He Freed the Kings He Once Chained, They Chose to Bind Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Bath

Ren refuses Su Ming's practiced offer of himself and washes his scarred back instead; Su Ming turns furious, and Ken's wrist goes black under the silver.

By evening Ren had found the keys.

They were in the bottom drawer of the prince's desk, under a stack of treaty drafts.

An iron ring held three padlock keys and one long brass key for the wing's outer door.

None of them fit the silver cuffs.

He tried each one anyway, and the cuffs sat shut and smooth on three right wrists, with no lock in them at all.

"They were riveted on by the royal smith," Su Ming said from the bed, where he sat with his legs folded. "By order of your father. They come off when the Pledge ends, or they don't."

"Or when someone cuts them."

"Then my capital burns." Su Ming smiled. "So no one cuts them, my lord."

Ren said nothing.

He walked to the bedpost and unlocked the padlock that held Su Ming's chain.

The chain slid off the bolt and dropped to the floor with a clank.

Su Ming looked at it.

Ren unlocked Ryu's next, and then Ken's.

The three chains lay on the rug, still fixed to the cuffs and free at the other end.

"You can walk around the room," Ren said. "You can walk around the wing. I'll leave the long brass key on the table. The door stays open as long as I'm in charge of it."

Ken sat up so fast that his chain whipped across the floor.

"What's the catch?"

"There isn't one."

"There's always a catch."

"There's one, and I told you this morning." Ren rubbed his eyes. "I can't send you home. I can't do that yet. But the door is yours."

Ryu got slowly to his feet, took the brass key off the table, and weighed it in his hand.

Then he put it back exactly where it had been.

He said nothing, and he did not leave the room.

That night the maids brought a dinner of rice and roast fowl, and Ren cut the fowl himself and put the first plate in front of Ken.

Ken ate fast, with one hand curled around the plate and his eyes on the door.

Su Ming ate three bites and stopped.

"You're not hungry," Ren said.

"I'm never hungry at night, my lord. It spoils the evening."

It took Ren a moment to understand what he meant.

Then the bath was drawn, and he understood the rest.

The bathing room was off the chamber, with a sunken tub steaming under a lamp.

Su Ming walked in behind him, closed the door, and began to unlace his own robe.

"What are you doing?"

"What I do every night." The robe fell off one shoulder, and a long white scar ran down from the collarbone. "I wash you. I serve you. Then you tell me what you want, and I give it to you, and everyone is quiet until morning."

He said it lightly and kept smiling.

His hands were not quite steady on the ties.

"No," Ren said.

Su Ming stopped.

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Ah." The smile thinned. "Then I've displeased you. I should have asked what you wanted first. Let me start again."

"You haven't displeased me."

"Then I don't understand."

"I'm not refusing you because I don't want to know you." Ren tried to find the plain words. "I'm refusing because you don't want this. You'd be doing it because the alternative is worse."

"What difference does it make why?" Su Ming's voice went up. "It's what I'm for. It's the only thing anyone here has ever wanted from me, and now you won't take it, and I don't know what you want instead."

"I want you to sit down."

"Sit where?"

"On the edge of the tub, with your back to me, and let me look at that scar."

The silence stretched.

Then Su Ming turned away with a hard jerk and sat on the marble edge with his feet in the water and his spine held stiff.

Ren knelt behind him.

The robe hung around Su Ming's waist.

His back was crossed with old whipping scars, long white lines with newer pink ones laid over them.

Two of the newer ones were hot to the touch, and one had gone yellow at the edge.

"This is infected," Ren said.

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing. Hold still."

He soaked a cloth in the warm water, wrung it out, and laid it flat against the worst of the welts.

Su Ming's whole body tightened.

Then he made a small sound in his throat, low and surprised, and his head dropped forward.

Ren worked in silence for a long time, cleaning each line and dabbing honey from the little pot on the rim.

His fingers slid over a ridge of old scar tissue near the spine, and Su Ming shivered all the way down.

Ren pulled his hand back.

"Did that hurt?"

"No." Su Ming was breathing oddly. "That's the trouble."

He reached down, quick and angry, and adjusted his robe in his lap.

It did not hide enough.

"Don't mistake it," Su Ming said, without turning around. "My body does as it's taught. It means nothing about you."

"I know."

"I'd say the same to anyone who touched me there."

"I know. I'm not keeping score."

"You should," Su Ming said bitterly. "You used to."

Ren's hands paused for the space of a breath.

Then he went on dabbing honey, carefully, one line at a time.

"I'm sorry for every one of these," he said.

He had not planned to say it.

Su Ming turned his head, and for the first time all day, nothing in his face was smiling.

"You're sorry," he said.

"Yes."

"After three years."

"I know it's worth nothing." Ren held his eyes. "I'm saying it so that you've heard it once."

Su Ming looked at him for a long, bright moment.

Then he laughed, short and ugly, and pulled his robe up over his shoulders.

"Then what are you for?" he asked. "If you won't use me, what do you want from me?"

"Nothing yet."

"Everyone wants something."

"Then I'll tell you when I figure out what it is," Ren said. "Wash your face. You're going to bed."

He walked out before Su Ming could answer, because his own pulse was pounding in his ears.

The chamber was dim, with the lamps turned low.

Ryu was standing by the bed, and he had been watching the bathroom door.

He looked at Ren's face and then away.

Ken lay curled on his side on the rug with his bad wrist held against his chest.

"Ken?" Ren said.

Ken did not lift his head.

"It's gone numb," he said in a thin, strange voice. "I can't feel my fingers."

Ren crossed the room in three strides and crouched at his side.

Under the swollen silver, the skin of Ken's wrist had turned black.

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