I carried the gown to the full-length mirror, watching my reflection when a knock rasped against the door, a soft, low voice mumbling from behind it. Panic flared. Do I answer? Pretend to be sleeping?
Heat flowed into my bare feet from the stone floor as I crept across it, leaning in as I neared the door, listening for the knock again—
—and smashed my knee straight into a side table. A vase toppled and shattered, porcelain scattering across the floor in a crash that could have woken half the damned palace.
Fuck. So much for pretending.
“Ms. Vale?” The voice was small, mousy. A timid thing that barely crept through. “I’m here to help you prepare for dinner.”
He’d sent me a maid?
I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted or flattered. Did he think I was incapable of dressing myself, or was this some Ryuuan courtesy reserved for honored guests?
My eyes dropped to the tunic clinging to me, tattered, sweat-stained, dirt ground into every seam. The filth beneath my nails, though glamoured, still taunted me. Maybe I needed help after all.
“Ms. Vale?” The voice wavered, and guilt pinched me for leaving her waiting out there while I stood in the wreckage of porcelain shards.
“Yes, um…just a moment!”
I shoved my muddy boots beneath the bed with my heel, restacked the abandoned books on the mantle with too-quick hands, then darted toward the door. Halfway there I froze.
Pants. When the fates did I take off my pants?
A frantic scan of the chamber revealed them draped over a chair by the balcony doors, as if I’d shed them in a haze without remembering. I snatched them, tugging them on while the hue of night teased through the arch, painting the room everything in the same deep blue he’d chosen for me.
It hung waiting, luxurious and severe, in that deep shade that turned my skin luminous. My chest pulled tight. Had he looked at me, really looked, and guessed what color would catch against me like starfall on oil? Or was it a coincidence?
It was just fabric, just a gown. And yet my pulse betrayed me, because it wasn’t just either. Not when Ronan had imagined me in it.
A breeze curled in from the balcony, licking up my bare legs. Oh right, pants.
“Just come in!” I shouted, wrestling with the stubborn leather. My heel caught, my toes flailing, the dried mud stiff in the weave.
The door cracked open and a woman peeked inside. Her hair was pinned back neatly, streaked with a fading shade of violet, purple that once might have been brighter, now muted by time. Warm, brown eyes shot toward me, widening when she found me half hopping, pants snarled around my knees.
I froze, grinned.
She cleared her throat delicately, lowering her stare. “My lady.”
Mm, no. I didn’t like that title. “No—" I dropped the fight with the pants, letting them puddle uselessly around my ankles. “You don’t have to call me that.”
Her lashes fluttered as she nodded, though her eyes still didn’t quite meet mine. Silent, she moved across the chamber until the door to the washroom clicked open. The sound of rushing water filtered out, the air shifting with it into lavender and lemon.
My lungs expanded, pulling the scent deep. It tugged at something buried in me, the taste of my childhood summers, afternoons when citrus clung to my fingers and made the whole world feel a little kinder.
Drawn by the pull of it, my feet followed, and I squealed when I drifted through the doorway. The washroom opened into a sanctuary of stone and steam, and in the middle of it was a tub.
No, not a tub. Apool. Nearly ten feet wide, filled to its shimmering brim with sliced lemons. Their bright flesh glowed beneath the water, and atop them floated mounds of iridescent bubbles, lavender sprigs bobbing lazily in the froth.
“You’re—” The word stuck to my tongue, disbelief and curiosity twined tight.
“Yes,” she said gently, as if bracing. “A nature wielder.”
Her head dipped in a bow just as mine snapped toward her, the suddenness of my stare sending her a step back, shoulders tightening like she expected reprimand.
“I thought only dragons were permitted inside these walls?”
My voice was sharper than I meant, but history had taught me well. Ryuu rarely opened its borders. Its palace even less. You were either born here or bred here. Or unwelcome. That was the law.
