Chapter Twelve
Chapter Eleven
Leona
The water hits me like a shock. For one split second, my body reacts the same way it has to everything else tonight.
I flinch. Lock. Brace for something that isn’t coming.
The heat spreads over my skin too quickly, too real, and my breath catches hard in my throat as my hands lift instinctively, unsure whether to push it away or pull it closer.
Panic flashes through me, bright and stupid and humiliating.
My body still doesn’t know the difference between relief and threat.
It only knows contact. Pressure. The next thing coming.
Then nothing happens. Nothing except water.
It spills over my shoulders, my back, my arms, running in clean lines over skin that still feels borrowed and wrong. No hands. No force. No demand in it. Just heat. Just water. Just something that doesn’t want anything from me.
I force myself to stay where I am. My eyes go to him immediately.
Marius stands where he said he would, just inside the doorway, exactly where I can see him without turning fully.
He hasn’t moved. Not closer. Not farther.
He isn’t watching me the way the others did.
His gaze stays slightly off, fixed somewhere behind me, giving me presence without taking anything I haven’t offered.
He is there, and he is not devouring the sight of me.
He is there, and he is not pretending he isn’t.
Somehow both matter. That matters more than I can explain.
The water runs down my arms, carrying with it traces of dirt, blood, and things I refuse to name.
My stomach turns so sharply I have to brace my palm against the tile.
Memory claws upward all at once. The lantern.
The ropes. The smell of them. The sound I made when I couldn’t stop making it.
The table under my cheek. The awful, animal reality of my own body turning against me.
No. Not like that. Not all at once.
I drag in a breath and make my hands move slower.
More deliberately. I grip the wall and let the water hit my back while I force my mind onto stupid, manageable things.
Tile under my palm. Steam on my face. Water running clear over the drain.
The fact that he is still in the doorway.
The fact that when I look for him, I find him in exactly the same place.
When I open my eyes again, he is still there. Exactly where I left him.
Something inside my chest loosens by a fraction I can barely feel.
The air doesn’t seem quite so sharp. My body doesn’t feel quite so much like it is waiting for the next hand, the next order, the next thing I will have to survive.
I am still shaking. Still hurting. Still not even close to okay. But I am not alone.
I reach for the bottle on the shelf with unsteady fingers and nearly drop it before I catch it against my palm.
The motion feels clumsy and disconnected, like my hands still belong to the part of me left back in that cabin.
I pour too much and don’t care. The scent rises in the steam, faint and clean, and for one ridiculous second my mind doesn’t understand what it is.
Soap. Just soap. The thought is so ordinary it almost hurts.
My hands move over my skin, hesitant at first, then harder as I try to scrub away whatever still clings to me.
The sensation is immediate and unbearable.
Too much. Too fast. Too aware. My own touch turns foreign after only seconds, and I stop abruptly, palm flattening hard against the tile while my breathing starts to climb again.
My eyes snap open, searching for him. He hasn’t moved. Still there. Still not looking directly at me. Still giving me space.
Safe, some traitorous part of me whispers.
The word feels wrong in my head. Too clean.
Too soft. Too simple for what he is, for what I know of him, for the violence that clings to his name and his men and the world he dragged onto my land.
But my body doesn’t care what should be true.
It only knows that when I tense, he eases.
When I look for him, he is there. When I ask for distance, he gives it.
Somewhere between the cabin and this room, he has become the only fixed thing in a night that has otherwise come apart in my hands.
I hate that. I hate that it is him. I hate that my body has made this choice before my mind can catch up to it.
He should frighten me. He still does, in some colder, deeper way that has nothing to do with what happened in that hut and everything to do with the fact that men like him are never safe in any ordinary sense.
He is still half threat, half shelter, built of violence and control and old power I don’t understand.
I should want him farther away. I should want the room empty.
The door locked. No man near enough to touch.
But he is the first thing tonight that has not taken when it could have.
The first thing that has not turned my body into something to pin down, handle, use, or break.
So when I keep looking at him, it isn’t trust. It is need in its ugliest form.
My body choosing the nearest danger that has not hurt me yet and refusing to let it drift too far away.
I force my breathing to slow again. One breath.
Then another. I start over, more carefully this time, cleaning piece by piece instead of all at once.
Shoulder. Arm. Wrist. Collarbone. Stopping when I need to.
Starting again when I can. It isn’t about being clean.
Not really. It is about reclaiming something that does not feel fully mine right now.
About proving to myself that this body still belongs to me in whatever broken, furious way I can manage.
The water runs clear after a while. I don’t know how long it takes.
Time feels wrong, stretched and warped and half useless, but the sharpest part of the panic has dulled into something heavier.
Exhaustion. It settles into my bones like wet sand.
I lean my forehead against the tile, then open my eyes again. He is still there.
“You didn’t leave,” I say quietly.
“I said I wouldn’t.”
Something in my throat tightens.
“Most people would have.”
“I’m not most people.”
The answer comes without hesitation. Not arrogant. Not tender. Just true in the way dangerous things often are.
I nod slightly, even though he isn’t looking directly at me. My hands slow, then stop. The water keeps falling around me, warm and steady now. Just there. Like him. I glance at him again, only for a second, confirming what I already know. Still there. Still not moving closer than I allow.
Something in me settles a little further. Not enough. Never enough. But enough to stay upright.
I reach behind me and turn the water off. The quiet is immediate and sharp, almost enough to drag me back under. For one second, my chest tightens at the sudden absence of sound, the steam hanging too still around me. Then I look at him. And it doesn’t.
“I…” My voice sounds different now. Less torn. Still fragile. But mine. “Can you just stay a minute?”
“I’m here.”
I nod once. For a moment I simply stand there, the last drops sliding down my skin, the warmth already fading as the air touches me again.
Everything feels brittle, like one wrong movement could undo the thin shape I have managed to hold together.
I reach for the towel with unsteady hands.
The fabric is soft. Too soft. My fingers tighten around it before I wrap it around myself more out of instinct than comfort. The motion is clumsy, but I manage it.
Then I look down at my hands. They are cleaner. The blood is gone. The visible dirt washed away. My skin is pale under the light, marked and reddened but no longer covered in what was done to me. But under my nails, the dirt is still there. Dark. Stubborn. Unmoved.
My breath hitches.
No.
My fingers curl slightly as if I can hide it from myself, but I can’t stop looking. It is still there. Still on me. Still part of it. My chest caves inward.
“No,” I whisper.
I move before I fully know I am moving, turning toward the sink too fast. The faucet turns on and water rushes out.
My hands are under it immediately, scrubbing, rubbing, trying to force it free with more pressure than my skin can take.
It doesn’t come out. My breath breaks. I grab more soap, working it in harder, faster, scraping under my nails, trying to erase the last visible thing left on me.
“Come off,” I choke. “Come off…”
The sob hits sharp and ugly. I scrub harder, ignoring the burn, the shaking, the way my hands won’t stay steady.
Behind me, I hear movement.
“Marius.”
I freeze just enough that my hands slow, my breath snagging mid-sob.
“Leona.”
His voice is low. Careful. Not close enough to trap. Not far enough to vanish.
“It’s still there,” I whisper. “I can’t…”
The words collapse before they fully form. I keep staring at my hands as if I can punish them clean if I try hard enough.
“It won’t come out…”
He steps closer, slow enough that I feel it before I see it. He stops beside me, not touching yet.
“I see it,” he says quietly.
“I need it gone.”
“I know.”
He waits until I don’t pull away. Then his hand finds mine carefully, stopping the frantic motion without forcing it. Just enough pressure to interrupt the spiral.
“Not like this.”
“I can’t…”
“Slow.”
The word lands like weight on a shaking thing. He takes the brush from beside the sink, adjusts the water, and guides my hand back beneath it. Not taking over. Not deciding for me. Helping. A distinction so sharp it almost makes something in me break all over again.
“Let me help.”
Every instinct in me screams to keep going, to do it myself, to scrub until my fingers split if that’s what it takes. But his grip stays steady. Not forcing. Just grounding. I don’t pull away.