I reach for him or for the light or for anything at all.
He does nothing.
The last of my breath escapes in a thin trail of bubbles.
I snap awake.
Air crashes into my lungs. My body jolts upright with a gasp that tears at my throat. I splash water everywhere, stirring waves around me, and only then do I understand. I am in a bath. A deep, steaming bath. Warm water envelopes me, sinking into my frozen bones until my skin flushes a soft pink. Every breath feels like the first breath I have taken in hours.
A fire burns in the large hearth to my left, its glow casting amber pools across the stone floor. A pot hangs above the flame, steam curling upward with the scent of herbs filling the room as it bubbles softly.
It takes another moment for the truth to settle.
This room is untouched by winter.
No frost on the walls. No icy breath slipping beneath the door. No cold clinging to the air or crawling under my skin. Only warmth. Only light. Only the faint fragrance of something earthy and healing.
I sink back against the bath, shuddering as the last memory of the lake dissolves into the steam.
For the first time since entering this cursed palace, I am warm.
But there is no time to enjoy it. A Fae female scurries past the massive copper tub, her arms piled high with towels. She places them on a chair beside me, but when I part my lips to thank her, she darts away in the opposite direction and stirs the broth over the fire. She stays only a moment before she is moving again, this time toward a wardrobe. She throws the door open and rifles through the dresses inside, muttering under her breath.
I lean forward in the tub.“Thank you,” I call.
She does not respond. She does not even look at me.
She seems older, though with the Fae I cannot judge. She looks like she might be in her fifties, which probably means she is thousands of years old. Even so, she is lithe and slender, her hair pale as snow, threaded with silver and braided into a tight coil at the nape of her neck.
Maybe she did not hear me. I draw in a breath to try again, but another voice stops me before I can speak.
“Feeling better?”
My head snaps toward the far corner of the room. In the shadows, one blue eye and one gold eye gleam like twin stars.
It takes a second for the rest of it to register. How low the water sits. How clearly my body must be visible beneath the still surface. Heat floods my face. I drag my arms across my chest and sink lower, slipping until only my head is above the edge of the tub.
“You were just sitting there, watching me?” I snap. My hand flies to my neck, and I feel that someone has knotted my hair into a messy bun on top of my head.
“I am sitting in my castle,” Luceran replies, voice cold enough to frost the air. “And I am looking in a direction where you unfortunately happen to be. The bargain was for a servant. Not a house guest pampered with bubble baths and warm broth.”
I glance down at the water.
“There are no bubbles.”
He almost smirks. “You have been lying in there for quite some time.”
My eyes narrow. “Tell me again how long you have been sitting there?”
His posture shifts at that. He straightens, and the intensity in his gaze sharpens until I wonder if Fae sight can cut through copper.
“You did not answer the question,” he says. At the same moment, a strand of long, ivory hair slips free and falls over his blue eye.
For a moment, I forget the question entirely.
Luceran notices, so he asks again.
“Are you feeling better?”
