Page 12

No battles and no running.

Just warmth.

Eventually, I managed to figure out which bottles were meant for washing my hair and spent far longer than necessary working the grime from it. The water around me gradually darkened as layers of dirt, blood, and dust finally disappeared down the drain. Then I filled the bath a second time and let myself soak some more, now that the water was clean again.

By the time I finished, I almost felt human again.

Leaning back against the smooth stone, I let my head rest against the edge of the bath and turned my attention towards the enormous window overlooking the mountains beyond the city.

The view was breathtaking.

Snow-capped peaks stretched across the horizon beneath a sky painted in fading shades of gold and violet, while dense forests blanketed the valleys below in rich greens untouched by war. Waterfalls glimmered like silver ribbons in the distance, catching the last of the evening light as they tumbled down the mountainsides. From here, high above the city and far removed from the battlefield, it was almost impossible to believe that thousands of people had been fighting for their lives only hours earlier.

There was no darkness, no screaming, and no blood. Nothing to suggest that an entire kingdom had stood on the brink of destruction.

The warmth soaked into aching muscles while my thoughts drifted to everything waiting for me beyond the safety of these walls.

To Lazaros.

To Atlas.

To the conversation neither of us could avoid much longer, and a knot tightened in my stomach. I hoped Lazaros was alright, though I wasn’t entirely sure what alright even looked like anymore. How did anyone recover from discovering they had unknowingly helped destroy their own kingdom? How did someone carry the weight of that and continue moving forward?

Then again, I wasn’t sure I was the right person to ask.

My gaze drifted towards the fading cut reflected in the mirror across the room.

No matter how many people tried to reassure me, which I knew was going to happen once I left this bathroom, I wasn’t sure I would ever stop wondering whether there had been another way.

Whether I could have saved more people.

Whether I should have done something differently.

Eventually, we were going to have to talk about Demetrios. About the visions. About everything I had learned.

I closed my eyes briefly, wondering exactly how I was supposed to explain that I believed his greatest enemy was actually an unknown brother?

The situation sounded ridiculous even inside my head, yet every instinct I possessed told me it was true. The visions had never shown me something meaningless. Which meant eventually I was going to have to tell him.

The only question was how.

A soft knock against the door broke me from my thoughts.

“My lady?” Lia’s voice carried through the room.

Reluctantly, I climbed from the bath and wrapped one of the impossibly soft towels around me.

“Come in,” I said before the door opened carefully.

“The king is waiting for you.”

My stomach immediately performed an impressive acrobatic routine.

Of course he was.

After everything that had happened, there was only so long either of us could avoid the conversation waiting between us.

Which meant that a short while later, feeling considerably more human than I had an hour earlier, I found myself standing in front of the wardrobe trying to decide which of the countless gowns looked least likely to draw attention to the fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Or that I was clearly an outsider and didn’t belong here.