Chapter thirteen
Audrie left me in a bathing room. Alone.
I knew how to bathe, of course. But the room was cavernous with a pale vaulted ceiling that looked like it was chiselled from rock. An unnatural cave.
Insisting on getting them washed or boiled, Audrie had run off, my leathers pinched between two fingers as she held them away from her, shouting something about soaps and towels or possibly something about ropes and bowels.
Probably not the latter. But her voice had been swallowed as she skipped back out of the room.
This was the basement level of the palace, and there were no windows in here. Complete privacy. Or no escape. Depending on your perspective.
Not a palace. Right. What was this if not a palace? The chamber was large enough to have a steam room and a pool big enough to float in. And the freestanding bath that stood before me was carved from white marble and was spacious enough for two.
This was a palace by my standards. Even if they weren’t Kaed’s.
He said they were from Hayden, though, so maybe he spent time in the castles and palaces.
The king’s fortress was the only passage to the Northern Corner.
I didn’t know much about the Northern Corner or destruction of the Aurorans, but he was the only Crown left in the Four Corners; trade and taxes flowed through his region at his command.
Before the war, there had been only the Southern and Northern Crown, and truth be told, I didn’t know why war had broken out between the North and South.
Before that, hundreds of years older than living memory, there had been four Crowns; one for each Corner.
Of the Four Corner Crowns, the Eastern Crown had been the only human Crown.
The details were sparse on what exactly happened to two of the four Crowns.
Other than that they were destroyed. According to legend, right at the heart of the Four Corners, where each Corner joined at a tiny point, two mighty oaks grew where the Eastern Crown king and Western Crown queen had been killed.
So much blood had been spilled that day.
It had poured into the ground, and two gigantic oaks with blood red leaves grew overnight.
And for years, until the destruction of the Southern Crown and seat in Aurora, there had been a Northern and Southern Crown that ruled the corners.
And now there remained only one Crown in the north.
Swirling thoughts of myths and ancient trees and fae lineages drifted in my mind like bubbles floating to the air.
The city I found myself in. All that knowledge, the stories, that could be at my fingers tips by exploring the library.
The tattered books I’d left behind me felt paltry compared to the hundreds, thousands of books I’d find here.
There was a heady sort of steam in the room, like the entire place was designed to soothe and relax your muscles. Clever metal grates punctuated the smooth floor to avoid the whole room becoming slick and slippery in the humidity.
It was calm here. The only sound was the occasional hiss of hot stones in a metal basket serving to heat the room and build the steam. Everything here ran on copper piping hidden under the stonework. I had never seen anything more impressive, and I’d seen a lot in the last day.
Had it only been a day?
Glass bottles of every colour lined shelves carved into the wall. Each container was gem-like, the way they gleamed in the fae light of the room.
Every bottle I uncorked smelled even better than the last. Hints of mint and jasmine. Sweet honeysuckle and fresh verbena. There were even headier scents. Spices. Bergamot. Citrus. Amber …
In a rush, I put the ruby bottle I had been holding back down. It smelled just like him. Maybe I imagined the similarities. How could you even bottle something so elemental as a person’s scent?
I poured a viscous liquid from a green bottle that smelled of juniper and a few drops of rose oil from a tiny pale pink vial into the carved tub. They seemed expensive. I threw in a bit more, hoping it would cost Kaed somehow.
I discarded my robe on the cool floor and was about to step into the inviting, bubbling water until I saw the painted streaks on my skin.
Beads of sweat had left rivulets of salty dirt along my body, like the marks of a map.
Blood and grime and even a bit of a twig had snagged in my hair.
Snatching a coral sponge from the vanity, I scrubbed until my skin felt raw. I washed every bit of dirt off me.
I was in a new city. In a new place. Wasn’t that what I had wanted?
Fate had a cruel sense of humour, it seemed.
Kaed hadn’t exactly been jubilant—I wasn’t sure that expression was part of his repertoire—about researching in the library with Audrie, but I would take any chance I got to find out more about my family.
The books from home or even the merchants in Craven’s Rook had never had any information worth noting.
But this city, this place, it had to have answers to some of the questions I’d carried for so long.
Scrubbing abandoned, the sponge squelched at my feet as it hit the tiles.
The bathwater burned as I sank down into it. Smooth marble cradled me, and I slid until my hair was soaked and coated in thick bubbles.
Time made no sense in here. There was no sun. No dials. No windows. You could lose yourself in no time at all. You could emerge in a different era entirely if you stayed too long.
The water embraced every single part of me. It didn’t care if I was female. Fae. Human. Free. Held prisoner. It didn’t discriminate.
And then I took a breath.
The tiny bubbles danced over my entire body as I submerged myself. Maybe I could stay here. Forever. If I never resurfaced, I’d never have to worry about faebane or lords or betrothals.
But I did have to get out of here. I needed to find that piece that sang inside of me.
Louder now since leaving Shadowfall, it reverberated through my bones.
Everything since leaving had gone wrong.
I could have just accepted Bray’s offer.
I could have gone to him when he reached for me.
Instead, I’d recoiled. And I had landed in Kaed’s arms instead.
I would escape from this place. I just needed to gather myself, find information and formulate a plan.
The conundrum of how I was going to convince Kaed to let me go or manage to slip away still hung over me.
He wouldn’t let me go until he had his faebane, and I wasn’t going to just give him the location so he could march across Shadowfall and crush it in the process.
The only hope was that there was something to be found in the library with Audrie.
And, if I was lucky, I might find other information there too.
The piece of shell around my neck glimmered in the waters as I spun fantasies about finding my parents. Finding the home I always wanted, the heart of where I should be. My mother, waiting for me with open arms as my father read a history book by the fire.
I fought a groan at my errant thoughts and pushed out of the encompassing waters.
But I came up for breath only to lose it to a scream.
Kaed was leaning against the far wall like this wasn’t a private affair. His hair fell loose over his brow with the steam of the room.
“What in the hells are you doing here? Get out!” I tried to gather the foamy bubbles to cover my modesty. His eyes landed on me, dark, hooded. Hungry.
I tried not to shift under the weight of his gaze. Something had heated inside me, far too low and deep to just be the water around me.
But then his eyes shifted. A mirror catching the light for a briefest moment before rearranging its facade.
“Is that any way to speak to your would-be husband?” He pushed off the wall with a grin.
His mood shifts were impossible to predict. Raging with darkness one moment and quipping about us, besotted in our betrothal the next.
“I don’t care what you think this game is, but it is not this.” I gestured between us for emphasis.
“You’re right, it is a game. And we’re going to play it. Properly.” He handed me a towel and made a show of looking away.
“What does that even mean?” I would have put my hands on my hips in indignation, but I wasn’t about to expose my entire self to him.
The towel still dangled between us. I snatched it, careful not to touch his fingers.
“I’ve thought about it.” He ignored me, absently picking at a selection of soaps piled in a dish. “And I think we can make this work to our advantage.”
“Our advantage?” I raised a brow as I tucked the towel around me. “I doubt that.” My hair dripped as I waited.
“I think this could be useful.” Kaed leaned back against the wall again.
“Newly engaged to be wed. The questions will be about love”—the mockery of the word on his tongue seemed to burn as he bit it out—“and how we met. A beautiful creature on my arm. People are less suspicious.” His eyes fell to something insignificant on his nails as he examined them.
“How we met is not exactly a romantic epic to regale the masses.” Darkness tinged my laugh.
He looked at me then. I must have been a sight. Hair clinging to me, lips red from the hot water. Dripping wet. My heart thumped a little harder in my chest, and I shifted.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said, clearing his eyes. “This will work.”
Was he talking to me or himself?
“What did you mean? You said suspicious. Why would people be suspicious of you?”
He gave a dark laugh. “Let’s just say my father is not the most popular fae in the Four Corners.”
My eyes grappled for the scar on his cheek.
I bit back my next words before I could ask about the way his father had treated him.
I wanted to know … something inside me, buried under my own scars, wanted to understand his pain.
But I also wanted to keep my head. Getting lost in Kaed’s past would not help my future.
He might be beautiful, but he had a short fuse that usually ended with the threat of a cell with iron bars.
And violence. At least to others. He’d been surprisingly reserved with me.
I thought by now he’d have tried harder to get the faebane location from me.
And perhaps I was becoming bolstered by the lack of torture at the hands of my kidnapper, but I spoke to him like he wasn’t a threat.
And that was dangerous. To let my guard down around him.
But it was hard not to get lost in him. He was more than the stories could ever have told me. There was an ethereal aura that clung to him, the shroud of magic and power practically phosphoresced around him. And I felt lost in him. I felt like I was following a star, not a map, as I looked to him.
And I was curious. I wanted to know what being fae—truely fae—was.
“And you think showing up to events, parties with your betrothed will somehow make you more likeable? I think it’s going to take a lot more than that to help you there.” I looked him up and down and grabbed a comb on the vanity to start working on my knots.
As I moved, I felt his gaze on me, and I allowed it to linger. Anything to drop his guard around me. Better that he see me as a pretty flower than a thorn. I could feel his gaze even as my back turned to him.
“You’re right,” he said, clearing his throat. “It will take more than that. You’ll need a new wardrobe. And combat and defence lessons.”
My ministrations came to an abrupt halt. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean?”
“The Head Sentinel, Denora,” he clarified, “will instruct you when she arrives.”
It didn’t seem to be a negotiation. Not at all.
“I don’t understand? You want me to defend myself?
After you’ve kidnapped me and kept me as your prisoner?
You want me to learn how to beat you?” I couldn’t deny that I wanted that.
In fact, I was a little agog at the suggestion.
But I didn’t let him see that. Maybe if I’d had more training in the meadow that first day, I wouldn’t be in this mess now.
He sniffed like he was trying to swallow a laugh. “Trust me. You couldn’t beat me. Not fairly anyway.” He looked up from under the damp strands of hair that had fallen to his eyes.
“Who said I’d play fair?” I allowed my lips to curl around the words. His eyes tracked the movement.
Silence clung to the steamy air as it vibrated around us.
Kaed made to leave, but I scrambled to block the door.
“Stop. Wait. You’re making no sense. You don’t care about me, not really.
Only about what I can give you. Why do you want me to do this?
I can defend myself already.” I wanted what he was offering, but I knew it would come at some sort of price.
Of course I wanted to learn from someone like Denora; a sentinel.
But the instinct to fight him, to push back when he said anything, stuck in me like brambles in a berry bush.
“Clearly. That’s how you ended up captured. Twice.” He leaned in. “In one day.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“And you”—his head leaned even closer until his scent engulfed me—“are starting lessons.”
“Why?” Couldn’t he just give me a straight answer?
“Simple.” He straightened to his full height and pushed his hair back with a ringed hand. “I’m protecting my investment.”
“You’re a bastard.” But he’s already pushed past me.
“So you keep telling me, peach.”
I reached for and threw the nearest bar of soap at him, and it skittered across the marble hallway beyond the bathing chamber.
I missed. By a long way.
Maybe Denora could work on my aim at the very least.