“And you will, right away,after I bathe.”
I am not going to talk to him about whatever it is he wants to talk about in this state. My hair is half-fallen from its bun, half-caked in dirt from my time on the ground, and my clothes are stiff with dried sweat.
Even if it’s just a game that we’re playing in getting to know each other, I am not playing it like this.
The servants have already taken my change of clothes down to the changing rooms, so I finish hanging my pauldrons on their rack and head out the door.
Taran is still waiting there.
“Are you going to oversee my bath?”
Taran blushes a deep red that covers his entire face, neck, and even his ears. I both feel sorry for him and feel validated inmy assertion that this poor, shy man can’t possibly be bad just by virtue of his birth. “No, ma’am. I’ll tell him you’ll meet him straight after.”
“Good man.” It takes him a minute to leave even after saying that he will, and I imagine he’s trying to determine if he’s failing to follow an order of Ronan’s, or if my defiance is something that can’t be helped no matter what Ronan told him to do.
I take my time bathing, not only because the heat of the hot cave feels particularly nice on my sore muscles and bruised back, but because I’m thinking of what Larus said to me about Ronan benefitting from me taking his side.
It’s interesting because it’s well beyond what I had been thinking. It made some sense to me that Ronan might want to keep me close to see what Nithyria was planning and if we had anything to do with the information leak, or to be able to stop me himself if I tried to make a move. I’m the weakest link in our chain, the person with the least experience on and off the battlefield.
But it hadn’t occurred to me that Ronan might think there’s a chance of winning me to his side entirely. We would never try to do the same; we know there’s no chance of making Ronan give up his crown willingly. The very notion is absurd. So wouldn’t he consider trying to win me over equally ridiculous?
Or is he so arrogant that he thinks there’s actually a chance?
I’m still drying my hair with a towel—where’s a wind-born when you need them?—when I hear the same faint tap on the changing room door.
“I’m nearly finished,” I say through the crack as I hold the door ajar. “But I’m hungry. I thought I’d stop by the dining hall—”
“He told me to throw you over my shoulder if I have to, but Imustbring you to him immediately.”
I open the door a bit more to get a better look at him. “Would you throw me over your shoulder?”
He winces. “Please don’t make me.”
So that’s a yes.
I let him squirm for just a minute thinking he might have to, then I toss the towel back inside and follow him up the stairs to Ronan’s quarters.
The door opens before we approach it. Of course it would. He could feel me from down the hall.
“What took you so long?” he says to Taran, and the poor man stammers an apology.
“It’s my fault,” I say, interrupting him. “I dared to insist on bathing before I was granted my royal audience.”
“Come inside,” says Ronan brusquely. I shoot a regretful look at Taran—sorry I got you in trouble—before following Ronan.
We’re back in the sitting room again, but this time, he opens the door at the back and leads me through into his chambers.
The room we enter isn’t what I imagined at all. There’s no bed in it, I notice entirely too quickly, so he must sleep elsewhere. This is a lounge of some kind, a space meant for gathering and relaxing.
There are clusters of chairs and low divans in luxurious velvet fabrics, some of them angled to face each other in conversation like the benches in the receiving room. Shelves reach to the high, vaulted ceiling, filled with books, scrolls, and beautiful objects carved from stone or crafted from silver, all of them worth more than everything I own, I’m certain. On the far wall, curtains of a delicate, gauzy material billow in the cool evening air to either side of a wide archway.
But what catches my eye the most is a desk in the corner with a great map of Selara hung on the wall behind it. The map is filled with pins and markers that must relate to the stacks of paper below somehow, important trade routes or militaryinstallations or maybe just places Ronan likes to visit. The answers must be there, right on that desk.
I could learn so much in this room. And he let me in here willingly. He invited me.
Ronan stops just inside the door and turns to me. He’s wearing a sheer black tunic similar to the robes he wore the first time we met. It’s tight through his shoulders, revealing the tension in the muscles there. His beautiful, flawless face shifts from annoyance to concern and then returns to a careful neutrality. There’s a war happening in his mind as he tries to decide how much to give away. It's a feeling I know well.
His composure falters as he looks at my neck. Someone must have told him about what happened in the arena. Did he send someone to keep an eye on me, or had Zara come straight here after the fight? It’s only been a few hours since then.
