“Hungry,” I said, my face burning.
“You’ve been burning through everything your body has,” Malric said. His voice was closer than I expected, still rough at the edges. “You need to eat.”
He sat up. As he moved, I heard his boots on the stone. His departure from the room left an emptiness. Thane didn’t move, but his arm around me loosened enough to tell me I could if I wanted to.
I didn’t want to yet.
I lay there and breathed and took stock of myself. My limbs were heavy in a way that was pleasant rather than worrying—thehollow exhaustion after my father’s visits was nothing like this. That had been a taking without permission. This was pleasure.
My body felt settled and was mine once more. That was the strangest part. It felt like it belonged to another person for hours—uncomfortably warm, overly conscious, processing everything with a haste that ignored my own inclinations.
“How do you feel?” Thane asked.
“Strange. Better.”
“Strange how?”
I considered. “Quieter. Inside.”
He made a sound of understanding and pressed his mouth briefly to my shoulder. “The spike broke. That’s what that is.”
“It’ll come back.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t try to soften that, and I appreciated it more than I would have appreciated a reassurance. I’d had enough comfortable lies to last me a lifetime.
Malric returned before I’d worked up to sitting. I heard the familiar sound of dishes on the low table, the ceramic knock of a water jug being set down, and then he was back in the doorway of the nest.
“Bath first,” he said. “Then food.”
The bathing chamber was warm, which didn’t surprise me. The tower had always managed that regardless of season, always had the water at the right temperature before I’d finished crossing the room. What surprised me was that all three of us fit. The tub was large—I’d never had reason to notice how large; it had always just been mine—but standing at the edge of it now with two grown men behind me, it was clear the tower was preparing for a different future, one where I wasn’t alone.
I averted my gaze as Thane stripped and went in first, though I slid a sideways glance to see sleek muscle and an impressive member bobbing between his legs. He dropped into the waterwith the ease of someone entirely comfortable in his own skin, then leaned against the curved stone side with his arms along the rim. Malric waited a long moment, smirking as he watched me sneak looks at Thane. He stripped more slowly, ensuring I had a full view of his broader frame. He cupped himself and gave himself a hard stroke, as if daring me to look. He then took the opposite end, his expression wicked. Face burning, I stepped in between them and sank beneath the surface and let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for days.
The heat of the water moved into my muscles and loosened things that hadn’t been loose since before any of this started. I sat for a moment with my eyes closed and just existed inside the warmth of it.
Thane’s hands found my shoulders.
He wasn’t asking anything. His thumbs pressed into the muscles on either side of my spine and worked at them with steady, unhurried pressure, and the knots that lived there began to yield. My head fell forward and I moaned with pure pleasure.
“Here.” Malric’s voice, closer than I expected.
I opened my eyes. He was holding a piece of bread slathered with honey butter, torn from the loaf he’d brought from the dining table, and he was looking at me with a softness I didn’t expect to see. Not on Malric.
I reached for it and he moved it slightly, not handing it over but holding it out in a way that was clearly an offer to put it directly in my hand or?—
“I’m capable of feeding myself,” I said, a little crossly.
“I know you are.”
He waited.
I didn’t entirely understand what was happening, but something about his patience made me stay still instead of taking it from him. He pressed the bread to my lips and I chewed. I felt absurdly taken care of, pampered even, in a way Ihad not felt in many years. He tore another piece and held out a slice of the soft cheese he’d brought alongside it. I ate from his hand and Thane’s hands worked down my spine. The warm water held all of us, and something in my chest did something complicated.
My mother had done this.
The memory arrived without warning—her hands in my bathwater, her voice telling me to hold still, the small domestic authority of a woman who had known exactly how to take care of someone. I’d been very young. I hadn’t thought about it in years, or perhaps hadn’t been allowed to, the memory worn smooth by time and isolation and whatever my father had done to the edges of things I wasn’t supposed to keep.
