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I dip my head in acknowledgment of Ivy’s remark. “Whatever you’re covering, it only reflects how your life has shaped you. There’s a beauty in all experience, good and bad—in still being alive to show what we’ve been through.”
Alek’s throat works. Then he reaches for his tunic. “All right. It shouldn’t matter anyway.”
He sounds certain enough that I leave him to his undressing and shed my own clothes.
Ivy shimmies out of her undergarments, her wiry body drawing my eye as it always does. She unties the ribbon she wears around her arm in memory of her sister and rests it on top of her pile of clothes.
Then she clambers over the low edge of the bath and sinks into the bubbly water, sitting on the ledge along its wall. With a deep breath, she slides a little deeper. Her eyelids dip and her hair fans out into the water.
An ache fills my chest all the way to the base of my throat. She’s so lovely—and so unaware of that fact.
A bath is hardly anything to compete with the horrors she’s faced in the past day—gods, in the past several weeks. I wish I could wash all the stress and pain she must be carrying away.
I wish I could stop her from having to experience any more of it.
But how in the realms could a courtesan do that?
I can’t keep her safe. I can’t take down the scourge sorcerers in her place.
Pampering her to the fullest extent of my ability is the best thing I can contribute… but compared to what Stavros and Alek can offer, it feels like barely anything.
A niggling voice in the back of my head pipes up that I’m being selfish by focusing all my energy on this one woman, that I don’t deserve to even try to devote myself to her, but I tune it out as well as I can. What I can give her is better than nothing.
I ease into the bath and sit kitty-corner from her. Alek pauses at the edge of the tub, stripped down to his drawers.
There’s plenty to recommend itself about his tall, lean frame. The toned definition of compact muscle shows beneath his bronze skin across his chest and arms. He has nothing to be shy about there.
He grips his mask and pauses. Visibly girding himself, he peels it off his face.
The mottled flesh beneath, stretching across his forehead and nose and down his left cheek, tells a story I don’t know the details of. I can see it was some kind of injury, one that dug too deep to be fully healed.
But he did survive it. Ardone teaches us that beauty can be found in all things. There’s beauty in the interplay of colors amid the scars; beauty in the unusual shapes they create on his face.
Beauty in the fact that he was willing to share it with me at all.
I smile at him, hoping he can tell that I’m unbothered by his appearance. “It’s an honor to have you trust me with your full self.”
Something in Alek’s stance loosens. He tugs off his drawers and scrambles into the tub.
“Oh,” he says as the water envelops him. “That is nice. Now I’m thinking I’ve never actually had a proper bath.”
Ivy shoots me a fond grin. “Casimir elevates them to an art form.”
I tip my head back against the edge of the tub. There’s so much space we can all sit without bumping up against each other. “Anything can be an art if you give it the proper attention.”
Just because we don’t have to bump into each other doesn’t mean I want the distance. I scoot over so I can stroke the side of Ivy’s face. “We can’t change the hurt you’ve been through. But you can know that you never have to worry about wherewestand. We want to see you safe and well. There’s so much joy waiting for you when you reach the end of the mission you’re on.”
Ivy’s smile tightens a little, but her eyes shine bright. She looks from me to Alek and back again. “You know… when I was in the tower, after Wendos injured me… part of what helped me keep standing up to him was thinking about you. How you’d already been there for me even then.”
The ache gripping my chest melts into a heady warmth. “Any strength I can give you is yours to take, whenever you need it.”
“And if you ever need more than we’ve thought to give, just ask,” Alek adds, his voice gone a bit hoarse.
Ivy ducks her head with a hint of shyness. “I wouldn’t mind help washing my hair.”
I reach for the soap. “It would be my pleasure.”
As I massage the suds into Ivy’s scalp, Alek takes a little soap and washes away the smudge on her jaw I noticed earlier. As he works his way down her neck and along her arm, I feel the tension releasing from Ivy’s body. She hums encouragingly.
