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I shake my head. “Any will do and don’t call me ‘Joanna’. It’s Jo.”
“Very well,” Derith answers and doffs his head towards me as if I’m some noble lady which I’m decidedly not.
He looks back to Kellen. “Please prepare the second-floor guest room at the far end of the hall for… Jo.”
“Are you sure, sir?” Kellen asks, looking quickly from his master to me. “The dungeon has been re-secured—”
“Quite sure,” Derith says. “Jo is now our guest, not our prisoner.”
“But,” Kellen starts, glaring even further at me.
“Go,” Derith barks at him, and Kellen immediately remembers himself, his cheeks coloring instantly as he nods and scurries away without another glance in my direction.
“From the dungeon to a guest room—what an upgrade.”
“Indeed,” Derith responds with a smile. “I do hope you rest well, Jo, and I shall see you in the morning which is to say, the evening.” He leaves me with a respectful nod, and I ascend the stairs, feeling suddenly exhausted. After my long night, it’s no wonder. Derith is correct—I do need sleep.
Following Derith’s directions to Kellen about the guest room at the end of the hall, I walk into a relatively barren room with no more than a small bed, covered with a black quilt and a large tub sitting beside it—the only things to offset the stone. It’s not exactly comfortable but it will do. Taking a seat on the straw mattress, I check myself for bruises and scratches. They’re plentiful, as usual, but there’s nothing that needs immediate dressing except the wound on my knee where the water ghoul came out of me.
I stopped feeling the throb after a few miles of walking, but I’m not moving now, and the pain returns with intensity.
“Lisette,” I call and a blonde woman enters immediately—almost as if she were waiting outside my bedroom door. “Can you bring me some salve for my leg and a rag or something that will work as a bandage?”
She looks at me for a few seconds before responding and her expression is bizarre—as though I’m a riddle she can’t quite solve. Before I can repeat my question, she runs off. A redhead comes in a minute later with a bottle of whiskey and a dry rag.
I thank her and she gives me the same strange look as Lisette did and quits the room.
I’m a bit bewildered at the treatment from both women but I’m too tired to think on it long. Kellen seems to abhor me, which I suppose makes sense, given our introduction. But it wasn’t hate in the women’s expressions. I don’t know what it was.
I generously apply whiskey to the rag and then apply the rag to my wound. I think, at first, I’ll scream when the whiskey hits the gash, but the pain is just sharp enough to get a whimper out of me, nothing more. Yes, it hurts, but I need to kill whatever might still be lurking inside the cut. I’ll wash it in the bath and then reapply the alcohol once I get out.
Speaking of the bath, nothing is more inviting at the moment. Walking up to it, I put one foot into the marble tub, testing the temperature. It’s warm but not hot, so I sink my foot into the tub, right up to my ankle, then my calf. It feels beyond good.
I lather myself with a soap bar which smells of lavender and mint, starting from my toes and ending with my hair.
A knock at the bedroom door surprises me.
“What?” I shout.
“I just wanted to see if you needed anything before you went to sleep for the day,” Derith calls through the wooden door.
“No, not that I can think of,” I call back.
“Very good,” comes his terse reply. “Sleep well.”
I hope I do—although I’ll be sleeping with a dagger beneath my arm.
Chapter Ten
My bed isn’t comfortable.
That isn’t the problem. I’m not hungry since Lisette brought me a loaf of bread and slices of cheese. I don’t have a headache, and I’m not congested. There’s nothing that should be keeping me from sleeping and yet...
Nothing except the blinding pain in the wound caused by the water ghoul. The pain is greater when I’m not moving, strangely enough. Thinking I ought to get up and walk around, in hopes it might help, I throw back the covers and swing my legs down onto the floor. I lean down over my knee and unwrap the rag, noticing there’s a bit of brownish seepage and fresh blood right at the center, but it’s nothing alarming.
I slip on the night camisole that one of the humans left for me. It’s pink silk with lace trimmings—the sort of thing a woman wears if she’s expecting company. It’s something I would never wear—much too feminine, dainty, and silly.
I don’t rewrap my wound just yet. I think the chilly night air might do it some good.
