Chapter 9: The Hot Spring

She found him on the east balcony with snow falling on his bare head, and she told him everything Marguerite had said.

He listened to all of it without interrupting.

When she finished, he stood looking out over the white courtyard for a long time.

"Marguerite is afraid of my cousin," he said at last. "She has been for nine years."

"That's what a guilty woman would say."

"It's also what a frightened one would say."

She opened her mouth to argue, and he turned and put his hand on her arm.

"You're shaking," said Bastien.

"It's cold."

"It's not that." He looked at her, and his voice softened. "Come with me."

He led her through the east wing and down a narrow stair cut into the living rock.

It was warm.

That was the first strange thing, because the deeper they went the warmer it got.

The air began to smell of minerals and wet stone.

At the bottom the stair opened onto a cave.

A pool lay in the middle of it, black and steaming, ringed with smooth stone benches.

High above, a crack in the roof let in a ribbon of night sky, and a single bright star hung in it.

"My great-grandmother found it," said Bastien. "It never freezes."

"It's wonderful."

"I come here when I can't stand the clocks."

He set the lamp on a ledge and turned to her, and he suddenly looked unsure of himself.

She took pity on him.

"Turn around," she said.

He turned around.

She stripped off the wine silk and her shift, stood shivering on the warm stone for a moment, and stepped into the water.

It closed around her to the shoulders, silky and hot, and she gasped with delight.

"You can look now."

He looked.

He was standing at the edge of the pool, half undressed, absolutely still.

"I've seen the cards," said Liora, with her chin up, "and none of them told me you'd stare."

"I am not staring."

"You are."

"I am memorizing," said Bastien, very quietly, and he stepped out of the rest of his clothes and came into the water.

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