“I have not had a bath whose water was warmer than tepid in almost ten years,” she said, her words slurring as she let the water make her soft and easy. She sighed again. “You could scald me, and I would still stay in this tub.”
“A bold witch, shunning her Craft.”
“I departed from the Craft in so many ways today that I scarcely remember what it looks like.” She let her head roll to the side and made a face at the black rumple on the floor. “I only wish I could leave that thing behind as well, but there is nothing else to wear.”
“I am in a position to grant that wish,” he said, and she heard him cross behind her as he headed for his trunk.
“I will not wear your knickers,” she said, but with very little heat. The water made her feel so deliciously heavy. What could it have given me to go without this so many years?
“They are not my knickers,” he said, stepping in front of the tub. “They are, in fact, yours.” He was holding her shift. “You left it, that first night.” He spoke casually, and he kept his eyes carefully on hers, but Madeline was suddenly aware that she was naked in this water, and that the man, the only flesh and blood man she had ever been naked with before, was standing before her. Holding her underwear.
He lowered it, then folded it over his arm. “I’ll put it on the bed,” he said. But he lingered, not moving. She sensed he was waiting for her to look away, that this would be his cue to move out of sight again.
Madeline did not look away.
He did not move his eyes from her face.
“There is soap,” he said eventually. “Beside you on the floor.”
Madeline still did not turn away, but she felt the decision in the air. I have left so much else behind today. Let me leave this behind too. “Would you fetch it for me?” she asked.
His eyes slid down, only for a fraction of a second. Then he nodded and took the shift to the bed.
Madeline ducked beneath the water, letting it close over her, shutting out sound and light and air for one last moment. Then she rose again, blinking the water away. Jonathan was waiting there, the soap in his hand. She looked up at him, but she did not reach for the soap. In fact, she sat on her hands and kept waiting.
He reached down and pressed lightly between her shoulders, urging her to rise. She did, and she shut her eyes as he took her wet hair in his hands and began to lather it with the soap.
He took his time, lifting and coating each lock, swirling each between his fingers as he made the bubbles foam. It was neutral-smelling soap—his own, she suspected, likely army issue—but it lathered well, and soon frothy bubbles were falling around her like fairy snow, drifting along the top of the water, fighting with the oil from the plants to see who would break whom away. He set the soap aside, began to massage her head, her neck, her shoulders, and Madeline shut her eyes, let her shoulders fall forward, surrendering to his hands.
“I had fantasies of this when I was young.” His hands drew slow and long against her scalp, tugging gently but firmly so that her skin broke out in gooseflesh. “I would go to the moor, wait for you to come and shout at me, and then I would go home and lie in my bed, clutching desperately at myself as I imagined giving you a bath and washing your hair. I would think of it sliding beneath my fingers, wet and full of soap. I thought of it all the time, even sometimes when I looked at you—that and many other things, with and without soap. I always thought, ‘If she had any idea what I was thinking of doing to her right now as she shouts at me, she would either strike me across the face or pass out on the spot.’ I always wanted to find out which it would be, but I was too afraid.”
“I would have hit you.” She kept her eyes closed and continued to move with his hands. “Then I would have kissed you.”
He said nothing more, just continued to run his fingers through the soap, and she continued to let him. “Duck down to rinse.”
His hands eased her down, which made her heart pound, but it pounded even harder when he continued the massage beneath the water, working out the soap. Then he nudged gently at her neck to draw her up again. He continued to work his fingers into her hair, and she could feel that some of the soap was still there, dripping down over her ears.
He said nothing this time, and Madeline wished he would. The water was beginning to cool, and her heart was growing heavy.
“You had a good day with Charles, I gather,” he said at last.
She nodded, intending to tell him some of what she had discovered, of how exciting and confusing it had been. But when she opened her mouth, she found she said instead, “They are coming, Jonathan. I can feel them. The Council. They will come very soon.”
His hands stopped. They tightened, then loosened again.
“We will face them,” he said, but his voice was not easy or soft any longer.
“They are stronger than I am,” she whispered. “Much, much stronger, even with what I have learned from working with Charles. I will not be able to stop them.”
“Rinse again,” he said, whispering back.
He pushed her under the water, loosening her hair once more, but he did not keep her down long. When she was above the surface again, he curled his hands over her head, no longer stroking her. He simply held her.
“I will not let them take you,” he whispered. “I don’t care who they are or how strong they are. I will find a way to be stronger.” He kissed her wet, still-soapy hair, and she felt his medallion glow and swell behind her, felt its magic push against her, a power strong enough to keep him alive through torture and war, through heartbreak and distance and sorrow.
“I will not let them take you,” he said again. “This time it will be my turn to save you.” He pulled away. “One more rinse.”
But this time when she went below, she pulled away from his hands. She scrubbed at her scalp herself, forcing out the last of the lather with her fingers, then rose quickly, sitting up but keeping her head tilted back. She opened her eyes and blinked through the water as it fell away. When he bent toward her, she grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him the rest of the way, opening her mouth to take him in deep as he met her tongue with his own.
His hand braced against her neck, but the other slid over her shoulder, claiming her breast, giving it the same slow, sultry treatment he had given her hair. Madeline turned her head to the side and took him in deeper, their tongues dueling as she arched her body into his hand, urging it lower. He went down on his knees behind her and let his hand slide down her stomach, over her thigh, then between. He was lazy as his fingers made their way to her sex, but once there, he parted her and eased himself inside with almost one movement. Madeline moaned into his mouth and spread her legs full against the sides of the tub, then threw them over, opening herself as wide as the metal sides would allow. He shuddered, made a rough sound low in his throat, and entered her deeper, fuller, and faster.
When he stopped and pulled her out of the water, clutching her as he carried her to the bed, she went soft for him, nipping hot and wet against the side of his neck, laving the skin there so that when he came to the bed, he all but tossed her to the mattress in his desperation to shed himself of his clothes and slide inside her. But when he stood above her, staring down at her naked, open body as he fought with the buttons of his shirt, she smiled wickedly, then whispered a word, shimmering with power as she moved his clothes effortlessly from his body to join her dress in the middle of the floor.
He blinked, laughed, and let his eyes fall to dark hoods as he joined her on the bed.
* * *
When they were alone in the turret room, Charles showed Timothy some of what he had learned to do that day.
Timothy had produced a bottle of a wine he described as “one I never thought I’d see again and still can’t understand how I am now,” and they were sipping it straight from the bottle, swapping it back and forth as Charles gave a more personal rehash of what he’d done through the day than what he’d told in the study. With Timothy he let himself tell it al
l, how nervous he’d been, how he had fumbled so much but how Madeline had been so good about it and so patient. He spoke excitedly of the things he’d shown her, things she hadn’t known but he somehow had. He demonstrated the trick of moving things in and out of the Void, which made Timothy laugh with delight, and that laugh in turn made Charles smile, his heart bursting inside him as he bent down and kissed Timothy first firmly, then softly on the lips.
Then for a while, there was no talking at all.
He reached back and stayed Timothy when he would have withdrawn from him, and it made him feel good and safe when Timothy remained where he was, going slowly soft inside him as he wrapped his arms around Charles, pulling him back against his chest. Charles settled in deeper and threaded Timothy’s fingers through his own.
“What is your name?” he asked. “Your real name—because I will never believe anyone in Catal named you Timothy or Fielding.”
Charles both felt and heard Timothy’s chuckle, and shut his eyes in pleasure as Timothy kissed the back of his neck. “Raturjula Naike.”
Charles tried it out several times. “It’s a bit of a mouthful, but it’s pretty.”
There was mischief in Timothy’s voice as he said, “It means ‘the beautiful opening.’”
“That’s…nice,” Charles said, though privately he was thinking it was a bit odd.
“It’s a very specific sort of opening.” He trailed his hand down Charles’s side, then over his hip and back around to where they were joined. “Quite specific.”
Charles held still, certain he had to be misunderstanding him, but as Timothy stroked him lightly against the side of his own expanded opening, he made a gurgling sound of protest. “They did not. They would never. No one would.”
“I always thought I escaped lightly. My favorite playmate was named ‘Iron Cock.’”
Timothy was laughing, and Charles thought, He’s having me on, and I bought the entire gag, but when he glanced over his shoulder and gave Timothy a withering look, Timothy sobered—mostly—and pulled his hand back from between them and held it up in the air. “I swear, quiera. That is my name, and that is what it means.”
“But how can you laugh?” Charles demanded. “The very thought of walking through your life having to answer to ‘Beautiful Anus’—”
“I have tried to tell you. It is different in Catal. I will admit it gave me some difficulty at first in the gardens, because my name was my mark from the lot, but I would not choose a new one like the others. It was who I was, and I made it my own.” He sighed. “Once I was in the Etsian-Catalian army, however, I decided my point had been made and that nothing would be served by being the literal butt of everyone’s jokes, and so I became Timothy Fielding. And it serves me well in my own mind: Raturjula was before, and Timothy is after.” He draped his arm back over Charles’s side and ran his fingers idly over his hip. “Though, now that we are speaking of it, I remember that the ghost called me Raturjula D’lor when she first met me.”
“What does the D’lor mean?” Charles asked, bracing for another something lewd.
Timothy’s hand paused on Charles’s hip. “That’s the odd thing. It’s a sort of Catalian honorific—far higher than I can even feign to claim—but it’s not the male honorific. It’s the feminine.”
“I can vouch for the penis, if it comes to that,” Charles quipped. He felt his stomach dance when Timothy laughed before kissing Charles’s face as he slid over him again, their sexes nudging one another. Timothy settled over him, smiling as he placed little kisses on Charles’s nose and trailed his fingers across Charles’s face. The sex was wonderful, but this—this easiness, this lightness and laughing… Charles never wanted it to end.
“When this is over,” Timothy said, tucking a rogue hair behind Charles’s ear, his voice low and rich and velvet, “when you and your sister have taught each other enough to find the way to the sea, to either defeat this demon or leave it all behind—when this happens, quiera, I am going to take you to Catal. I cannot take you to the palace because it is gone. But someday, when the war is over, I will take you to the ruins. I never thought I wanted to see it again, but I find now that I would, with you.”
“I would go anywhere with you,” Charles said, reaching up to touch his face.
Timothy caught his fingers and kissed them before continuing. “Then I will take you south, where it is never cold but always lush and rich, where we will pluck our dinner from the trees and feed it to one another on a misty shore. We will make our house on the hills above the white sand, and we will stay there, making love like nothing this world has ever seen. We will walk into the towns and trade with our neighbors, and not a one of them will care if you are li or lon or something new entirely. And when the war is over, won at last, we will dance together in the great Plaza of the Sun.”
Charles was so spellbound he could barely breathe, let alone speak. “Yes,” he whispered. “All of it—yes.”
Timothy bent and took Charles’s mouth in a tender kiss. “Speaking of yes.” He kissed him again and again, moving his fingers against Charles’s neck in that way that made him tingle all over. Then he pulled back, nuzzled Charles’s nose, then finished speaking. “You have, perhaps, heard of this humble tradition we have in my country, something you call a Catalian Ceremony.” He looked into Charles’s eyes, but he was just a tiny bit self-conscious when he said, “Should there come a time when you feel you are ready, I would like to perform it with you.”
“I’m ready now,” Charles said, not self-conscious at all.
The next kiss took some time.
“It takes many hours and some supplies,” Timothy whispered, a bit breathless, when he at last lifted his head again. “We cannot start tonight, for you must rest. But with a bit of planning and a conference with your sister—” He smiled. “What would you say about tomorrow?”
“I love tomorrow,” Charles answered.
They made love three more times before they surrendered to sleep in each other’s arms. But they went to very different places in their dreams, guided by very different forces. For as they and all the others slept, one rose who had been waiting, patiently and for a long, long time.
And though the dome of magic held strong, as the sun let its first fingers slide over the horizon, far below the tower, in the heart of the abbey, someone opened a door.
Chapter Thirteen
dah’kiel
darkness
Through darkness they will see they are nothing but one.
Through the door they shed shadows and return to the sun.
Timothy dreamed of a beautiful lady, the most beautiful he had ever seen.
He had been sitting in the darkness with Charles, whispering and laughing quietly as they fed each other pieces of bread and cheese over a golden tablecloth spread across the ground. Except there was no ground. There was only darkness all around them. There were no stars above.
He did not notice the lady immediately; he was so focused on Charles, on talking him into trying the peppered nun cheese, that at first he did not realize she had arrived. He turned from his picnic to acknowledge her, but when he saw her face, he paused, stunned by her beauty. She wore a veil, a thin blue sheet that rippled when she moved, but even despite the cover, she was stunning. This was no ghost. This was the real woman, and she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Timothy could not speak for the sight of her.
She smiled and held out her hand to him. Her skin was a translucent blue that shimmered in the dark, and he could see her skin was also dusted with gold. He realized she was the tall ghost from the abbey, the one from the tower, and the golden lady from the inn. It was as if all those ghosts had been mere shards of this one woman, but here she was whole. Real. She was more real to him now than she had ever been.
“Welcome, Raturjula.” She spoke, but her lips did not move. The words simply arrived, fully formed, in Timothy’s head. “It is good to see you so healthy and strong.”
Timothy wanted to
touch her. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to put his hand in hers. His heart was beating hard against his chest, and he could not decide if he wanted to laugh or cry.
“You are the ghost,” he said, “but—do I know you? From somewhere else?”
“We have known each other always. But it has been necessary for you to forget me for a while. I am happy to see you return, to know you again.”
She still held out her hand, but she lifted it now, reaching slowly for his face.
Timothy still wanted her to touch him, but he drew back. He was not yet ready.
“Who are you? Why do you come to me now? Why were you one of the ghosts? Are you—are you all the ghosts?”
“I have always been with you, through your entire life as Raturjula D’lor, but you are only able to see me now.” Her smile turned sad beneath the veil, and she lowered her hand. “In the abbey you saw only my shades, and that part of me had to fade so you could shine. You saw a stronger shade of me at the inn and when you made love to Charles for the first time. But now you see all of me. We are all here now. We are in a space out of time. All the shards, in this moment, are returned. We have come back to claim you, so that you may claim him.”
In the distance, Timothy heard thunder. He turned to look, but he saw only darkness. “Where are we? What is this?”
“We are at the edge of all things, at the edge of the Veil, far, far beyond the Void. It is here we have been hiding, you and I, for ages and ages, and here where we must hide again. But this time we will not hide for long.”
“I don’t understand,” Timothy said.
“You must not fear. You will not be left alone. But now we must go. We must go and open the door.”
Timothy began to be nervous. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “And for the record, I’m not a highborn woman, so stop calling me D’lor. My name is Raturjula Naike. Tuja, if you wish to be familiar. Or Timothy Fielding, if you want to be current. But whoever you are, you don’t need to stay with me, because I am leaving as soon as I can with Charles—”
The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil Page 41