But her head was aching. Her brain itself felt sore, too stretched to be of much good. Thankfully, there were few things as strangely clarifying as an argument with Mila Rostova.
“I’m not saying you can’t do it,” Mila was saying as Lucy swung open the bathroom door. “I’m just saying that you’re cutting it close.”
“I’m not cutting it that close,” Lucy said. “It’s not even sunset. It’s barely pre-sunset.”
“Maybe,” Mila said. “But we can’t be completely sure what Vanya’s timing is. Like, does he need to wait until the last rays of light have left the sky, or can he start to move when it gets even a little bit dark?”
Lucy was going to take Mila by her beautiful shoulders and shake her. “I will be done well before it starts to get dark at all,” she said. “It’s a shower. I’ll be quick.”
“I don’t understand why it’s desperately urgent for you to wash your hair,” Mila said.
“Because Ineedto wash my hair,” Lucy said. “After the day I’ve had, I deserve to wash my hair. Would you like me to tell you about the day I’ve had again?”
Mila looked appallingly unmoved. Maybe it was because Lucy could only tell Mila about roughly half of the day she’d had. She had to excise any parts about Laurentius’s offer. But even leaving all that out, she’d been through more than enough to warrant the hottest shower known to man. She had fully sweated through her pajamas tossing and turning the night before. She had barely managed to take three bites of even the rarest meat they were able to find in the dining hall. And she still hadn’t heard from Natalie.
Mila raked her hands through her hair. “Okay, okay, fine. Stop looking at me like that,” she said. “But I have a safeguard in mind. It’s just not going to be very comfortable.”
“I’m okay with that,” Lucy said. What had been comfortable about the past week? “I feel like dirty laundry. I probablylooklike dirty laundry. I’ll do anything.”
“You do not look like dirty laundry,” Mila said.
“Next to you I do,” Lucy said. “Everyone’s probably looking at us like, what is that beautiful Amazonian goddess doing with that sentient dumpster?”
Mila didn’t laugh. Which seemed fair enough to Lucy, at first—her sense of humor was among the many things that had suffered over the past week. But just as she was going to ask about this uncomfortable safeguard, Mila said, “Beautiful Amazonian goddess?”
“Well…yeah?” Lucy said. “Sorry. I could probably come up with a better descriptor if my hair was clean. About that safeguard—”
“Why would you say that?” Mila blurted out.
Lucy reeled back. She read Mila’s tone as anger, at first. But as they locked eyes, she recognized the look on Mila’s face. Total bafflement.
“No,” Mila added quickly. “Sorry. You need to shower.”
“Well, no. Now I have follow-up questions,” Lucy said, against her better judgment. “Are you actually embarrassed that I’m calling you beautiful?”
“I’m not embarrassed,” Mila said, which was a bold thing to say when she’d gone so uncharacteristically pink. “I’m just—surprised.”
“Surprised?” Lucy felt like she was having a stroke. “I thought I was being obvious.”
“Obvious when?” Mila said helplessly. “We’ve known each other for a week. You’ve been mad at me for half of it.”
“When we first met,” Lucy said, as if she could somehow jog Mila’s memory. “I blatantly hit on you.”
Mila looked at her like she was speaking French. “You were traumatized.”
“I was traumatized,” Lucy agreed. She could hear a warmth in her own voice that she would have thought she was too tired for. “And I was also hitting on you.”
Mila looked so utterly lost that it was Lucy’s turn to go pink. She’d been so humiliated that night, when Mila had stepped out from behind the chapel. So sure that she’d made a complete fool of herself, making eyes at someone who was eventually going to have to kill her. And now it seemed as if Mila just…hadn’t noticed?
She needed to mercy-kill this conversation. Before they both dug themselves into respectively deeper holes. “I should, um, shower. What’s this safeguard?”
“Right. Fuck. We’re wasting time.” Mila whipped out a pair of handcuffs from behind her back.
“Mila!”Lucy said.
“I told you it would be uncomfortable!” Mila said. “But if I’m going to leave you alone next to a window, we should restrain you with something stronger than cloth.”
“Okay, sure! Understandable!” Lucy said. “But you couldn’t whip out the handcuffs before I started calling you beautiful?”
