave, I would be the harbinger of consequences.
When I finally meet Henry’s dark blue eyes, he looks less skeptical but not entirely believing.
That’s okay. He can be suspicious. It’s better than him knowing I’m defective.
That could destroy this entire arrangement.
I can’t afford that when I need this goodwill from my parents—when Aidia needs to get out of the cage of Lunameade before it suffocates her.
For a moment, the wind is knocked out of me.
I close my eyes and I can see nothing but her haunted eyes when she lay in bed with me the night before I left home.
The water stirs as he sits on the ledge next to me. “And the ice is for?—”
I blink my eyes open. “Have you ever held your hand in ice water for a few minutes? It’s very painful.”
He hums. Not exactly an agreement, but it seems like enough to get him to stop pushing.
Generally, when I’m hunting in Lunameade, I don’t have to spend so much time talking, and I certainly don’t have to volunteer things about myself that are even partially true.
I’m starting to realize how out of my element I am.
Mercifully, my first husband had thought me nothing but pretty window dressing and didn’t care to hear me speak at all.
I’m only now realizing how different fake intimacy is from real intimacy. When a man knows you already tried to kill him twice, he’s not inclined to believe casual flirting. I need to make him believe my interest the same way I need to let him think I’ve given up information I don’t want to.
I need to get him talking about something else. I clear my throat and nod at a neat scar on his throat. “That looks like it hurt, but it’s too clean to be from the Drained. How did you get it?”
He purses his full lips. “Going right for the throat. Why am I not surprised?”
“You have many curious scars. I could pick another,” I offer.
He bows his head and goes so still, I’m afraid to even breathe. When he looks back up at me, he looks entirely at war with himself.
“You don’t have to—” I say at the same time he says, “I hate talking about the day the fort fell.”
He runs a hand through his hair, the water flattening his waves and trickling down his temples. His eyes are far away. The candlelight bounces off the well’s surface, casting strange shadows over the planes of his face.
“No one here talks about it,” he says. “We don’t need to—or maybe we do and we just don’t know how to speak to that kind of terror.
” He pauses and licks his lips. “I’m a fighter.
Every man in Mountain Haven is raised to be a fighter.
You chase. You hunt. But most of all, you protect.
And that responsibility was even heavier for me.
I was raised with a blade in my hand—to not fear the monsters in these woods that surround us, because to fear is to attract them.
But it is one thing to go meet them where they are, and another entirely when they bring the fight to you.
I have never felt fear like I felt that day. ”
He takes a slow breath and looks at me. For the first time since we met, his face is absent of all its guardedness and there’s no hint of cunning in his eyes.
He looks devastated. “You are wary of me and uncomfortable so far from Lunameade alone. I’ve done nothing to make you feel at home, and I could say I’m sorry, but we both know I wouldn’t mean it.
You did try to kill me, after all. However, at some point we have to have a base level of trust between us or this whole thing will fall apart. ”
I lick my lips. “That’s fair.”
“I have no illusions. I know you have your own agenda, Harlow. No grown woman enters into something like this without good reason. But I’m telling you a secret and asking you not to share this information with anyone else.”
My mouth is dry. I shouldn’t feel so uncomfortable when I’m getting what I want, but I hate this version of him.
“The ring I was wearing in the city hides auras. It’s made with protection magic from Vardek. My sister’s creation. She was gifted with more protection than just holy fire. She also had a sort of boundary magic. My parents also wear them.”
That explains why I haven’t been able to see his parents’ auras. “But I can see yours now.”
“I don’t wear it around you because I imagine it’s unnerving when you’re used to seeing everyone’s auras. I only wore it in town when I didn’t want to be spotted by the rest of your family. But my parents always wear them because my mother has a blessing from Asher. ”
His intense, dark eyes bore into me.
“She’s a resurrectionist.”
The words take the breath out of me. Resurrection—the rarest of magics. While we had credible reason to believe that was the case, it’s another thing to hear it from Henry.
When I don’t say anything, he continues. “It’s a rare gift, but also a terribly draining one.”
He opens his mouth to say more, then closes it.
Finally, he turns on the ledge to face me head-on, and I can sense the weight of whatever he’s about to say.
“The day the wall fell, I wasn’t just wounded. I died. And my mother brought me back.”