Chapter 29
I wake to the sound of a door shutting and footsteps marching over. I bolt upright, wincing at the strain it puts on my wounds.
The footsteps stop. “Well, this is quite a dismal sight.”
Looking up, I see Ciona standing over me from my spot on the floor in the sitting room, her eyes no longer bloodshot.
“Oh. I thought you were the Piper,” I grumble.
She arches a blond brow, her hair veillet adorned with a silver chain and draped over her head in a creamy lilac color that matches her dress. “He left yesterday.”
So that’s why he hasn’t returned to his rooms. Not that I’d wondered where he was or where he was sleeping. Since he stormed out, I haven’t thought of him at all.
“Where did he go?” I ask before I can stop myself.
She smiles placatingly at my question but ignores it for one of her own. “Why were you sleeping on the floor?”
I shrug in answer. The truth is, I didn’t intend to. But come night, I refused to sleep in his bed again. It felt like a way to silently rebel.
I tried to sleep on the sitting room sofa, but it wasn’t comfortable on my stomach.
At some point, I yanked up the cushions and tried to make a pallet on the floor, but they kept slipping.
After hours of tossing and turning and adjusting, I fell into broken slumber on the cream rug in front of the hearth, my whole body aching.
But the truth is, I don’t think I would have slept well even if I’d caved and crawled into his bed. Despite lying to myself, I’ve been too plagued by what transpired. By every word we’d flung at one another.
Even now, it all repeats in my mind.
You’ve captured my attention, blight.
Shoving aside his voice, I gingerly get to my feet, unable to withhold the grimace from the pain in my back. “What are you doing here?” Standing now, I notice two guards behind her. “Oh. Let me guess. My blood.”
Ciona gives a brisk nod. “Your blood. Is that alright? I’d like to check on your infection.”
I slump to the sofa and hold out my arm. “Fine.” She gives me a look, and I shrug. “I’m grumpy.”
“I expect that’s because you slept on the floor.”
“It’s because of the Piper,” I retort.
She sits beside me. “I’m sure that’s true too.”
“It is true. How can you work with him? How can you condone what he’s doing?”
For the first time, her polished expression erodes a bit. “Because despite what you think, he’s trying to help.”
Her words surprise me even more than the sharp slice of a blade as she reopens the wound on my arm. “What?”
She holds my limb and her tone in equal firmness. “Everything will be explained soon.”
“Why can’t you tell me now?”
“In case we have a traitor in our midst,” she says quietly.
I falter at the confession. It’s not at all what I thought she was going to say. I steal a quick glance at the guards. “What are you talking about?”
But Ciona shakes her head, watching as my blood beads. “I can’t say. Just . . . a little more time. Give us that.”
“Why should I?”
“Because perhaps in a few more days, you’ll think differently.”
She offers no further explanation as she leans in toward my arm. Her eyelids flutter closed, and she takes a deep breath through her nose. The guards stand sentinel as I hold still, watching her dissect whatever scent she ekes out of my veins.
After a moment, her eyes open again, once more riddled with splotches of red, and her brows draw together. “Hmm . . .”
“What is it?”
She pulls a fresh bandage from her pocket and wraps my arm with a shake of her head. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“There shouldn’t be an infection in your blood anymore—well, at least, not enough to block me,” she explains before tying it off.
“You mean I’m not healing?” I ask, my fingers twisting with worry. “The infection still isn’t clearing out?”
“I don’t know. I’m missing something.” When she meets my gaze again, curiosity swims in her bloodshot eyes. “It’s interesting.”
I open my mouth to speak, but she gets to her feet before I can. “I must go review my notes.”
“Wait—”
But she doesn’t, and I can’t get around the guards. She sweeps out of the room with her escorts before I can get another word in, and they close the door behind them.
I let out a sigh, more perplexed than worried. Sure, my back hurts, but there’s no fever, and my wounds have scabbed up. Despite what Ciona is sensing, I do feel better, so I’m going to choose to believe that I am.
I have enough problems on my plate already.
Remembering what Ciona said about the Piper being gone, I chew on my bottom lip in thought. For some reason, his absence makes me uneasy. On impulse, I turn and wander into his dressing room, and then I stop short.
Because the spot where his pied cloak had been hanging sits empty.
* * *
Another day has come and gone when the Piper suddenly strides back into the sitting room first thing in the morning. I jump so badly I nearly trip from where I was staring at the boarded-up window.
He stops and scowls at me, his black clothes looking wrinkled, his hair scruffy. Hanging off him is his pied cloak.
He looks from the window and then back to me with suspicion. “Why are you just standing there?”
His confrontational demeanor gets my hackles up. “I’m here because you trapped me in here, remember?”
“What, being in a castle instead of a poor tenement isn’t diverting enough for you, blight?”
“No, actually. I’m used to working. Being productive. I’ve had to figure out how not to die of boredom in here,” I say, but he isn’t paying attention as he strides toward me.
I back away, but then I smirk when he passes me to stop in front of the window that his guards sealed with planks of wood. He starts examining it with a frown, his hands yanking on the boards as he checks to see if I tampered with it.
Which of course I did.
Or at least, I tried. The nails are really in there. I couldn’t get the boards loosened at all, much to my disappointment.
Once he’s satisfied it’s still sealed shut, he turns to me. “Not trying to fall to your death today?”
“It’s still early.”
His lips hitch ever so slightly.
He takes a step closer, and I glance down at the instrument hooked at his hip, where silvery smoke curls from the pipe.
I find myself wondering how it works—his magic.
If the pipe feels strange, if those red engravings I saw only light up when he’s using it, and why it constantly spews this strange odorless vapor.
“You’re looking at it like you want to wrap your lips around it.”
My eyes yank up to his. “What?” I sputter.
“You heard me. Though, I doubt you’d actually know what to do with it.”
His innuendo clearly pleases him, a flash of teeth bolstering his ridicule.
I feel a blush swarm my face. “I’m not inclined—musically or by desire—to do anything with your . . . pipe.”
“Shame.”
Anger kicks into my sternum. “You’re disgusting.”
“You’re disgusting, my lord,” he corrects. “If you’re going to insult me, at least use my title. Sir will also do, as you’ve been informed—repeatedly.”
I roll my eyes. “Where were you?” I ask, looking pointedly at his cloak.
“Gone,” he answers dismissively. “Why do you ask? Did you miss me?”
“No. You left me stuck in here for two days.”
“Alone time gives one an opportunity to think.”
“I don’t need to think. I need to get out of here.”
“Hmm. Sounds to me like you need more time,” he says mockingly.
Outrage scratches my ribs. “You’re such an—”
Without waiting for me to finish, he turns and strides into his bedroom. I follow him, watching him disappear into his dressing room.
“Why won’t you tell me where you went?” I persist.
I hear him rifling through clothing, and when I peer in, I see him unhook his cloak and hang it up. Then he reaches a hand back and yanks up his tunic before tossing it to the floor. My eyes go wide at the sight of his muscular back, all smooth skin and corded bulk.
He turns to reach for a new shirt, and I get an eyeful of his abdomen and chest, every inch of him sculpted in honed strength. I have never seen a body like his before. He is brutal power wrapped in sensual temptation.
The sight makes my mouth go dry.
After gathering fresh clothes, he strides out of the dressing room, and his gaze snaps over to where I’m standing a few feet away. My face goes hot with mortification that I was just caught staring.
He cocks a brow and I plunge my eyes down to the floor. I hear him kick off his boots, and then he heads to the washroom.
“Are you going to answer me?” I call at his back.
“No.”
He slams the door shut and I let out an unsteady breath. I press my hands to my cheeks, trying to smother the flame that’s ignited beneath my skin. But I hear water running in the washroom, and my exhale splits apart.
He’s taking a bath.
He’ll be . . . unclothed, right there in that room. With only a door to separate us.
The thought of him undressing makes my nerves shred.
I quickly turn and rush back to the sitting room like my shoes are on fire and sit on the sofa, snatching up one of the books I took from his bookshelf.
It’s on Brekon geography before it cracked, no longer completely relevant, but I pretend to read it anyway, if only to distract myself.
My eyes trail over the words, but I keep seeing that flash of exposed skin, imagining it dunked in steamy water . . .
I snap the book shut and start to pace, stopping in front of one of the paintings on the wall, where a particularly stern-looking monarch stares at me like there’s something wrong with me.
“No argument there,” I mutter.
After a few minutes, I settle back onto the sofa again, managing to compose myself enough to read the old maps until the Piper comes striding back into the room with a fierce look on his face.
“Blight,” he growls.
I paste on an empty expression. “Yes?”
His hair is dripping wet, the ends curled where it hangs around his neck. He has brown trousers yanked up in a rush, the ties still loose, boots shoved on haphazardly.
But it’s the tunic that makes my lips twitch.
“What did you do to my clothes?” he demands, his tone lethal.