Page 92

Atticus

They didn’t return Orpheus to his cell. Atticus led him down a hallway that seemed to be made of wood rather than stone, the clean scent of soap heavy in the air. His crutch thumped dully, old planks creaking with his weight, sinking with every step as if suspended above an empty void. The rain had brought with it a humidity Orpheus expected to follow him into Sanctuary’s spires, but not like this—not mixed with a warmth that felt intentional.

Wherever Atticus led him now was different, and Orpheus didn’t know if that was something to note or something to fear.

Ahead, a door groaned on hinges that sounded older than time, revealing a room that smelled of lavender and rose, and he wondered what that meant.

“Come now, let’s get this off.”

Light flooded his eyes, moist air his lungs. Orpheus blinked through the sparks and what greeted him would have made his knees weak if they weren’t already.

“What is this?”

“A private place to talk.” Atticus gave him a flat look. “You could also call it your reward.”

A bathhouse waited before him. Wide wood planks framed a modest sized room, clear, dark water filling what appeared to be a stone basin set into the center of the floor. Sinks lined the walls, little stools with baskets of ladles and scrub brushes and a cake of soap set in cracked porcelain trays beside each. Where steam curled up from the basin, little glass baubles hung, catching the light from the portrait window that looked out over the first living orchard Orpheus had seen within Sanctuary’s walls.

Gnarled fruitless branches swayed in the rain, rooftops steepling the horizon while the storm outside lit the clouds with lightning, but here, inside the bath, he could only hear the thunder of his heartbeat.

All hells, a bath. Was Atticus offering him a bath?

…What in all hells was the catch?

“I didn’t ask for this,” he whispered.

“And yet, here you are. Consider this a communal gift we all benefit from.”

Orpheus laughed, or at least he tried to. The sound came out raw, a little wrecked. The events of the day caught up so that, when Atticus stepped up close and removed the collar from his throat, he nearly crumbled to his knees.

His secret, exposed—by none other than him.

“Aren’t you going to kill me? Now that you know?”

Atticus’ jaw worked. “You were never actually meant to die, my unfortunate mage. Though this does complicate things for me.”

“What does that mean?”

That grim expression from the wall was back, Atticus’ eyes lingering on him before he closed them and sighed. “First, we bathe, then I’ll tell you something of my own secret.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll hurt you?”

Atticus scoffed. “Without your magic and sporting a broken leg? I’m not that old a man, thank you very much.”

As if in demonstration, Atticus shucked his coat and hung it off a nearby hook. The broadness of his shoulders was not a tailoring trick, his shirt stretched across muscles honed by years of intention, a robustness notably absent from the rest of Sanctuary—a healthiness matched only by Gwen.

They were both important. Important enough to allocate sparse resources to, like Sanctuary’s limited food supply.

“Wash first, then bathe.”

He’d never bathed with anyone but Fenrir before but he’d read about many cultures where community baths were the norm. This didn’t look like a communal bath. This looked like a private bath fit for an emperor, well-used by the state of the caked soap and the light spots where the floor’s varnish had been stripped away. But weeks without so much as a hairbrush had left him desperate, he wasn’t going to turn down a bath in Atticus’ private chambers without a very specific reason to.

“You followed through,” Atticus eventually said when Orpheus lowered down to a stool. “In all honesty, I didn’t expect you to.”

Orpheus plucked up a cake of soap that smelled of honey. “Because you kidnapped me and then threw me in a cell without daylight after keeping me in a cage for weeks?”

“Make no mistake, I didn’t say I like you.”

Orpheus snorted, dropping the cake and then hunching over his lap.