Chapter 7 George makes a friend.
seven
George makes a friend.
“So, this is one of the famous Domossan Baths,” Isahn rumbled as George closed the door behind them. Throwing his arms out wide, he breathed deeply. “Divine.”
It was a lovely space with patterned mosaics in cream with specks of color that spread across the floor and disappeared over the edge of the steaming pool.
Large windows filled the walls and ceiling.
Fitted with colored glass in shades of yellow, orange, turquoise, and blue, they basked the room in a happy array of light.
It was “divine” even without looking at it through the eyes of an outsider.
“This is the caldarium, the heated bath,” George offered before gesturing to a door on the left wall. “Through there is the frigidarium, the opposite.”
“Why would anyone take a cold bath when there’s a hot one right here? Also, can we get in?”
She found him bouncing, ever so slightly, on the balls of his feet.
It was adorable, and George quickly pushed down the weightless thing trying to flutter in her chest. “The contrast is refreshing. And yes, you can get in. You’ll find subligar, the bathing cloths, behind that screen.
” She pointed to a fabric-covered, freestanding wall at the back of the room.
“Cloths or clothes?” His brows shot up.
“Cloths. They’re... not quite clothes, but we won’t be naked. See you in a moment.” With that, she darted behind the screen for women and selected her outfit from the baskets.
Wearing a simple bottom in a thin but dark fabric and a mismatched—and too small—white triangle top, she reemerged.
Isahn stood a few feet from the pool in a bathing cloth of his own.
The linen, apron-like flaps tied around his waist did absolutely nothing to hide the sculpted ridges and divots of his muscular thighs.
A thin, fuzzy layer of light hair curled over his legs, softening their statuesque appearance.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts.
“Is this right?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, sounding breathier than she liked.
Lord Yaranbur chuckled. “Like what you see?”
“Just get in the water.”
“As you wish.” With that, he took two long strides toward the pool and leapt in, knees tucked up to his chest.
A tidal wave of heated water drenched her. “Deiwa hathemi!” She tugged a sodden curl from her mouth. “I wasn’t going to get my hair wet!”
“Sorrrry,” he dragged out the word, looking unrepentant. “I’ll dry it for you when we’re done.”
“Sure you will.” George rolled her eyes before walking to the side of the pool and sliding in—as one should.
Since her hair was already wet, she decided to go for it and dove to the bottom, kicking down until her fingertips touched the tiled floor.
Sitting, George slowly released the air from her lungs.
She stared up at the ceiling, watching light dance over the rippling surface and the earl’s blurry, lazily kicking feet.
His legs came apart for a moment, and she could see straight up his cloth—but the view warbled.
She pushed herself to exhale the last breath from her lungs and welcomed the strange burn that came along with it.
Her black curls drifted around her, morphing and wiggling like slithering snakes, lengthened by the pull of water.
A cold current blasted her, wrapping around her waist and yanking her upward. She tried to scream, but only a tiny bubble escaped her lungs.
Gasping when her head broke the surface, she caught her breath, then shrieked, “What the fates was that?”
“I thought you drowned yourself.” He shrugged. “Didn’t like it.”
George rolled her eyes as she kicked her way backward.
Isahn said something she couldn’t hear, the rumble traveling to her through air and liquid.
“What?” Her voice sounded strange and distant through the water.
He replied with a shouted, “Nothing.”
Reaching the pool’s benches, lurking below the surface on all four sides, George braced her head on the outer tiles and floated. With her eyes closed, she basked in the humid warmth, the weightlessness, the rapidly fading pain in her lower back—always present, on account of her too-large chest.
The door to the bath house swung open, and she tilted back to see who was joining them.
Greta shuffled in, one hand bracing her belly. “Ah! Georgie!”
Sitting down on the bench, she turned sideways, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Greta, are you coming in?”
“I’m planning on it. If that’s all right with you?”
George tilted her head with a lift of her brows. “It’s your villa.”
“You’re the princess.” Greta popped a hip.
Isahn’s chuckles devolved into bubbles, and George assumed he’d dunked himself.
“Of course you can join us.”
“Good. I was going to come in anyway. Introduce me to our new guest when I’m back.” Greta sashayed behind the women’s screen, George’s laughter following in her wake.
“You have a wonderful laugh, Georgie.”
When she looked over at the earl, one corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk that popped an adorable little dimple on his cheek.
She huffed.
“I’m not joking.” He shrugged as he ran his hand through his tangle of sandy blond locks.
“Is this finally your real hair color?”
Isahn tugged one of his shoulder-length strands up to scrutinize. “I think so, yeah. Should get lighter in the summer sun, but this looks about right.”
The door creaked open again, and Hildy walked in, chin held high and gaze hard. “Were you going to bring him by to visit with us?”
“I didn’t know you were waiting. I thought you were wrapped up with the boys.”
Hildy coughed.
“Melody, is it?” Isahn chimed in. “Or Hil-something?”
George looked over her shoulder at the earl as Hildy retorted, “You really were listening in.”
“Yes. Sorry about that?” His lips dipped sheepishly.
The only sign of Hil’s stress was the ripple through her upper arms when she ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t trust you.”
Isahn lifted a brow as his eyes sparkled. “And I don’t trust you.”
With pinched lips, Hildy offered a clipped, “I’ll be right back,” and disappeared behind the screen with Greta.
“You don’t trust me either?” George asked, turning to face him again and enjoying the way the water lapped at his firm pecs. She knew his answer should be “No.” She expected his answer to be “No.”
But when he said, “Not at all. How can I possibly trust a woman who’s risking her own safety to save her people?” her heart warmed.
Isahn continued, “How could I trust a woman who protects her friends fiercely? Who refused to torture her prisoner beyond a few false prods and poorly made illusions?”
“Poorly made?” Hildy snorted, emerging from behind the curtain wearing a subligar similar to George’s. She tugged at the triangular-shaped top, her gaze averted as she tried to hide the smile on her lips.
George caught a whisper tossed to her by Hil: “He likes you. He might be nice.”
She blushed, a weight lifting from her shoulders at Hildy’s approval of their former captive. She hadn’t realized how much she needed that, that confirmation she wasn’t insane for thinking he was a good man.
Greta padded out from behind the changing screen wearing a flowy, amethyst tunic that hung to mid-thigh and was shortened in the front by the bump of her big belly.
“Introductions?” George asked.
Hopping from the pool, Isahn was seemingly unbothered by his state of near-undress. It was the norm in Domossan bath houses, of course, but her culture was unfamiliar to him.
He stuck out a well-muscled arm and offered, “Lord Yaranbur, Earl of Midlake. But call me Isahn, please.”
“Hildred Segreto, bastard of Domos—but don’t call me that. Call me Hildy.” Hil shook his hand.
George grinned as Isahn’s warm laugh rolled through the room.
“Greta will do, or Domina Neninios if you’re feeling fancy.” Greta smiled at the earl, coming over to shake his hand, too, before she sat on the tiles and began to ease herself into the water.
“Please, let me help you.” Elbow crooked, Isahn offered his arm.
Hildy shared a look with George before she dove in a fluid leap, making the tiniest splash as her feet disappeared beneath the surface. When she resurfaced, shaking out her cropped curls, she said, “I’m ready to dampen the mood.”
“Is that so?” George checked, picking up on her direction.
Stepping into her future role as Georgie’s official advisor, Hildy peppered Isahn with questions, making him retell the story of following his uncle north, listening in on the spies, and his abduction—from his perspective.
“Those are my boys,” Hil muttered, shaking her head.
“What are their real names?” Isahn asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Deiwa, Hildy, let him be. They’re Dunstan and Burke.”
“Burke is Odos?” Isahn paddled across the pool, joining her on her side of the square.
“Yes, and Dunstan’s the tall one.”
“Tocco,” Isahn confirmed.
“Back to me ruining the mood,” Hildy called, pulling them from their little moment. “Isahn, what do you know about the King of Domos?”
“I know you’re all trying to take him out.”
Gods, she and her friends talked too much.
“Good ear. And do you know why?”
Isahn shook his head, his sodden waves wiggling over his shoulders.
George sighed and pulled her knees up to her chin, wavering slightly in the water’s push and pull. “Let me explain a few things. We all hate talking about this, so I suppose it’s my royal duty to bring you up to speed.”
Perching on the edge of the bench, his eyes bore into the side of her face. She couldn’t meet his gaze.
Domos’s shame was her shame. She was born to lead these people, expected to maintain the status quo, trained up for it by her father, and disgusted all the while by what her forefathers wrought upon their people.
“First thing you need to know, my father’s a tyrant. Second thing, there are a great many enslaved people in the capital of Domos.”
“Gods,” he groaned.
“My father, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, has kept people trapped there... using magic. They all claimed it keeps Domos’s economy afloat.”