The rattling persisted. “Esioul,” he tried again, flinging her soiled gown onto the bench, most likely realising it was still clasped in his hands.
“Eh?” She turned, back rounded like a hissing cat, a bottle clutched in the hand attached to the arm that still worked. Her hair stood in wild disarray, so different from the last time I’d seen it—a prickle bush in a goat-less field.
“They will not sprout legs and flee,” he reassured, gesturing for her to set it down. My eyes fixed on the fall of his veil, where his mouth must have been, uncertain why his voice was softer than I had ever heard it. “Choose one in a moment and listen to what I am about to tell you.” He folded his arms across his chest, helm lifting, and waited for Esioul to relinquish her oils.
One eye wary, she lowered the bottle to the bench, making no attempt to cover herself while she stood as straight and tall as her injuries allowed.
“Half a turn to get clean,” he instructed, tone stripped of inflection. “New garments will await you once you are finished. A sister will be instructed to collect you and guide you to your resting chambers for the night.” His helm shifted to me, and Imet it. “There are paxiams stationed at the entry, so stay in the baths. Do not attempt to leave. For the consequences, should you try, will be most undesirable.”
With a pointed tilt of his helm, he edged towards the corridor from which he’d guided us down.
“You’re not staying, then?” A wash of cool relief finally tempered the heat in my cheeks. No one but Demetri had ever seen me even partially exposed, and I had never used a thermae—women were only ever permitted to go every third day before sunrise, but I’d never joined my mother, preferring our small tub instead. It seemed a menial thing, having stared death in the face, to care…but I could not ignore that uneasy twang in my chest at the thought of baring all for a druid.
He paused his exit, halting beside me. A brush of cold metal dusted over my clavicle, the druid’s dark mass leaning over me. “No, laurel. I will not be escorting you to your bath. Why…did you want me to?”
I huffed, spinning to sit on one of the benches and peeled off my slippers. A ring of dirt, ash, and crusted blood tide-marked my ankle, a map of all I had endured in the last day. I could endure the taunts of a druid, too.
“I will be seeing you in the ‘morrow, before the sun rises. Be ready.” Metal clanked as he made to leave.
“Catch.” A glass bottle hurtled towards me, and I missed, the base striking me between the swell of my breasts to land in my lap. “That one should be strong enough to wash off the stench. I’d recommend lye, but it would strip the skin, and we need to keep that curious blood of yours securely inside you…for now.” With a swish of his red cloak, he was gone.
***
Cupping my breasts, I descended into the main rectangular pool at the thermae’s centre, only releasing them once I was submerged, conscious even of Esioul’s disinterested eyes. Gods, it was warm, deliciously so, and achingly familiar, so like the all-encompassing sensation that had washed through me on the dais, and the scaffold. I exhaled as muscles I hadn’t even known were tensed slowly relaxed, coaxed by the heat.
Esioul claimed a smaller bath as her own, stretched out and starfished on her back, her bruised body looking so much like a corpse that I found myself checking the rise and fall of her torso, counting each inhale and breath. Drifting round and round, she allowed the water to guide her where it wished, tendrils of grey invading its surface as the ash shed from her hair and skin.
The air hung with something rotten, akin to stale eggs, masked under the burning rosemary. Falstaff had bathed here—they all had; every druid in the templum. I shuddered, despite the heat. Perhaps their taint of whatever it was that led them to serve a god so cruel infused the water, just like our ash.
I lay on my back, eyes upturned to the tiled ceiling, trying to tame the one muscle that had not yet calmed: my heart. It thundered in my ears, competing with the slosh of water.
Demetri was alive.
The Blood Tree had burned to nothing.
My blood was to be tested.
The Butcher…he was not what he presented to be.
Demetri was alive.
It was a surprise I wasn’t at the bottom of the pool, pinned under the weight of these new truths, each of them boulders tied to my ankles, dragging me under. I counted the boons, holding my injured hand over where the beating was strongest. The warm flower in my chest had well and truly wilted, and though a small, foolish morsel of hope at Demetri’s endurance eased my nauseous stomach, there was an almighty cavern within me, too.Bandaging one arm round my waist, I kept it out of the water, as instructed, using it to cover my breasts, pressing down hard as if it might hold me together.
One arm fanning over the water, I rotated, swirling in a loose circle. Had the Butcher swum in this bath, just as I was doing now? Alone?Naked?
I huffed a breath, doing everything I could to avoid remembering the curious sensation of his wet tongue tracing my palm. He was a druid; he was responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. A cup of water, a healing hand, and a bath would not erase that ledger, and it would be wise not to forget it. Lifting my hand, I examined the neat stitch. The gash was no more than a faint pink line beneath the threading, the skin already fused and sealed, though it should be impossible.
Sweeping my legs beneath me, I found purchase on the tile and stood, knees bent so my shoulders remained submerged in the warmth. Esioul had done the same. The dark mass of her hair floated behind her like an oil slick, staining the pale blue water of the circular pool she occupied. She was still, eye honed on something behind me.
Her gaze was loaded, something purposeful in the way she stared.
Him.
She stared atHim, a marble statue etched in the likeness of the Blood God, carved into an alcove at the far end of the baths. As ever, His eyes were veiled, but this one’s hood was tilted upward, the chiselled fabric outlining an upturned nose, as if He were trying to peer down into the baths, to pass silent judgement, or perhaps to indulge in the very sins He demanded we bleed for.
“Odi te. Skybalon ei. Velim se pathein apeira. Odi te.” The sound of Esioul’s voice mingled with the steam on the ceiling, a storm cloud gathering over us. Words hoarse, her throat likelyparched, they were somehow steady and unwavering, flung at the statue that watched us both.
“Odi te. Odi te. Odi te!” Rising to stand to her full height, water sloshed off her body, hair clinging to her like a second skin and embalming her in shadow.
