Chapter 12
TWELVE
Darkness shrouds us through the old house, up the stairs, and down a corridor lined with creaky doors.
Samick pauses only to glance inside a room before we pass it, until he pushes open a door with loud groaning hinges.
His bootsteps lead the way inside. The sound is clackier, like the flooring has changed from rugs covering hardwood to cold, sharp tiles.
I inch my way in after him, a hand splayed in front of me in the dark.
Then I stop—and wait.
A familiar sound shooshes through the room, and it takes me a moment of concentration to place it.
Curtains.
He closes curtains.
Such a plain sound. Something I never made a note of before. But it was buried away in my brain—and the sound of it is a blow to the gut.
An echo of normalcy, of a life I’ll never get back.
My face falls, and just as it does, white beams erupt through the room.
Samick brought the torch.
The light bounces off porcelain and dusty mirrors, an assault at first, but then the light softens. It settles.
I’m standing in a bathroom.
With his back to me, Samick sets the torch down on the edge of the sink, propped up on a bar of soap.
He doesn’t need the light.
It’s entirely for my benefit.
The angle washes the light through the room, over the tub, the tiles, the towels racked against the wall, and for a moment, I take it all in, from the toothbrushes in the tumbler, the lotions and even retinol phials on the shelves, to the basket of dirty clothes in the corner.
A sock has fallen out of the basket. It sits on the floor, white and crumpled, with a soft brown stain on the sole.
Someone lived here.
Downstairs, it’s a practice. A collection of offices, and at least one is used for psychology sessions. It has a clinical-feeling waiting room, an extension-like kitchen, and a weirdly placed toilet at the back.
But upstairs, the bathroom is lived in.
Upstairs, it feels a bit more like a home.
Samick balances his bowl of mash-covered stew in one hand as he stalks for the tub.
Hope lifts inside of me.
He turns on the taps—and he runs a bath.
I’m lured closer.
Just a step.
But closer.
The bud of hope dares to bloom into something more, something like excitement—a feeling I haven’t had in so long.
“For me?” I ask, thumb already hooked through the bag strap over my shoulder, ready to tug it off and scramble out of my manky clothes—
If he lets me.
If he says yes.
Samick dips his fingertips under the stream of water. He waits. Tap water rushing over his fingers, seconds pass without any acknowledgement of me, of my question, and I wait, thumb hooked around the bag strap.
He sighs something small and disappointed before drawing back from the tub.
Setting the bowl down on the edge of the sink counter, he speaks a simple command, just one word, and it feels—as it always does—like ice.
“Wait.”
With that, he leaves me.
He actually leaves me alone.
Trusts me enough to vanish from the bathroom for long enough that I wander over to the door against the far wall, peer inside to find the toilet—
Then he returns.
Sparing me a single cold glance that frosts through the torchlight, he empties a pot of boiling water into the tub.
The water must be cold in the pipes.
Before he leaves again to boil more, he turns off the running tap—and gives me too much trust again.
Or maybe he just knows I’m too weathered down to do anything stupid.
Maybe he knows I’m too smart to leave his side, when he’s the one who will reunite me with Bee at the end.
So all I do in the moment he’s gone is use the toilet. Privacy—for the first time in months.
I flush, tidy myself, then come back out into the bathroom. My boots thud on the tiles as I wander in aimless circles until he returns again.
The water steams as he pours it into the tub.
And that’s it.
He sets the pot down on the floor, then turns to sit on the ledge of the bathtub. One of those built-in tubs surrounded by cold tiles.
It reminds me of mum.
She would have a pack of smokes on the ledge, a glass of wine, the wine bottle, and some orange-chocolate.
It was her do not disturb time.
Still, I would bother her. Sit on the bathmat on the floor, read, listen to music, talk her ear off about school and falling out with friends, how some teachers had it out for me…
She probably tuned me out, didn’t listen to a thing I said.
She had more patience than I do.
I would probably end up telling my kid to fuck off or something if they intruded on my alone time. Or maybe I would get used to it, having a rugrat around, always in my space—the way I’m sort of used to Samick’s constant presence, like it’s natural to me now that he’s around.
I step over my backpack where I dropped it before using the toilet, right in the middle of the room, and I peel off my gloves.
Samick lounges on the edge of the tub. He leans back against the wall, bringing a boot up to rest on the ledge, and he starts to pick at his dinner.
I inch closer to the edge of the bath.
Samick dumped enough hot water in there to have ribbons of steam wafting up from the surface.
I take one look at it, and I’m suddenly wrestling the clothes off my body in a hurry.
I strip down to the nude, letting even my underwear crumple to the floor—and I dip my toes into the water.
More than warm, it’s hot—but not scalding.
I scramble in.
And I jolt, rigid, for a moment.
It’s that kind of hot that takes a beat to get used to, like it’s searing my skin, but it isn’t really, it’s just much hotter than the air in the bathroom.
I keep my cheek to Samick’s cold, unfeeling stare as I sink into the water.
I can’t stop the wispy breath from escaping me, because this is pure fucking bliss.
A full belly from a mouth-watering meal, a warm bath, and just a handful of fae alien fucks around me.
Not even the cool green of Samick’s stare unsettles me.
My lashes shut on him, his knee hiked, the spoon lifting to his parted pink lips, and I sink.
The water rises over my body.
Then it touches my chin, and the world ceases to exist. It all goes quiet.
I listen to the soft silence, only disturbed by the occasional sounds of a spoon cutting through the stew and water trickling.
I’m in no rush to get out of the water, and Samick doesn’t nudge me along.
I soak.
I think I even drift off for a minute.
The only disruption is the glare of the white torchlight turning my eyelids red instead of a peaceful black.
Everything else lulls me—and I have to force myself to open my eyes, otherwise I’ll doze off completely.
The moment I blink, and water droplets fall from my lashes, Samick lifts his unfeeling gaze to mine.
Like darkness needs to cling to him, shadows cover half of his face, and the light only gently brushes over the other side.
The raggedness of my quiet voice should surprise me, “Where are we?”
Slowly, he lifts the spoon from the bowl.
He eats, slow and lazy chewing, like he isn’t as starving as I was.
He gives no answer.
I should have worded my wonder better.
What I really meant is—
“How much longer?”
He lowers the spoon to the bowl.
He eats like he has time, not like I did when I scarfed down the stew and licked the bowl clean.
Does he not get as hungry as I do?
It’s another question burrowed away someplace in my mind, because he’s, well, jacked.
Muscle packed into marble.
So he would need more calories, he should hunger more than I do. But he eats like he knows his next meal is a sure thing, like he can take his time, and so he does.
I eye the bowl, as though I can see the stew within it through the porcelain if I stare hard enough.
My mouth waters.
“Not long,” he says, then he leans forward…
And hands me the bowl.
Water splashes.
I sit up straight.
But that same urgency isn’t in my slow-moving hands as I reach out.
The moment my fingers touch the bowl, I snatch it as though he’ll steal it back from me.
He doesn’t.
And I look down to find about a quarter of the stew left.
I’m not as quiet or slow about finishing it off as he was.
Samick sinks back against the wall and watches me devour the stew. “Two weeks.”
My brow furrows.
Two weeks is a long time all things considered, like constantly fucking trekking through darkness and relying on him to keep me, not just alive, but safe.
Still, it’s nothing compared to the time already gone—since I’ve seen her.
“Two weeks,” I echo, “and I’ll be back with Bee?”
He nods once, almost disinterested.
But he’s not disinterested.
I know, because he talks to me. He answers my questions when he doesn’t have to. He speaks when he can choose to be silent.
Months ago, there’s no chance in hell he would have answered me. He probably would’ve shoved a gag in my mouth just for parting my lips.
I finish the stew. Before I’ve even set the spoon down in the bowl, Samick takes it from my hands, then passes it off to the edge of the sink.
He’s in no rush.
So I guess I’m not either.
I sink into the bath again, the filmy water coming up to my chin.
My lips move carefully around a murmured question, “You and Arwyn…”
I trail off—and Samick lifts a faint frown to me. Waiting for me to continue.
Distractedly, he runs his thumb over the hilt of a blade, the glassy one with gold and black flecked through it.
I think it’s a favourite of his.
Less practical, more sentimental.
“Why are you so different to the others?” I ask, my voice small. “You move differently,” I add. “You knew the hail was coming before it did. Arwyn, too. And some of the other fae… they’re afraid of you, I think. Not Rust, but like… most of them.”
The frown smoothens—and his stare becomes steady, cool, unreadable.
Frost cracks those wintery eyes.
Then he blinks—and the faint green returns, like the sun coming out over the arctic, but only for a moment.
I think I’ve stepped onto a minefield.
But the bath has me too soothed, and the questions I’ve stored are coming out now.