Bend Her novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Warm Water

Linnet's POV

By the third week I could freeze a bowl, boil it and stand it on end, and Ansel still said "again" every time.

I had learned to say it back to him.

"Again," I said, over a bowl that was steaming happily on its post.

"That was my line, Princess."

"You can have it back when you say well done."

"Well done."

I stared at him.

His ears twitched, and he walked off across the yard without another word.

Bess, on the step, put down her bread and said, "Did he just..."

"Eat your bread, Bess."

That night my shoulders ached from the cold and my fingers cramped from snapping, and Bess put her hands on her hips in the door of my room.

"There's a spring," she said.

"A what?"

"Under the keep. The cook told me. A hot one, in a cave. Nobody uses it but him, and he's out on the wall all night." She held up a linen sheet. "You are going to soak, and I am going to guard the stairs."

I did not argue.

The cave was reached by a narrow stair cut into the rock, and the air at the bottom was thick and warm.

A pool of green-black water lay in the stone, steaming gently, and lanterns hung in the ceiling in iron cages.

I left my robe on a ledge and slipped into the water in my thin linen shift.

The heat soaked into every muscle in my back.

I had never been in water that was not scented and carried up three flights in cans.

I let my head tip back against the stone.

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