The thought made me smile. She had sent me a basket of fruit and crackers that hadn’t lasted a day between the four of us. She’d also included some oils she said her dancers used tosoothe aching muscles. I had yet to try them, wanting to wait until my skin was clean.
I missed Melaena, despite her apparent role in Garyth’s and Aiden’s schemes. I even missed our rehearsals. I’d started getting better, and the other girls had been a bit friendlier.
I hated to think that progress had been cut short by a Wolf’s blade.
Would Renwell also cut my mission short?
After everything that had happened, everything I’d done, would he pull me out? If he did, I would probably never see Aiden, Maz, Ruru, or Melaena again. Or if I did, it would be under unpleasant circumstances.
A lump formed in my throat.
I slid lower in the water until it closed over my head. Silence and darkness pressed around me like a warm pillow.
My mind conjured the image of a sunstone knife plunging toward my chest.
I jerked upright, gasping for air. My eyes blinked water away as they darted around the shadowy room.
There was no one here. No Wolves. No knives seeking my death.
But then a shadow by the door moved. My heart seized.
“Kiera.”
Chapter 19
Kiera
“Aiden?”I gasped, sinking lower into the water.
“Forgive me for intruding,” he said, his gaze fixed somewhere above my head. “Ruru told me you went for a bath, but you didn’t bring fresh clothes. So, I... I brought you some.” He cleared his throat. “Sophie laundered them.”
I blinked. Why hadn’t he just sent Ruru with them? Holy Four, had he seen me leaving my mark for Renwell?
“How did you know which bathhouse I would be at?” I demanded.
“I tried the one closer to our place first.”
I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “Ruru said this one was bigger.” Which was true.
“Right. Well, then. Where shall I leave your clothes?”
Careful to keep my breasts underwater, I pointed toward my curtained alcove. “There.”
He strode over to it and laid a canvas bag on top of my dirty clothes. “Do you need more soap?” he asked, still averting his eyes. “The attendant wouldn’t let me in without paying for soap and a towel.”
“Yes, thank you.”
He knelt next to the pool and laid the extra towel next to mine. Then he handed me the soap. Our eyes finally met as our fingers touched.
Something burned in the depths of his gaze that stirred a nest of embers in my stomach.
We stayed locked together until the soap slipped from our fingers.
It fell to the floor, too far for me to reach. Ignoring it, and him, I turned away and dug my fingers into my snarled hair to comb it out. The scar on my chest pulled, and the tender spot on my head prickled with pain.
Biting my lip to keep silent, I dropped my hands back into the water.
“Do you need assistance?” His voice was like a deep, sensual song to my ears. Gods help me if he ever did sing as Maz was always trying to get him to do. His voice mesmerized me like it had that first night when he helped me with my boot and checked the bruising on my ribs.
