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“Ophelia Harrow.”

In a blink, his gloves are on the counter and both his bare hands are in the bucket, closing around my wrists beneath the water. The brush knocks against the side and slips from my fingers, disappearing into the grey suds while he holds me there.

“You are stripping your own skin,” he murmurs near my ear. “Cease.”

“Let go of me.”

Water sloshes over the rim as I yank against him, his thumbs settling firmly over my wrists, his chest pressed into my back.

“Ophelia.”

“I. Said. Let. Go.”

He releases me at once. I wrench myself around in the cramped space between him and the counter, but the sudden twist sends vicious agony blazing through my thigh. My leg gives beneath me, an embarrassing noise tearing free from my throat as the floor rushes up to meet me⁠—

An arm catches my waist, and before I can so much as breathe, I’m lifted back and up, the jars of dried herbs rattling as I’m set down on the counter, my damp skirts bunching beneath my thighs.

One hand remains firm at my waist while the other braces against the counter beside me. His cloak brushes my shins as he steps in closer, and I have to tip my head back just to find those amber lenses in the gloom.

“Have you finished behaving like a lunatic?”

My brows shoot up. “I beg your⁠—”

“Scouring the flesh from your bones will not rid you of what is happening in this village.”

I look down at my hands, red and raw, water still slipping from my fingertips and gathering on the wood beneath them. “I can still smell it,” I whisper.

His thumb moves, tracing a small, idle circle against my waist. “I know.”

My eyes well up, and I duck my head, trying to tuck my face into the loose strands of my hair, but Iscairn’s free hand comes up between us and his fingers find the damp line of my jaw, gently turning me back towards him. Another tear gathers before I can blink it away, and his thumb catches it halfway down my cheek.

He bends closer, the long bone beak brushing the skin beneath my ear. Gooseflesh races over me, and I suck in a deep breath, drowning the stink of bodies beneath the scent of earth and rain clinging to him.

“You are alive, Ophelia. You do not smell of the pit, nor of the bodies in it. You smell of yarrow and mint. You smell of life.” His other hand moves lower, following the curve of my hip until his fingers rest at the hem of my skirt. “Let me do this for you. Let me take the ache away, if only for a little while.”

My heart thumps wildly, and my knees pull in on instinct to try and guard myself, but with him already standing between them, all it does is bring him closer.

“Don’t—” The word cracks in my throat. “Don’t. Please. It’s—it’s ugly. The scarring…”

His thumb keeps tracing that slow, idle circle against my waist, warm even through the damp wool of my skirts. The shop is quiet except for the drip of water from my hands onto the counter and the soft creak of his boots as he shifts closer.

“I will not look,” he murmurs. “I give you my word, Ophelia. Keep the skirts where they are if it eases you. I need only your consent to touch. Nothing more.”

I swallow hard. The devastation is still there—their faces in their final hours, the dull thump of bodies against frozen soil, Gideon’s nails biting into my arm—but Iscairn’s bare hand is warm at my waist, and little by little it becomes easier to breathe.

I nod once, small and shaky. “Yes.”

His thumb keeps moving at my waist while his other hand slips beneath my skirts, finding the bare skin of my good thigh first. His palm settles warm against me and strokes slowly upwards, then back down again, careful each time not to stray towards the scarred side, and I suck in a breath as the heat sinks into skin that’s been cold for hours.

When his hand moves higher again, my hips shift with it, edging forwards against the counter.

The tips of those long pale fingers graze against the edge of my left thigh, where the flesh is thick and twisted with deep, silver scars, and my chest stutters. I squeeze my eyes shut and brace myself for the moment his hand reaches the ruined parts—for the smallest hesitation or change in his breathing that will tell me he’s disgusted by the ridges and hollows beneath his palm.

None comes.

His hand settles over the worst of it as easily as it did the other side, and the warmth of his bare skin sinks into the old ache until a breath slips out of me. He rubs his palm along the scarred muscle, unhurried and firm, then back again, his fingers closing gently around my thigh before easing away.

My head tips forward and I let myself sink into it, the constant pull and throb in my thigh softening beneath his hand with every pass.