Carefully, she poured it along the serration of the cut.
“Not too much. If he’s drunk and injured, he’ll be hell to maintain,” Dunixi chided, his back to the table as he read each and every label on Taillefer’s carefully appointed wall.
“Stay away from there. None of that is ours to use.”
“Come now, Ula. Torture serum could come in handy.”
“I’m afraid for how much you think likehim.”
“It’s not simply how one thinks; it’s how one acts. I’m notthatdisturbed.”
Ula rolled her eyes and caught Luca’s expression—still pained, but his lips turned up at the corners, amused.
Next, she fished around the worktable for something to numb the pain. Anything.
An entire section of storage vessels was devoted to dried herbs, but there were a few vials there, too, with tags, much like the ones on the walls. She rummaged through.
Oils. Basil might work. Thyme too. But then her fingers shook as she came across a label that reminded her of one of her last memories of her father, crushing spices for a proper supper after finally finding work, in the months after their escape.
Clove oil.
Ula bent back over Luca. “For the sting.”
“It’s quaint to call it that.” Despite the pain, he tried to smile, and so she did, too.
She dripped it over his ruined skin. Luca licked his lips and sucked in a deep breath. “Better. Thank you.”
Ula nodded. Then she leaned in, lowering her voice until only Luca could hear it. “We’re going to get you out of here. And we will get your princess. I’ll think of something. I promise.”
CHAPTER
46
THEmaids came in a bustle of warm water and rose petals of the darkest aubergine. They carried grapes and paper-thin cheese, too, arranged on an ornate silver platter suited for the wedding itself. They placed a pitcher of cool water, crushed ice clinking gently against the crystal, on a carved marble table between the tub and a velvet-lined golden chaise.
Like Amarande’s maids at home, these girls expected to stay. To scrub. To dress. To gossip.
The princess was in no mood. She sent them away, not only for a chance at solitude but also because her own suspicions and Renard’s words had sunk in—if Dowager Queen Inés wanted her dead, anyone could be motivated to make the mark. Being alone was best.
“Prepare the wedding dress in the sitting room, please. Use your best judgment as to my size to begin. I trust you will make it fit.”
Honestly, Amarande didn’t care if it did. All the better if they hacked apart too much of Inés’s dress and made a mess of it. She’d proudly wear that to this disaster.
When they were gone, Amarande locked the door, and only then did she finally slip from her clothes. The tunic and breeches she’d stolen from Ula pooled in a cloud of grit on the floor. The pouch of diamonds hit with a thunk and she left them there, under the stinking clothes. However, her boots—and boot knife—she took care to shove far under the bed, not gambling with thesafety of the only things of value she had left. If the knife were confiscated, she’d only have her hands to rely on. If the boots disappeared, so did her ability to run for it in something comfortable. Though she knew how to make do with bare feet as well as she did bare knuckles, she wanted to keep every advantage possible.
The princess lowered herself into the steaming water, her muscles softening on contact. Dirt and grime lifted from her skin, swirling on the surface with the rose petals.
Her stomach growled, and her eyes slid to the platter of plump grapes and delicately sliced cheese. Food only shared in the walls of a palace, not suitable for survival anywhere else in the Sand and Sky. Still, it called to her, hazardous as it could be.
With a similar thought in mind, the princess inspected the soap the maids had left, purple like the rose petals but this time made that way by lavender. It smelled fine, and when she wet it and ran the bar along a hardy patch of skin on her shin, it didn’t burn.
Amarande scrubbed every inch of her body and hair, the stink of her days-long quest gone in mere minutes. But it would never leave her—there was no way to cleanse her heart of the journey. Or of Luca.
For the first time since she laid her father to rest, she was clean and somewhat relaxed, the warmth of the water soothing. The scent of the rose petals heady. Her muscles unwound themselves, knots unspooling, sinew stretching clear. Her heart slowing.
Amarande’s eyelids began to pause with each blink, the mass of what she’d been through weighing them down like the gold pieces that her father had worn in his casket.
She forced them open just long enough to ensure the door was indeed locked. And, satisfied, she let them flutter closed.
