Chapter 32 #2
I walked through the library and pulled the dustcovers from the furniture near the fireplace.
I couldn’t sit down; my clothes were wet and freezing, which probably wasn’t great for the brocaded silk on the sofa.
So I trekked back to the kitchen in search of supplies for cleaning Nin’s neck wound and found…
practically nothing. A clean rag. A large basin for water.
A tin can of salmon that made me turn up my nose.
But it might have been the only food in the house, so I decided to wait and see how hungry I got before I resorted to stinky fish.
By the time I’d pumped water at the kitchen sink and slowly carted my basin through the house to make my way back to the library, Nin had already gotten a fire roaring.
“There you are,” he said.
“I’m going to clean your neck,” I told him, sloshing water over the sides of the bowl and nearly dropping it all over the rug when I got to the seating area.
Nin steadied it with two hands and helped me set it on a small table, along with my lantern. “First you’re going to get warm,” he said, touching my cheek with the back of his hand. “You’re shivering. Come, stand in front of the fire.”
We warmed our hands together, side by side on the hearth, and it felt so good. But my teeth would not stop chattering.
“I don’t know everything about humans,” Nin said. “But I do know that when you’re this wet, it’s difficult to dry off without removing some layers of clothes. My toes are made of ice right now, and I’m betting yours are too.”
“Oh, right…,” I said, a little breathless at the thought of Nin undressing. Until I realized he was talking about me, too. Surely he didn’t mean all the way undressed. But I’d never been even partially undressed in front of a man. Or a man who was half god.
Definitely not a half god that I’d kissed.
But Nin didn’t seem to care about social niceties and was already pulling off his boots, hopping on one leg as he tugged. “We can move the fire screen a little further from the firebox and hang our clothes on it.”
“Good idea,” I said, trying to sound normal.
As if this was something I did all the time.
But he’d already seen me in my bare stockings, so I went ahead and unbuttoned them, bending low to struggle with the frozen fastenings while Nin stripped out of his jacket.
I glanced up and said, “Oh, your shirt sleeve—we never fixed that, did we?”
“Still have it,” he said, pulling it out of his pocket along with a single mandarin orange. “Ah, forgot about that.”
“How are you not as cold as I am? Is this a god thing?”
“Yes,” he said, tossing his orange onto an upholstered wingback chair. “It’s much colder in my world. I’m used to it.”
I certainly wished I was. “Does it snow in your world?”
“In some parts, yes. Not where I live, though. Just rain and more rain, and a constant chill.”
“Sounds like New York City half the year.” My numb fingers weakly gripped the wet wool of my coat and tugged it off my shoulders as Nin resituated the fire screen further away from the firebox. He draped his wet jacket over it along with his torn shirt sleeve; then I did the same with mine.
I guessed that I wouldn’t need any of my chatelaine tools right now, so I unclipped that, and then tried to think what else I could remove.
The pinafore apron was easy enough. As I untied it in back, I tried to force my eyes not to roam sideways, where Nin was unbuttoning his black waistcoat.
I’d already seen his bare arm plenty of times, but that was in a nursing capacity.
Any second now, his entire shirt would be off, and—
“You all right?” he asked, eyes flicking to mine.
“Yep, yeah, yes.” My face warmed. I quickly hung my apron on the fire screen and considered what to remove next.
My dress was soaked. I could remove the bodice and outer skirt, and my foundation garments would protect my modesty.
My fingers were stiff on the bodice buttons, and I could feel Nin looking at me.
“Do you need help? I know some women’s garments require it, with all those ties and buttons…?”
“No, I’m fine. Just, um… I don’t require aid.
” See, I got the bodice off just fine. Beneath it were several layers—the cotton short-sleeve button-up that covered my corset.
The corset itself. And below it all, the cotton chemise that I often slept in.
I laid the cornflower-blue bodice on the fire screen and hesitated.
My gaze couldn’t help but flick toward Nin when his golden bangles jingled.
He’d already removed his shirt and was tugging a sleeveless undershirt over his head.
When he shook out his curls, he stood next to me half naked, with miles of pale skin and well-defined, lean muscle stretching in every direction.
Even his feet were bare. Only his trousers remained.
He held his undershirt and looked at me.
Looked away. Looked again. “Perhaps…” He set down his undershirt and grabbed one of the dustcovers that had been draped over the sofa.
It took him a few seconds to work out what to do with it, but he found a nail in the center of the mantel—perhaps used to hang Christmas stockings—and pierced the corner of the sheet, hooking it on the nail head.
Then he stretched out the sheet from the fireplace to a standing floor lamp and tied the other corner to the finial.
The sheet hung between us like a curtain.
Nin peered over the top of it. “There. Privacy wall.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said weakly, feeling embarrassed that he’d obviously noticed my nervousness and had put up the divider for me.
“Humans need privacy,” he said, moving away from the sheet so that I couldn’t see his head anymore.
“Gods don’t?” Now that the screen was up, I made quick work of removing the outer skirt of my dress and untying the bustle beneath, then let it drop around my feet, all the steel bands collapsing together in a neat pile.
“Sometimes,” he replied.
I shook out my bustle and set it on the sofa arm; then I began unfastening the steel hooks on the front of my corset, relaxing a little more with every pop of the fasteners, until the whole thing fell away. I exhaled a long, luxurious breath.
Nin’s silhouette slowly paced behind the sheet.
Was he already finished undressing? He still had trousers on; I could see the outline of them when he walked.
I tugged off every item of clothing I had except the chemise and my stockings; then I fell back upon the sofa breathing a long sigh of relief.
“Hey,” I said, staring at Nin’s scuffed boots on the hearth. The marks from his iron manacle were still present. “I need to clean your neck.”
“In a minute,” he murmured, still pacing.
I let a minute go by. Then I said, “So, um, I was just thinking about Kesh.”
His pacing stopped. “Why?”
“Because I just remembered something Hoffmann told me back in Agnes Voss’s rooms before you showed up. He said that Lavina had entered into a bargain with a god. And that matches up with what Kesh told me the second time I went to see him.”
Silence. And then, “You went to see Kesh again?”
“I meant to tell you,” I argued. “But, you know. Things have been hectic lately.”
“Not that hectic.” He stood facing the sheet, but he wasn’t close enough to peer over it. “Why did you go see him? And what did you talk about?”
“Look, this was before… you know. What we did in the greenhouse. You weren’t coming to see me, and I didn’t know if you were hurt—”
“Lavina wasn’t sleeping. You knew I couldn’t leave.”
“I didn’t know at the time!” I argued. “I thought Kesh might be able to… I don’t know. I just didn’t have a lot of resources, okay? And if it makes you feel better, our conversation lasted about a minute, and he was still trying to convince me to retrieve the hourglass.”
“What else?”
“He seemed miffed that the master had reneged on a bargain they’d made.
But he didn’t mention what that bargain could be.
And remember, Hoffmann said Kesh wanted a temporary hourglass that would allow him to simply enter the manor grounds—Kesh didn’t want the entire aegis to come down.
What kind of bargain was he trying to make with Lavina? ”
Nin sighed from the other side of the sheet. “I have a theory about that, but I am loath to say it aloud.”
“Maybe you could whisper it.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Fine. When we were crossing the aegis, I caught Kesh’s scent.”
“What?” I straightened on the sofa. “He’s on Earth right now?”
“No,” Nin said. “When I say ‘scent,’ I don’t mean a literal one. I perceived a memory of his presence—I could detect that he’d been there. But he wasn’t the only one. I caught another scent, a much more powerful one.”
I waited a moment to ask, “Whose?”
He waited a moment to answer. “Chaos’s.”
Chaos? Wait… I knew that name from Nin’s story.
I jumped to my feet, sprang toward the sheet, and pushed it aside to duck under the fabric, causing one of the corners to come loose. “You mean the god of Chaos!” I said as the sheet fell to the ground behind me. “The god who killed your father?”
Nin stopped pacing and turned around to stare at me, blinking. His gaze roamed over my chemise, sticking to me like honey. “You destroyed the privacy wall.”
I was suddenly aware of how thin and worn the cotton of my chemise was, and I did a quick mental calculation of the light source from the fire and what could or could not be seen by him. “I’m not a fan of protective boundaries.”
“Me neither,” he murmured, gaze slowly dropping down my body.
I crossed my arms over my chest to avoid feeling self-conscious. “Why was Chaos at the same spot your brother was?”