Chapter 28 Esme #2
I stand there in the warm, damp air in nothing but my thin cotton under-layer clinging to my skin.
Every mark on me is on display—a map of my failures.
The gash in my side is still raw, a five-inch slash of angry red against my pale skin, its edges puckered and weeping.
Bruises in various stages of healing darken my arms and ribs—violet-black where they're fresh, sickly yellow-green where they're fading. I feel too seen.
Dayn looks at me from across the steaming water. His eyes travel slowly from my face to my wounds, lingering on each mark with an expression that’s difficult to read. His gaze is heavy as molten gold, but there's no judgment in it. Just… focus.
I take a step toward the pool. Then another. When my toes reach the edge, the heat coming off the water makes my muscles ache in anticipation. I lower myself in slowly, hissing as the heat hits the cut on my side—sharp at first, then easing.
The water wraps around me, thick and warm. It pulls some of the weight out of my body. My breathing slows without me meaning it to. I let my head tip back and close my eyes. For a moment, I don’t have to move. I don’t have to fight. I just… exist.
When I open my eyes, he's closer, his silhouette cutting through the rising steam.
I didn't hear him move—not a ripple betrayed him. He stops an arm’s length away, close enough that I can feel his presence in the water as a current of warmth, a disturbance in the mineral-rich pool that has nothing to do with movement and everything to do with the unnatural heat his body radiates.
His eyes catch mine through the mist. “Let me,” he says quietly.
“What?” I whisper, throat dry despite the humidity pressing against my skin.
“Assist your wounds.” His fingers flex, the texture of his palms a quiet reminder of strength and experience.
I hesitate, then nod, once—the smallest surrender I can live with, a tilt of my chin barely disturbing the water lapping at my collarbone.
He crosses the pool with a sound like silk pulled through a ring.
The heat he carries changes the temperature in concentric circles around him; the surface shivers, steam feathering my skin.
He doesn’t touch me at first. His hand hovers just above the torn flesh at my side, his palm a sun I want and don’t want.
“Easy,” he murmurs, and the word finds the place in me that is still braced for impact.
I hold myself very still.
Something flares between us—no blaze, just a thin thread of gold that seems to hum along the bond, a current he feeds so carefully I almost miss it.
The water warms another degree. The pain sharpens, then unfurls, like a fist opening.
He angles closer, his other hand sliding under the water to brace at the outside of my hip.
The contact is solid, impersonal in its intention, intimate in its fact. My breath stutters anyway.
He exhales, slow, deliberate. The air that ghosts my skin smells faintly of hot metal and cedar, and where it brushes the wound, heat seeps deeper, precise as a needle. I feel the edges of the cut tighten, draw together—pressure, prickling, then a delicate, tugging ache.
He waits for each small shift of the mending, matching his breath to mine. When I grimace, his thumb flexes in the muscle at my hip—not possessive, not quite, just a steadying weight. His eyes are on my face the entire time, not the blood, not the bruises. Watching for retreat.
“More?” he asks.
I give a quiet nod, allowing the gate to open a fraction wider.
Golden warmth wicks through the seam of pain, spreads under my skin in a slow tide.
The gash stops screaming, dulling down to a low murmur.
The water around us glows faintly, shot through with firefly filaments that curl and vanish against my skin.
He moves his hand at last—no rush, no lingering.
His palm skims lower along my ribs, mapping the ugly purples blooming there.
The heat he calls this time is duller, deeper, working into the meat of me.
The bruise eases under it, the pressure bleeding away.
He traces the line of my forearm where I blocked too many times with bone instead of blade.
His knuckles graze the tender ridge once, then hover, heat pulsing a heartbeat at a time until the throb retreats.
When his hand lifts toward my left shoulder, instinct flares; I go rigid.
That scar. The one I always tuck out of sight, the jagged reminder of my first clearblood kill at thirteen—the one where I didn't move fast enough, where I learned that hesitation costs blood. A Purifier lash caught me before I could dodge. It’s the mark that earned my grandmother's first truly disappointed frown and her firm words: “A Salem doesn’t show weakness.”
His fingertips stop a breath away… and he waits.
I shake my head. It’s an old one. Not trial-inflicted. I’m not sure why he thinks that he could even heal something gained outside this virtual reality.
He notices my flicker of confusion. “You’re right,” he mutters. “Best let old ghosts lie.”
He inclines his head, barely, and leaves it. A small flicker of respect sits in my chest like a foreign coin.
He sets both hands back into the water then, the glowing threads fading to the dimmest ember.
The water settles around us, the last of his power receding into a quiet hum in my blood. The absence of pain is a shock, leaving a hollow space where it had been. It’s unnerving. I feel strangely light, untethered.
I watch him, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the demand that always follows a gift from someone like him. But he just holds my gaze, his expression unreadable in the dim, turquoise light.
The silence stretches, thick and heavy as the steam.
Then, he moves. My muscles tense, a reflex I can’t stop.
But he doesn’t reach for me—not to hold or restrain.
He cups his hands, gathering the warm, clear water of the pool.
Slowly, as if approaching a feral animal he’d prefer not to startle, he lifts his hands to my face.
My first instinct is to jerk back, to slap his hands away.
But I don’t. I stay frozen, my heart a frantic bird against my ribs as he gently splashes the water onto my skin.
His thumbs, calloused and unsettlingly gentle, trace the curve of my cheekbones, wiping away the grime and dried blood from the trial.
He works with a focus so quiet it feels almost like reverence, cleaning the filth from my temple, my jaw, the corner of my mouth.
His touch is not a claim or a brand. It is…
care. A simple, staggering act of tenderness that my mind has no defense for.
A shudder runs through me that has nothing to do with the cold.
“Is this in your draconic courtship manual?” I manage, my voice coming out tighter than I intended. “Chapter four: 'Lure the feral witch into a hot spring and scrub her down’?”
His thumbs pause at the corners of my mouth. His hands still, and a slow smile breaks one corner of his mouth.
“Chapter seven,” he says. “Right after How to Deal With Infuriatingly Stubborn Women.”
His fingers return to my skin like he never stopped, the heat of them making my breath hitch.
“And I wasn’t planning on letting you bleed out in my space,” he adds. “Bad for the atmosphere.”
“How very considerate,” I murmur.
His hands slide to cup my jaw, thumbs settling beneath it. Just… holding.
Keeping me there. Light glints off the ring he wears, its pale gold matching the one that encircles my own finger.
“You aren’t my hostage, Esme.”
The way he says my name makes me go still.
“Then what am I?” I breathe.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Back to my eyes.
“A problem,” he says softly. “And I’ve never wanted a problem this much in my life.”
The steam presses in around us. My pulse stutters. I can feel it in my throat, in the soft place under his thumbs. A shiver runs down my spine. My eyes flick to his mouth, then away, then back again, like I don’t trust them to behave.
He sees it. Of course he does. Something in his expression shifts—not softer exactly, just more careful. More aware.
“You fight everything, don’t you,” he murmurs. “Even when nothing is trying to hurt you.”
He leans in, slow enough that I could pull away. His forehead nearly touches mine. We stop there. Breath to breath. No contact. Just that razor-thin space between restraint and… ruin.
I close my eyes, fighting to stay in control. Looking at him like this is a mistake I can already feel forming.
“I don’t know how to stop,” I say. The words slip out anyway.
His breath grazes my lips. “Then don’t. Just be here.”
I open my eyes.
He doesn’t move back. If anything, he’s closer now, heat rolling off him, steady and sure.
“This place,” he murmurs, glancing around the stone and steam, “doesn’t exist outside itself. The world you’re afraid of can’t reach it. And when you leave… nothing follows.”
The words land, sudden and clear. Something inside me tightens, then loosens, like a knot pulled and then released.
A fantasy… A sealed moment. Of course. We’re still in a construct.
My pulse shatters against my ribs as the idea takes root. No reckoning. No aftermath. Just this knife-edge between us.
And the freedom to choose.
His words settle in my chest like hot coals, comfort and burn at once.
I taste the steam, the mineral tang of the water threading between us. Somewhere in the real world a clock is ticking. But here, inside this stolen bubble of the trial… the hourglass’s sand is frozen.
No duty. No war.
No past. No future.
Just this moment, suspended in time, in a place that doesn’t exist. Just him, watching me.
Waiting.
I lift my hands to his wrists, barely brushing the skin, testing the boundary between us. It’s the first time I’ve touched him first without a blade or a spell already drawn.
His pulse is steady beneath my fingertips. Certain. Unwavering.