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“You would have been right not to,” I said, relaying the rest of Sophia’s words to him. “She said he’s okay and that he would make his way here, and while I miss him so much, part of me just wants him to stay safely at Eirene’s house with the others rather than put himself at any more risk.”
“There’s nowhere we wouldn’t follow you, Grace. I have no doubt he’s on his way. We’re here.”
Wild exchanged a few words—a combination of spoken and signed—with one of the Spartoi before leading me to a small cabin.
“There’s a stream we’ve been collecting water from and boiling to drink. They’re going to heat some so we can wash,” Wild volunteered. They’d really developed their own unique way of communicating because I hadn’t gathered that from their brief conversation at all.
“Are we getting special treatment?” I asked.
Wild gave me a wry smile. “Most definitely. But you are their Prophêtis, and they want to see you cared for.”
“And you’re their General, aren’t you? You fought hard beside them today. They’ll want to see you cared for too,” I pointed out. Wild shrugged, always surprisingly shy when it came to anything resembling a compliment. “I wonder what happened to the people who lived here. Someone must have stayed on-site to run this place, right?”
“They probably ran when they realized there were armies approaching. Lycus said there were no corpses in any of the buildings. Or I think that’s what he said.”
Wild led me into a basic, clean room with a double bed in the center and a twin bed pressed up against the wall. It was all decorated in dated shades of pale yellow and light turquoise, but the bedding looked clean and undisturbed. In the week of darkness and the fallout that followed, it appeared this place had been unoccupied.
At the back of the cabin was a small tile bathroom. Optimistically, I turned the tap on, but only a drop of water came out.
“They’re boiling more water for us to drink,” Wild said apologetically, leaning against the door frame.
“I’m grateful for it,” I replied hurriedly. “I just miss, you know, plumbing. Electricity. Internet.” I thought about it for a moment, remembering sitting on those castle ruins with T and watching the sunset without distractions. “Actually, I haven’t missed internet access as much as I thought I would.”
Wild hummed in agreement, holding out his arms for me to step into. I practically threw myself against him, resting my head against his breastplate and gripping him tightly around the waist.How did I get this thing off? I wanted to feel his skin on mine.
“What about you?” I mumbled against his armor, feeling around for the whatever was holding this thing on his body. “You must be missing technology. You relied on it so much to keep in touch with your Keres daimons in Milton, and with Onyx…”
Wild hummed as my fingers found latches down the sides of the armor. “I’m probably not as worried about them as you’d think. They’re Keres daimons—I worried about themmorein times of peace. We’re built for this violence, this chaos.”
I held him a little tighter and snuggled in a little closer, my eyes shooting open when I realized the hard thing nudging my ribswasn’this sword.
“Ignore it,” he murmured, sounding amused. “Like I said, I’m built for this. Fucking and fighting go hand-in-hand.”
“Did you have thatwhileyou were on the battlefield?” I asked, baffled. That seemed like a massive liability.
Wild snorted. “No. The bloodlust is waning for the night, leaving some regular lust in its place.”
We broke apart at the knock on the door, the Spartoi coming in with an enormous steaming basin of water that two of them heaved between them into the bathroom while one of the other Spartoi set down a smaller jug of cooling water on the nightstand before they all excused themselves. I felt embarrassingly pampered.
Wild dug around in the bathroom while I hovered, coming up with some wrapped bars of generic-looking hotel soap and washcloths, and I nearly cried with gratitude.
With zero hesitancy, Wild undid the latches on the sides and at his shoulders, slipping out of the bronze armor and the worn clothes underneath that I recognized from Eirene’s house. I pulled off my own filthy clothes, setting them aside with the intention of scrubbing them all in the bath water and hoping they dried overnight.
“Before I forget,” Wild said, catching my hand. I looked down in surprise as he slid my opal ring back onto my ring finger. “Thank you for letting me borrow it, for letting me know you saw me.” He swallowed thickly. “That you were alive.”
I nodded, blinking away my own tears. No, we weren’t doing that right now. This was a quiet moment of peace—maybe even a little happiness, despite all the worry pressing down on us—and I didn’t want to waste it.
Reading the expression on my face, Wild quirked a small half smile and pressed a light kiss to my forehead.
“Come here.” He pulled me into the shower stall with the basin sitting on the side, so the water we used had somewhere to drain. Wild dunked a washcloth in the warm water, handing it to me, and my lip trembled just enough to catch his attention.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “It’s just been so long since I had a decent wash. I’m still itching from dunking myself in salt water which was my last attempt at getting clean. Or at least, not smelling so awful.”
Wild laughed, working the bar of soap into a lather and handing it to me. If I thought his half smile had me weak in the knees, his laugh nearly reduced me to a puddle on the floor.
How was this moment real? In the midst of all the awful, this sweet moment of bathing each other in a cramped shower stall, the biting chill setting into my damp skin, felt likeparadise.
Wild wasn’t shy about staring at me as Ithoroughlywashed every inch of my body, and I discreetly watched him in return. In the time we’d been separated, both of our bodies looked slightly different, and I imagined it was as strange for him to see as it was for me. Wild had always been buff andhuge, but now he was leaner, his muscles more defined after the almost constant exercise and not enough food. I knew I was thinner—the clothes I’d left Eirene’s house in were hanging off my body, and my ribs and hip bones were showing through my skin.
