He scrubs at his face like an angry cat.
“You were in here so long,” he says, flinging water onto the floor, “and I called, and I knocked. When you didn’t answer, I assumed you were in danger.”
In danger of what? Drowning in a tub? “I simply did not hear you. My head was under the water.”
“As I saw.” He scowls at me. “What were you doing?”
“I was attempting to relax, Your Majesty.”
“Relax? How can that possibly be relaxing?”
“Well, I simply hold my breath, and—”
“Hold your breath?” He eyes me with suspicion. “I knocked for some time. How long can you hold your breath like that?”
I toss a hand up in aggravation. “A couple of minutes? I don’t know. I haven’t counted in some time.”
“A couple of minutes?” He gapes at me. “Why would anyone want to spend a couple of minutes underwater?”
“It’s soothing.” I look him up and down. “That is when one is not being yanked about by their hair.”
His irritation fizzles out like a doused fire. He glances aside, fixing his gaze on the nearest wall. “I apologize, Princess. I would not have touched you in so coarse a manner had I known where else to take hold.”
Fresh alarm sends heat racing up my face as the full implication of his words strikes me.
He stood over me, and so he saw me completely and utterly naked.
“As it was,” the king continues, “the light is dim, and the water obscured your figure.” His jaw works a moment. “I thought it unwise to reach for you…unguided, even considering my concerns.”
A thread of relief trickles through me. Perhaps he didn’t see. He clears his throat.
“Did I hurt you?”
I glance up at these quieter words from him. “No,” I say. Or rather no more than Hiln did wrenching my hair into this arrangement. It’s been tugging at my scalp all day. “Did…did I hurt you?”
“No.” Still averting his eyes, he cuts a quick bow. “I apologize again, Princess. I’ll leave you now.”
He turns on his heel and stalks out the door, or rather, the opening in the wall.
The door has been ripped away, as if by the jaws of a great beast.
I finish washing, one eye on the mangled doorway all the while.
***
I emerge sometime later clutching my bundled dress in front of me and trying in vain to avoid the king’s notice.
I fail, of course.
He waits in a dark, hulking chair and, to my surprise, he appears to be reading a book. As I creep toward the pillow pallet, his eyes rise over the pages, and when they fall on me, he freezes in place.
“I apologize,” I murmur as he takes in my attire. “I didn’t bring anything else.”
In all my fretting over sharing his chambers, I forgot to ask for a change of clothing. Remembering that he didn’t take anything with him into the bathing chamber, I opened every cabinet and found a pile of outfits similarto his, and discovering the pants to be far too large, that left me the option of swathing myself in towels or wearing a lone shirt. So here I stand in one of the king’s shirts and nothing else.
“We seem to be doing a lot of apologizing this evening,” the king says, his eyes locked onto mine.
“Indeed.”
