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“I hope you don’t intend to kill me in here,” I grumbled at him, as he led me inside first with a hand at my lower back.
He laughed. “Maybe after we take my brothers out and I get my magic back.”
I heard the tease in his voice, and knew he was joking. My lips curved upward slightly for the tiniest moment, but my small smile had disappeared by the time Namir caught up to me. I looked around as we stopped walking, and the doors reformed behind us.
Namir’s portion of the castle was made of the same stone as the rest of it, and was wide and open. Off to my right was a monstrously large bed, with a rectangular sheet of glass in the ceiling above it as he’d told me there was. It would be nice to sleep beneath the stars, while also safely enclosed.
The rest of his space held couches, bookshelves, and a large kitchen.
Did the Shadow King cook?
Did he read?
I didn’t ask him, though I was curious.
“I thought you were giving me an empty room.” I looked at him. “I’m not stealing yours.”
He raised a hand up beside his head, as if surrendering. “It was worth a try.”
I rolled my eyes, and his lips twitched like he was fighting a grin.
“Come on, Love. I’ll show you the available rooms.”
Chapter11
Namir showedme all three of the open rooms. None of them were ideal, honestly, each of them sandwiched between other people’s rooms. They each had their own bathroom, though, and I was definitely not opposed to the idea of taking showers again instead of bathing in the stream like I had in the forest.
I finally picked the one closest to the stairs.
Namir set the bags of extra food down in my room, near the door. He told me to let him know if I needed anything, and then flashed me a grin before I shut the door behind myself.
I knew it wouldn’t be hard to find him if I did need anything—he’d be in his room. Other people couldn’t get through his shadows, but I’d never had a problem doing so.
Turning on all of the lights in the room, bathroom, and closet, I wandered the space to check it all out. It was simple, but beautiful. The walls and flooring were made of the same shadow-infused-looking stone that the castle was crafted out of, and as I walked, the stone seemed to darken beneath my feet, like the shadows within were gathering to greet me.
There was a large bathroom, with a door to separate it from the rest of the space. It had a toilet that flushed, and a huge shower, as well as a bathtub. Akari had explained bathtubs to me years earlier, but I’d always found the idea of sitting in a tub of my own filth to be disgusting.
Outside the bathroom, I found the entrance to the closet. It was almost as big as the bathroom, a huge walk-in space with strange cylindrical rods protruding from the walls at a little above my height.
I ran my fingers over them, feeling the smooth stone they were also crafted out of. The whole castle was a masterpiece, as far as I’d seen, and I wasn’t sure whether to feel lucky or intimidated by being there.
It was too late to go back to the forest now, though, and truthfully, I didn’t want to.
I slipped out of the white and silver dress I’d been wearing—and had tried not to pay too much attention to. After dropping that and the undergarment I’d had on beneath it in the closet, I padded into the bathroom. The bed was huge and looked extremely comfortable, and I didn’t want to ruin it with the dirt that remained on my skin from so much time in the forest.
The shower functioned similarly to the ones in the inns I’d stayed at, so I twisted the lever to turn it on. At the inns, the water had come out cold at first. Because of that, I dodged the stream as both shower heads above me began to rain. Then I tested the water with a hand, found it already warm, and I slipped beneath it.
It took me a few minutes to get the water to a temperature I liked, but then I grabbed the brand-new bar of soap off one of the shelves to the side of the shower, and began scrubbing with it.
I was surprised—and disgusted—by the amount of dirt that stained the water as it ran down my skin and into the drain under my feet.
When the water finally ran clear, I turned my attention to the two bottles of soap on the shelf above the one that I set my bar of soap back down on.
I assumed the bottles held the hair soaps Namir had told me about; shampoo, and conditioner. The first would strip the oils and dirt from my hair, the second would soften it. There were labels on the bottles, but I couldn’t read, so that didn’t help me.
After undoing the complex braids Namir had done in my hair, I grabbed one of the bottles and tested a dab of the soap from within it on the ends of my hair, checking to see what it did. When my hair felt soft and slippery with the creamy solution on it, I decided it was probably conditioner, and rinsed it out.
I grabbed the first one, and squirted it into my palm before lifting my hands to my hair.
