We both laugh, and then his eyelids lower—and I know that he’s no longer thinking about travel or fishing or eight-legged bugs… and I have a renewed sense of energy. Except when I go to take a step forward, I see a web on my slipper and curse in disgust.
Merc chuckles softly. “Just so we’re clear, I’d take you any way you come, woman. But the water closet you’ll be looking for is right back there. I took advantage of it myself in the hopes you’d come and find me in this big bed—and look, it worked. That basin is magic.”
“Can we take it with us then,” I mutter.
“Only if we put Snooze in it to make better time.”
I’m smiling as I go over and kiss him. “I won’t be long.”
His face grows grim. “Don’t rush. I do believe you have earned it.”
I press another lingering kiss to his mouth, then I cross the beautiful carpet. As I pass by a dresser made from exotic wood, and check out the lineup of porcelain figures and silver brushes on its top, the luxury is such that never have I even imagined such things.
Mare likely lived like this at one point, I think as I disappear behind an ornate door.
After I shut myself in, I remember the coins I left behind in the ruins, and wish I could have retrieved them. Getting out with someone else’s priceless ruby was the plan, but as this quest seems to always demand, I have to leave a piece of me behind.
Refocusing, I look around at the facilities. They’re even more sophisticated than what we had back at the lodging house at the Outpost, and as I set the tub’s water to running, I’m astonished to find I can titrate the hot with the cold. While the level rises, I remove my clothes, and when I step in and sink into the warm pool—
I start to weep.
It’s impossible to define the precise emotions, the complex mix of gratitude and pain too much for me to understand—or control. Covering my face with my hands, I try to muffle the sounds as flashbacks from the goddess’s sculpture twist my head and memories of the officer in the cell freeze my bones—
“Sorrel.”
At my name, I drop my palms. Merc is kneeling by the tub, his beautiful black and white eyes searching my own.
“It’s all right now,” he says softly. “Whatever you see in your mind, that’s the past. You’ve lived through it. You must let it go.”
He brings a soft cloth into the warm water, and then he wipes my face gently. “Remember what I told you. Always forward… never back.”
“Sometimes I can’t help it.” I wipe my eyes and wonder if they’ll ever stop with the leaking. “The images come and I’m back where I was—and it’s never good.”
“You will train your thoughts away from all that just as you’d learn any other skill. With practice.”
I reach out and take his hand. “Will you tell me something you run from?”
Merc strokes my face, and lingers with his thumb brushing my lips. Then he looks away with a defeat that is wholly inconsistent with all that I know of him.
“I don’t run from what ails me,” he says in a low voice. “Wherever I go… there I am.”
Eighty-FiveReunion.
Merc stays beside me while I have my bath, stroking the warm, dripping cloth over my hair, over my freckled shoulders, over my arms, and eventually, my tears ease. With the crying passed, I lean against the side of the basin, and rest my cheek on the curved lip. On the inside, I continue to weep, but I keep that to myself.
I just feel so powerless.
“Would you like me to wash your hair?” he asks me.
When I nod with gratitude, he retrieves a bar of fragrant soap from a small dish. It’s what he smells of, and he puts aside the cloth and lathers up his hands.
“Tip back for me,” he says. “So that all is wet.”
I’m grateful for the job, and focus my thoughts on getting my head all the way under the water. As the level goes over my face, I hold my breath and look up through the wavy pool of warmth at the black-haired man who looms over me.
If I saw the shape of him like this and did not know him, I’d swear he’d been sent to kill me. Instead, I have a sense of security and safety. He’s already proven all that he’s willing to do for me.
And I’ve done the same for him.
