Even my thoughts feel slow, like they’re freezing solid one by one. Freezing me into an ice sculpture of misery.
“By Eryx!”
Yet another of his strange moon invectives. It’s followed by a heavyclunk, then another—what turns out to be the sound of his clothes hitting the stone floor.
He climbs into the bath behind me, displacing the water with two massive splashes.
It’s like sitting in an icy pool that suddenly turns into a hot spring.
His furnace of a body begins to heat the water, but not quite fast enough. On pure instinct, I turn into his warmth and burrow.
I wrap my arms around his broad gray shoulders and my legs around his heavily muscled waist. I press my chest and stomach to the length of his torso, trying to get every cold piece of me touching every weirdly warm piece of him.
Next thing I know, I’m clinging around him like the comically persistent branch bears my father was always spraying out of his rare fruit trees.
But there’s nothing comical about the piece of granite that suddenly presses against the very center of me.
I don’tthinkthat’s his stomach.
And I no longer believe the sculptor exaggerated what he saw.
Silence falls over us.
When the king finally speaks, his voice sounds less like smoke and more like steam… choking out of a machine that’s running low on water.
“You will return to your original position.”
As intimidating as the hard thing between us is, I say, “No. I’ll stay right here where it’s warm, thank you.”
More silence. Thick with tension. The hard length is pulsing now.
“I am required to give you a nightly bath until the time of the ceremony. I cannot…”
He swallows, and I feel the movement against my cheek, which I’ve pressed into his throat.
It takes him several seconds to finish: “…clean you in this position.”
“Clean me,” I repeat. “You mean like a pet?”
“What is a pet?”
“An animal you keep for companionship. The princess—I mean,Ihave a cymurra named Velvet that I like to pamper and spoil. I have my handmaiden feed it a meal worthy of a human before she’s allowed to eat herself.”
“So, this animal serves no other purpose than to keep you in silent company?”
“Yes. And it calms my spirits when I pet it.”
I feel him frown. “Is it at least slaughtered and ground into meat or adhesive once its companionship duties are done?”
“No!” I jerk my head back in horror. “Our beloved pets die of old age or disease!Neverby our hand, unless it’s meant as a mercy. And then they’re placed in the special part of the royal mausoleum where we keep all of our pets. My first cymurra died when I was twelve, and I go to visit it at least once a week to leave flowers on its grave.”
“Flowers like the ones you grew on that bush?”
“Somewhat. We have a designated flower calledwhitespirethat we grow especially to commemorate deaths.”
He tilts his head. “How many of these bushes do you have at your palace?”
“A near acre of them.” I settle back into his chest, laying my head on his shoulder.
