The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles 3)

“We can help you bathe or leave you in privacy. Which would you prefer?”

I stared at her, not sure myself what I wanted.

“We’ll stay,” she said.

* * *

I cried. I couldn’t explain it. It was not me. But I was many things now that I had never been before. Slow tears rolled down my face as they peeled off clothes, as they unlaced my boots and pulled them from my feet, as they sponged my neck and soaped my hair. As every last bit of blood on my skin was washed into the water.

You’re exhausted. That is all, I told myself. But it was like a vein had been opened that refused to clot. Even when I shut my eyes trying to stop the flow, the saltiness trickled past my lids in a slow languid line, finding the corner of my mouth, then spread across my lips.

“Drink this,” Madam Rathbone said, and she set a large goblet of wine on a table next to the bath. I sipped as ordered and laid my head back on the elongated copper rim of the tub, staring up at the timbered ceiling. The women took handfuls of citrus crystals and rubbed them into my skin, buffing it clean, polishing away the grime, the scent, and the misery of where I had been. They worked longer on my hands and feet, and more gently around my stitched wounds. Another sip, and circles of numbing warmness spiraled to my fingertips, thinning my muscles, loosening my neck, pulling on my lids until they slipped closed.

Vilah held the goblet to my lips again. “Sip,” she said softly. Familiarity, a field of vines, a silky sky, skins staining my fingers, velvet … home.

“Morrighan,” I whispered.

Yes.

The caravans bring it.

The best.

Colonel Bodeen won’t miss one bottle.

Much.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, and only vaguely remembered standing with their assistance to rinse. I lay on thick soft blankets, where they worked on me further, massaging oils into my skin. Madam Rathbone examined the stitched scars on my thigh and back.

“Arrows,” I explained. “Tavish dug them out.”

Adeline sucked in air between her teeth.

I heard the low cluck of their voices.

Madam Rathbone rubbed a buttery balm into the scars, saying it would aid their healing. The scent of vanilla floated in the air.

A deep purple bruise had bloomed on my hip where Ulrix had slammed me onto the pommel of his horse. Their fingers were gentle, working around it. I felt myself slipping again, voices around me growing distant.

“And this?” Vilah asked, her fingertips grazing the tattoo on my shoulder.

It was no longer my wedding kavah. Maybe it never had been. I heard Effiera describing the promise of Venda … the claw, quick and fierce; the vine, slow and steady; both equally strong.

“It is…”

The claim of a mad que

en.

The one who was weak,

The one who was hunted …

The one named in secret.

“Their hope.” The words were so thin and gauzy on my lips I wasn’t even sure I had said them aloud.

* * *