Chapter 23 #2
We follow the dirt road for another half hour or so in complete silence, our shuffling feet the only noise.
I’m struggling to lift my legs at this point.
My feet are covered in blisters from my old boots and my legs are burning.
Despite my determination to push forward, I still tire too quickly.
We come around a bend in the road and a leaning inn comes into view.
An enormous smile breaks across my face. It’s so wide it hurts.
Damn. How long has it been since I really smiled?
The inn is rugged, built out of a dark wood I don’t recognize, and seems to be struggling to stand.
But the warm yellow light flooding from the windows in the growing darkness of the setting sun is inviting and I can’t wait to scrub my body until it’s raw.
I’ve been dirty before, but not like this.
Almost every inch of my body is covered in dirt, blood, or dried vomit.
There are stains on my trousers and bodice I can’t even begin to place.
It feels like my very soul is stained by the events of the past few weeks.
I turn my attention to Caene, still grinning like a fool.
Caene’s jaw is slack as his gaze sweeps over me.
“What?” I ask, my smile dropping while I scan for signs of danger.
“You are stunning.” He grins.
My stomach flips over itself. I ignore it. Seems I’ve been ignoring a lot of things my body has been doing lately. “Shut up,” I snap before I stride away from him toward the inn.
We enter through a tavern on the main level, one that is surprisingly busy for such a remote location.
The din inside goes quiet and heads turn in our direction.
So many that I pull on my clothing and tuck myself deeper into Caene’s coat, trying to hide the worst of my appearance.
Caene doesn’t look much better with his shredded tunic, muddy trousers, and dirt-covered face, but he doesn’t shy away from the scrutiny.
Confident bastard.
We approach a stout man with pale skin standing behind the bar. He has a friendly face and a warm smile. His brown hair is graying, and his eyes are so blue they’re nearly white.
Caene raps on the bar with his knuckles to get the innkeeper’s attention. “Two rooms please,” he says with his annoying amount of confidence.
“Terribly sorry but we only got one room left,” the innkeeper says, wiping at the counter.
Shit.
Caene looks down at me with one eyebrow raised, amusement and challenge dancing behind his eyes.
“Are there at least two beds in the room?” I ask, hope rising in my voice.
“’Fraid not love.” The hope dies a pitiful death. I chew the inside of my lip, thinking it over. I need a bath, a hot meal, and a warm bed. I suppose if one of those things must be shared, it’s a sacrifice I’ll have to make.
“Fine,” I say and eye Caene. “But you’re sleeping on the floor.” He tries to hide his laugh behind a fake cough.
The friendly portly man comes around the bar. “Follow me.”
He leads the way up a set of creaking back steps to the second floor of the inn.
We follow him down a dirty hallway, lined with wood paneling to a door with the number four etched roughly into it.
He inserts a key into the lock and turns, opening the door.
My jaw hits the floor. This isn’t a room, it’s a broom closet.
The bed takes up nearly the entire room.
There isn’t even enough space for the door to open fully.
It bumps into the chipped wooden bed frame.
There’s no way Caene will fit on the tiny sliver of floor.
“Well shit,” I mumble. I meant to say it in my head but it slipped out.
“Through that door there is your bath and erm, necessarium.” He points to a narrow door by the foot of the bed. “Ya know. Where ya go to . . . relieve yourself.” We both eye him. “You know. Where ya goes when . . . when ya . . . needs to, um . . .”
“You mean a toilet?” I say, trying to save this man from his stammering.
“Blech! I hate that word.” He makes a fake gagging sound and I feel a smile break onto my face, but I stifle the laugh working its way up my throat. No need to embarrass the poor man. I look at Caene, who also appears to be struggling to control himself.
“Right. I’ll leave you to it then.” He looks me up and down. “I’ll have someone bring up water for the bath.” He looks Caene up and down. “Lots of it.” He turns on his heel and goes back the way he came.
Caene gestures for me to enter the room first, then he comes in behind me.
He accidentally bumps into my back as he tries to close the door.
I shift to the left, which only helps the door close a little more before Caene bumps into me again.
I grumble and climb up onto the mattress, standing on it so Caene has enough room to close the damn door.
I step down and brush the dirty footprints I left off the moth-eaten quilt.
I turn in place, taking in the dinky room.
I look at the bed, which is hardly big enough for his enormous body, let alone mine too, then look up at Caene.
“I hope you’ll be comfortable in the bathtub.” I cross my arms, leaving no room for argument.
He laughs, the sound winding around me, as he walks into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him.
There’s a knock at the door and I have to climb up onto the bed again to open the door.
Without a word, a slim boy who can’t be older than fifteen pokes his upper body into the room and drops two buckets of hot water to the left of the door.
Then leaves, coming back a few minutes later with two more.
“I’ll be back with more later,” he mumbles before scurrying down the hall. I watch him go.
The bathroom door opens as I close the door to the hallway.
This bed is going to be filthy by the time we’re done with all these door dances.
Without a word, Caene bends around me and picks up the buckets, two in each hand.
The man may be a liar and infuriating but he is amazingly strong.
He shimmies back into the bathroom, through a door not wide enough for his bulk to fit through comfortably, let alone with four buckets of water.
I listen as he dumps them into the tub, mildly annoyed that he’s taking the first bath.
I perch myself on the edge of the mattress, trying not to sully it further while I wait my turn.
“The tub is full,” he says, shuffling through the doorway, holding a towel out to me. A part of me wants to tell him I can draw my own bath and that I don’t need his assistance but instead, I take the towel from him. Our fingers briefly touch, sending a current up my arm. I give him a small smile.
His thoughtfulness tickles something in my chest. I don’t shove it aside this time.
I let the feeling settle as I try to wiggle around him to get to the bathroom, but his enormous body takes up all the available space.
He turns to his side, pressing his back against the wall to try to allow me to pass.
Still, there is barely enough room. Our chests are pressed so tightly together I can feel his breath on my face.
I look up at him to see he’s watching me closely, his eyes dark.
He looks from my eyes to my lips. My stomach flips over and that pooling desire is back in my belly.
He peels his eyes back to mine and leans in slowly.
I come to my senses when his lips barely brush mine.
I scramble past him and slip into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me, then lean against it, close my eyes, and let out a slow breath, jarred that I almost let him kiss me again.
He is your enemy, Vayna! My mother’s voice of reason screams inside my head. The voice of reason.
Is he though?
I open my eyes. The bathroom is equally as small as the bedroom, containing a cramped but deep metal tub in the center of the room and a “necessarium,” as the innkeeper called it, in the corner.
I smile to myself and am beginning to undress when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the cracked and crooked mirror on the wall.
The woman looking back isn’t me. This woman is gaunt, bruised, and covered in scabs and dried blood.
She has large, dark circles under her eyes, even more prominent because of her sallow skin.
I can count her ribs through that skin. But when I move she moves.
I push back the sting of tears with the heel of my hand.
I’ll heal. I’ll look like myself again, at least on the outside.
I step into the tub. It’s too short to properly spread out but it’s deep enough that the water covers me to just over the tops of my breasts.
The warmth of the water seeps into my very soul.
I soak for a few minutes, letting my muscles relax, letting my head fall back to the lip of the tub.
I look to my right and notice a bar of soap has been placed on a rickety, three-legged stool beside me.
I pick it up and begin to scrub, inhaling the clean rosemary scent.
As I watch the dirt and blood and whatever other ungodsly substances are coating my skin seep into the water, everything that has happened in such a short amount of time starts coming back to me, washing over me like a wave.
It is ruthless and I am drowning. I scrub harder, trying to wash away the memories and the pain, the fear and the despair.
The tears stinging my eyes start to fall, mixing with the now brown-tinged water.
My skin becomes raw from the harsh soap and savage scouring, but I keep scrubbing.
If I scrub hard enough, maybe I can wash it all away.
A strangled scream erupts from somewhere deep inside between the sobs wracking my body. No amount of scrubbing will rid me of the memories of the agony, of the terror. I double over, trying to curl in on myself, trying to make myself as small as possible, trying to disappear.
The door slams open and Caene is in the doorway, looking around wildly for the threat that he must think caused my scream.
Seeing none, his eyes land on me. I don’t try to cover myself or hide.
I’m beyond caring about modesty, not that I really did in the first place, but I can’t bring myself to look at him, to be more vulnerable.
I know if I look at him, if I meet those viridian eyes, I’ll lose my tenuous grip on my control.
“Fuck. What have they done to you?” His voice is low and rough with barely concealed anger. I can’t respond. I just hang my head and watch the tears mix with the suds from the soap, watch as the bubbles slowly burst.
He scoops the towel off the floor where I discarded it.
“Stand up,” he says softly, reaching his hand out to help me stand.
I don’t have any fight in me to resist and do as he says, holding my other hand out for the towel.
He doesn’t give it to me, nor does he release my hand.
I can feel him watching me, his eyes skating up and down my body.
I move to turn away from him, dropping his hand.
He inhales sharply as he sees the whipping scars across my back from Otyx’s punishments. I’d forgotten about them.
“Did they do this? Asa? My brothers?”
I shake my head.
“Who?” he growls.
I don’t answer. I can’t. I let my tears speak for me.
He lets it go and wraps the scratchy towel around my too-thin body, gently turning me back to face him.
He ties it off above my breasts and brings his hands to my jaw, cradling my head softly, tilting my face to look at him.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
I can see it written all over his face; I can see it swimming in his eyes. I’m not alone.
He bends and lifts me out of the tub, holding me tight to his broad chest, and carries me out of the bathroom, struggling to get us both through the narrow door.
He doesn’t seem to care that I’m still soaked and it’s seeping through his clothes.
He lays me down on the bed and crawls in beside me, pulling my back to his chest. I shouldn’t let him comfort me again.
I should push him away. But the warmth of his body and feeling like I’m not alone in my pain and grief for the first time in weeks is too much to resist. He holds me until my tears dry up and I begin to drift off to sleep.
In that space between asleep and awake, I feel him pull away and the bed shift.
I hear the bathroom door open and close before I fall into the deepest sleep I’ve had since walking out of Otyx’s bordello all those weeks ago.
A golden eye with an emerald iris, morphing into two green ones. Pain, shame, fear.
Concern.
I know those eyes.