“Look at me.”
I didn’t. “Look at yourself.”
“Guinevere, I can make life very difficult for you.”
“Says the man who ordered a hot bath to be drawn for me.”
“Only because I knew you’d stink to high hell, and that was the last offense I wanted to deal with.”
The steam lifted around me, and I figured he had to have a point there. I’d been stuck inside that dungeon for days, and I had to have stunk. Well, let him fucking deal with it, the bastard. I stared at the far wall and said nothing.
Arthur leaned closer: close enough that from my peripheral vision, I could see the dragon tattoo where his collar fell open. The black ink curled along the base of his throat, disappearing beneath the fabric.
“You’ll listen carefully,” he said. “Because I’ll only explain this once.”
He reached for the soap on the tray beside the tub. It was real soap, the mulled kind, expensive. He lathered it between his palms without ceremony and, shifting my hair aside, brought it to the back of my neck.
At the feel of his hands on me, I went rigid. Shock that he was touching me, bathing me, arose from somewhere, but I buried it beneath my own contempt for him.
“Your life is completely in my hands now. You’re my prisoner, which means every thought in your head... I own them. Every word you speak... I’ve already approved them. You’ll eat when I say, sleep when I say, and speak when I give you leave to do so.” He gathered my hair, and reaching for a ceramic jug just beside me, he lifted it and poured the water over my hair slowly, letting it run down my back before he began lathering it up from roots to ends. “Displease me, and I can have you executed, or I can simply leave you in that cell until you go mad. I can do whatever I fucking want with you because you’re mine; I own you.”
When he finished with my hair, his hands moved in slow circles across my shoulders. “You’ll contact Merlin when I tellyou to do so, and you’ll smile while you do it. You’ll make him believe every fucking word you say.”
I didn’t say anything mainly because I didn’t possess the energy. After being alone, hungry, and freezing for days on end, all I could think about was the heat of the water and the feel of his fingers on my skin, even if I didn’t want to think about that last thing.
“You won’t deviate from what I tell you. Not in word and not in expression. You’ll perform exactly the role I’ve created for you, and I’ll decide whether you’ve earned the right to keep breathing.”
Then he was quiet. Just his hands working out days of filth with a thoroughness that might have felt like care in any other context. In this one, though, it felt like being polished, prepared. Like the silverware before a feast.
He took my left arm and began running the soap down it, the dirty water dripping onto the floor. His hands were enormous, careful, and methodical. He worked up to my shoulder, set that arm down, and took the other.
“Whatever loyalty you had to Merlin before you walked into my dungeon is now gone. It doesn’t exist. There’s only Camelot now.”
He pushed me forward and began washing my back, coaxing the soap from beneath my shoulder blades down to where the water enveloped the lowest reaches of my back.
“Stand.”
I did, and then I felt him sudsing my ass. After a second or so, he began working each of his hands down the backs of my legs. Even though he was touching my naked body, there was such rigidity to his movements that I could say with full certainty that he wasn’t in the least bit aroused.
“What is more: you’ll address me properly.” He moved around the tub until he was standing in front of me. “Put yourleg on the lip of the tub.” I did as he instructed, and he began sudsing up one leg and then followed with the other.
“Sit,” he instructed when he’d finished washing me. “Every person in Camelot speaks to me with deference. Every knight, every lord, every servant who carries my chamber pot. You’ll be no different.”
The fire popped behind him, and I noticed how his eyes were that particular shade of blue that didn’t soften in the firelight the way most colors did. If anything, the warmth made them colder.
“I am the King of Camelot.” Each word landed separately, measured. “Every soul within these walls exists in relation to me. Their safety, their continued heartbeat; all of it flows from this crown.” He tapped his temple once, where the silver threaded through the dark gold. “That includes you.Especiallyyou.”
Steam rose between us, and his hands were in my hair again, presumably for round two of the soap.
“I’m the most important man in your world now. Theonlyman in your world.”
At that, my anger finally got the best of me, and in response, I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder. “Is it customary forthe most important man in the worldto bathe his prisoner?”
His hands stopped.
The silence was absolute, and I felt his stillness behind me like a held blade. And then suddenly the bath tipped over in one motion. The copper rim caught my shoulder on the way down, and then I was splayed on the stone floor with a wave of hot, soapy water spreading out around me in every direction. My palms hit the floor hard; my knees hit even harder.
I stayed there for a moment on all fours, dripping, the breath knocked clean out of me before his boots stepped into my periphery.
