Chapter 5: What She Asks

"A bath," I said.

Torin looked at me across the dais.

"A bath," he repeated.

"A real one. With hot water to my neck, and a door that shuts, and nobody counting how long I take."

"You've been here three days."

"I've been washing out of a basin for three days, my lord. The carriage from Lowmere had a leak."

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

Behind me, I heard Kjell make a noise.

"Kjell," Torin said.

"Already heating the cauldrons," said Kjell, who had apparently been listening from the corridor. "Six of them. I'll tell the kitchen to stop work."

"Why would the kitchen stop?"

"Because every girl in the place wants to be there when you hear what else she asks for."

I ended up in the bathhouse under the east tower, in a stone tub the size of a small boat.

Steam filled the room, and my glasses sat safely on a ledge.

It was the first hour I had spent alone, with nobody wanting anything, since the night of the feast.

I stayed in it until the water cooled.

When I came out, pink and wrapped in a robe two sizes too large, Torin was standing in the corridor.

He held a folded towel, and his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

"Kjell said you'd need this," he said.

"Kjell is a liar. There are towels in the bathhouse."

"I know." His ears had gone red. "I was told to stand here and look useful."

I took the towel from him.

Our fingers touched, and neither of us moved for a second.

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