Chapter 6: Stronger Than His Chair

Torvald did not mention her hand again.

He did not speak at all on the way back to his chamber that night, only rolled beside her through the dark corridors.

She did not ask what he knew.

She was not ready to hear it, and she thought he was not ready to say it.

In the morning she found a second note.

"Hot pools below the east wing. Wear nothing. T."

She read it twice, and felt her face heat.

Then she went.

The bathing hall was a cave with a ceiling of black glass.

Steam rose off three wide pools, and lamps of low gold flame floated over the water.

The air tasted of minerals and warm stone.

Torvald was already in the middle pool.

He sat on a ledge under the surface, water to his chest, his arms stretched out along the rim.

His chair stood empty on the tiles.

She stopped at the edge in her robe.

For the first time, she saw him without the chair or the blanket or the coat.

He was thirty-one, eleven years older than she was, and she was twenty and could not look away.

His shoulders were enormous. His chest was ridged with muscle, and old burn marks climbed one side of it in pale streaks.

Below the waterline his legs lay still and thin.

He watched her look, and did not hide anything.

"Is it ugly?" he asked.

"No."

"Do not lie to me."

"I don't lie." She let the robe fall. "You're the strongest man I have ever seen."

His eyes went dark.

She stepped down into the water, and it closed around her thighs.

"Here," he said, and his voice had dropped. "Come here."

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