Page 40 of Bride of Ash & Dust

I stare at him just long enough for him to read the you’re an idiot message I’m sending with my eyes, and then I stand up.

“Stay there,” I say.

I grab the candle and turn toward the bathing room without looking back to see if he’s followed my instructions. Most of my crates from Marion have been delivered, but I haven’t finished unpacking them. I expected to have less space but more storage in this strange place. Yes, the windows are lovely, and the bath is massive, but where are the shelves?

Maybe princesses in Vsenrog don’t own things. The thought makes me shiver. I try to ignore it as I pull a roll of bandages out of a crate and a tin of ointment out of a drawer in my little dressing table.

Zarek hasn’t moved when I walk back to the bedroom, the ointment in one hand and the bandages tucked under my arm. Or, no, he’s shifted a bit further onto the bed. And he’s holding a pillow in his lap. I set the candle on the table, frown at the cut on his upper thigh, and try not to think about the pillow.

“You didn’t even bandage it,” I say.

He makes a sound in the back of his throat like he’s trying to argue with me, but he can’t think of anything to actually say. I shake my head.

“I thought you were clever,” I mutter under my breath.

He opens his mouth, then hisses when I touch his skin. The area around the cut is warm and red, which isn’t a good sign, but it’s not as bad as I feared. I pull the lid off the tin, then dip my fingers into the cold goo inside.

Zarek sucks in a breath when I bring my fingers to the cut. I ignore him. His hands tighten around the pillow shoved between his legs, and gods, I try to ignore that too. I dip my fingers into the ointment once more, then spread another layer on the sides of the cut.

I’m so close to the edge of that pillow.

I could slip my fingers up his thigh, feel the rasp of fabric on the back of my hand, and reach for the hard press of what I saw on our wedding night.

My hand shakes. I pull away and sink my teeth into my lower lip as my heart races. Zarek said there is no such thing as the stopping point, that men can stop anytime they want no matter how hard they get.

Why in the gods’ many names do I want to push him and find out?

I step back, then grab the roll of bandages in both hands.

“Do I even want to know,” Zarek says, looking up at me, “why my wife has a roll of bandages in our bedroom?”

“It’s for horses,” I admit.

“You thought Vsenrog didn’t have horse bandages?”

I frown. “It’s my recipe,” I confess in a low voice. “The ointment, I mean. I mix it myself.”

My cheeks burn. This feels almost as bad as Zarek discovering Blayne with his pants down in our bedroom. If my father ever found out I was dirtying my hands with healing ointments, he’d be furious, and I probably wouldn’t be able to sit down for weeks.

But what was it Zarek said? I’m going to be clear with you? I guess that cuts both ways, now.

Zarek laughs, low and in the back of his throat.

“I thought you just killed the horses that got hurt,” he says with a grin that makes me think he’s teasing me.

“Then it’s a good thing you didn’t break your leg,” I reply as I stretch the gauze over his skin.

I glance up at him, ready to meet his teasing eyes with a frown. But his expression has changed. Now, he’s looking at me in a way that makes me think of our wedding, the heat and the overly sweet perfume, the crush of his hands against mine as red silk tightened around our wrists.

I turn away. My heart feels like it’s trying to climb the back of my throat, and my hands tremble as I run the roll of bandages below his leg.

“You should have taken care of this much earlier,” I say.

He snorts. “Well, it’s not like I could run to the nearest healer, is it? How was I going to explain this?”

He waves his hand over his thigh. I don’t dare meet his eyes as I finish tucking the loose end of the bandage below the wrap. I step back, then wipe my hands.

“You should change it every night,” I say. “I mean, you should let me change it every night.”