I tried to hide my disappointment, but I was too tired. It was all over my face, and all three of them saw it.
“Fine. I need a bath and sleep.” I took the bag and headed down the hall to another set of stairs.
“Kimber, we have to figure out—”
I spun and stared at them. “We’ll figure out who gets to fuck me later, okay? I don’t feel like having that discussion right now in the hallway.”
No one moved.
I marched down the hall, away from everyone.
If they were moving me, I needed alone time. I needed a bath, and I needed sleep. I didn’t care if the sun was coming up. I had been up all night, been betrayed, and watched four men beheaded.
That was enoughbe-ing for the day.
Pushing the door open on my new apartments, one of the housemaids—Roisin—was just scurrying out of the bedroom.
“Your grace, hello. I have the bed all made up, and the bath was just drawn.” She smiled. “May I help you with anything else? Your bag, perhaps?”
“No, Roisin, thank you. You’ve exactly covered the bases I needed. If you could put in a request for a late lunch with the kitchen, you can have the morning.”
She curtsied with a smile and hurried out.
Tossing the bag on the chair in the bedroom, I headed straight for the bath and stripped out of the filthy riding clothes I’d been in for too long.
I almost wanted to dive headfirst into the milky white bathwater that had rose petals floating on it. Instead, I lowered myself into the deep, claw-footed tub, and sank down until the water was at my chin.
I couldn’t feel the tears on my face for the warm bathwater.
None of this was how I had imagined life.
I wasn’t even sure what I wanted anymore.
The betrayal of a man I thought—no, I did love, was killing me.
I had known him since I was a child. I had always been around him. How could I have not known his true feelings?
It meant that his whole existence in my life was a lie.
He had never approved of me being an acolyte or teaching at the temple. All of his support and encouragement were pretty lies.
I was nothing to him except a means to an end and a place to dump his cum when he felt like it.
And withhold it when he needed to.
I sank deeper into the bath. I let the water cover everything but my nose and mouth. I could hear nothing but my own breathing in the water.
Without the sounds of the outside world, I could work on controlling my breathing and my runaway thoughts.
The gentle scent of roses drifted through the air and to my mind. They were comforting. Sweet. They reminded me of my mother’s garden in our little backyard.
The air would smell of flowers always. The spring was the most fragrant, with the scent changing every week or so. By early summer, though, the shifting fragrances were gone, and only one lovely scent remained.
Summer roses.
My parents were nearly six hundred when they decided to have a child. They were unsure and had kept putting it off.
Immortality had its advantages.
