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Fuck, she was gorgeous.
And I was going to figure out the real reason she’d been crying—after I put together a better damnedwelcomebasket.
Chapter4
Akari
I’d beena bitch to Espen, but honestly, the fact that he’d brought me a bag of toiletries that had clearly come from his own bathroom was kind of sweet.
Kind of.
And he definitely hadn’t been sweet in person. Honestly, he was pretty awkward.
Plus, he had so little control over his magic that it was almost funny.
I felt kind of bad for him, though.
Almost bad enough to try to make things easier for him…
But not quite.
In the time since I’d been left in the room alone, I had fallen asleep on the floor, immune to my own stench after so long in the dungeon. Espen had woken me up, but I didn’t think he’d realized that.
I spun the lid off his shampoo bottle and sniffed at the soap. It smelled manly, like pine trees and some other scent I didn’t have a word for. Using it definitely wouldn’t make me feel feminine, but smelling like anything other than sweat and filth was more than good enough for me.
I left the clean white pants on the bed. They were soft and luxurious, the fabric reminding me of the expensive soft yellows and golds that the solar fae always wore. I was a bit of an oddity in both that land and the night court—my blood was that of the sun, but I’d been born without more than a drop or two of magic, so my body was flooded with night power thanks to Espen.
I was pretty sure that was why it always reflected in my damned hair, but since I was likely the only one of my kind to ever exist, there was no way to know that for sure.
I showered quickly, having no desire to spend extra time beneath the falling water, where I couldn’t hear if anyone was trying to get into my room or find me. Some of my anxieties would never leave me—but that was okay. I was alive.
Stepping out of the shower, I dried my ass-length hair as best as I could with the towels hanging in the bathroom, and then combed through it with my fingers. It was softer than it had been in decades—literally—as none of the inns I’d stayed at on the way to Espen’s part of the court had provided conditioner or even shampoo. A bar of soap had been plenty good enough for me, though.
I still had a tough time combing out the tangles. I probably needed to cut off half the length of my hair—hell, maybe I wanted to cut off half the length. Maybe if I changed my appearance, I would start to feel alive again. It wasn’t likely, but… maybe.
As I finger-combed my hair, I forced myself to remember why I had come to Espen’s part of the court in the first place:
Revenge.
It didn’t sound quite as appealing now that the king had given me his shampoo and soap and clothes.
I supposed an important question to ask him was why he had left me in prison.
Had he known that I was his fated mate? If he had, he deserved whatever awful revenge I could come up with.
But if he didn’t… well, then I would need to decide how I felt about having a fated mate. And the king.
And the revenge I owed him and his court.
I tried to gather my anger again, to rediscover my fury, but I was so tired. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too.
Deciding to worry about finding my fury later, I finished combing my hair and then headed out into my room. All Espen had given me for clothing was a few pairs of pants, but they were clean, which was much more than I could say about my own dress and undergarment. Those piles of ripped, stinking fabric needed to go in the trash bin as soon as possible.
I stepped into the pants, tying a knot in one side of the waistband to hold them up on my hips.
Figuring I’d need to be clothed to go out and check on Diora—which was the excuse I was going to use to get out of this room and away from Espen’s space—I tied the second pair of pants around my breasts. I had to wrap it around my body a few times, and it looked absolutely ridiculous by the time I finally finished up and headed out, but I didn’t really care.
With my most important bits covered, I opened the door as quietly as I could, and then slipped out of the room.
