This is an ongoing companion piece to be read after completing the Snakesblood Saga. Because it takes place during the final chapter of the last book, it will be very full of spoilers. It’s also unedited first draft fluff… just for fun! Read at your own risk, and expect installments no closer together than once a month.
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The house was quiet when he led her through the front door. Firal did not know if Minna slept, but she tried to tread lightly as Rune drew her across the parquet floor of the entryway and up the stairs.
She had not yet gotten over the grandeur of the estate or its house, though she understood how it came to be. He had always been resourceful, and though she hated to admit it, he was good at manipulating those who held power.
Of all the terrifying skills he’d held, that one frightened her most—but it was that one which ahd planted seeds of doubt in their marriage, that had led to their downfall to begin with.
He manipulated everyone else so easily. Why should she ever believe he would not do the same to her?
“This way.” His voice was jarring, soft as it was, and Firal worked to keep her nerves from showing.
He led her to the uppermost floor of the house, the loft kept aside for his own personal refuge, and her heart fluttered hard enough that it tangled against her ribs.
She’d been there only that morning, yet this was different.
He held her hand. He’d drawn her in. He brought her into his sanctuary without hesitation, a wordless promise he wanted her there.
Her fingers tightened on his.
He squeezed back, then turned her toward a door at the far end of the room, past his bed.
Firal held back her questions and instead wondered at the odd familiarity of it all.
Was it supposed to feel natural? The way his skin slid against hers as he removed his hand from her grasp? The way the air felt so disappointingly cool in the absence of his warmth?
Rune pushed the door open with his shoulder and touched something against the wall. Mage-lights roused themselves, casting a warm, pleasant glow across a wide copper tub at the far end of the room.
She almost laughed. “I should have known.”
“You don’t know anything yet.” He flashed her a grin and her heart skipped.
It was the first time he’d done that since her arrival. There had been a few faint smirks and the forced smiles that manners dictated when they were in the Royal City, but this was different—warm, welcoming and genuine.
Her chest ached.
Whatever emotions and longing he’d stirred up in her, he didn’t notice. Instead, he crossed to the tub and reached for a ring on the wall. “A lot of this is Rhyllyn’s work. He’s got a talent for imbuing and cycling power.”
Firal lingered beside the door. “Imbuing?”
“Creating charged items. Planting magic inside objects.” He waved a hand as if that explained it.
Her brows rose. “I wasn’t aware there were any mages still capable of such things.” It was a priceless skill, one her teachers had called a Lost Art, and he meant to tell her they’d done that exact thing… to build a bath chamber?
“He can’t do anything like Gate-stones, if that’s what you’re thinking. Maybe after he has a chance to train as Alda’anan.” Rune pulled the ring in the wall downward and the wooden slat pulled free. It tipped down to create a spout, and steaming water poured from it to splash into the copper tub below.
Again, his nonchalance made her all the more surprised. “It’s hot?”
“A heating element in the basin.” He clapped the spout shut again and pointed toward the ceiling. “Rhyllyn attuned its power cycle the to the mage-lights. Once they awaken, it heats as the water pours through.”
Firal crossed her arms and pretended not to be impressed. “And what if you don’t want a hot bath?”
“Then you’re welcome to bathe downstairs in one of the traditional bath chambers. This one is still…” He trailed off and tilted his gaze upward before he produced a satisfactory term. “Experimental.”
“And it’s water,” she remarked. “So of course that’s where your experiments are.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips and he turned away, though he did not look abashed.
Firal gazed at him expectantly, though she did not know how to push him to share.
In the end, he needed no coaxing. He pressed the ring flat to the wall and traced it with a fingertip, then bent to check the drain in the tub. It was open, and what little water he’d poured into the basin was already gone. Where it drained to, she did not know, but she suspected it was as creative and efficient as the rest of his strange ideas.
“We always want what’s forbidden,” he said at last. He still stared at the drain.
She did not follow. “What do you mean?”
“Water.” He smoothed back his hair, though it refused to lay nicely, dampened with sweat and streaked with dust and dirt. “My father always said it was too great a risk. I had the stone Medreal made for me, but there was only so much a glamour could do. Water was forbidden. Reflections don’t always lie.”
The quiet resignation in his voice made her chest tighten.
“But it was an island. How did he plan to keep you away from water forever?” The impossibility seemed at odds with the version of Kifel she knew. All her time leading the island he’d once ruled had shown her what sort of person he was; he’d been pragmatic, modest in taste, eschewing luxury in favor of the practical. To believe he could hold an entire ocean at bay was nothing short of absurd.
“Fear, maybe. After all, I never learned to swim.” The smile he offered was grim now, laced with irony.
Even she had learned to swim, and she’d grown up in the temple, as far away from the shore as anything on Elenhiise could get.
No; she corrected that thought a moment later.
The ruins had been farther still.
But even there, it had called to him, for the use of the waterwheel and the water races that fed the bathhouse had been his favorite project there, too. Recollection of the two of them standing in the river’s shallows and the effortless way he’d lifted the water from its course flitted through her thoughts.
Firal tilted her head, ever so slightly. “Are you certain you don’t have an affinity?”
“I think I’d be the first person to know if I did.” He left the tub and strode instead to the opposite corner, where a low wall that served no obvious purpose jutted into the room. He caught the back of his shirt and pulled it off overhead.
A squeak escaped her throat before she caught herself and she spun away.
His chuckle was soft enough to be a caress. “Nothing here you haven’t seen before.”
“I’m not certain I agree with that.” It hadn’t been all that long since he’d greeted her shirtless at the door to his quarters in the Spiral Palace. She had certainly noticed a few differences then.
“Well then you can relax, because I won’t take long.” The sound of more fabric hitting the floor told her he’d finished undressing.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “You’ve always been very brazen for a man with so much loathing for your own body.”
“My distaste for certain parts of it never meant I was not aware of my other qualities.” Something creaked and a patter like rainfall filled the room.
It was just strange enough to spark her curiosity and make her turn back.
Water fell from the ceiling in narrow streams and he stood beneath them, conveniently behind the low wall she’d thought pointless.
Ah.
Her cheeks colored. “Modesty was never one of those qualities, either.”
The smirk that curved his lips was nothing shy of roguish. “I know what I’m good at.” His fingers slid through his wet hair before he retrieved a sliver of soap and scrubbed it clean.
Firal fought to keep her gaze on his face, on his infuriatingly knowing eyes that stared back at her in a silent taunt. No matter how she struggled, her gaze tried to follow the water that coursed down the rest of him, so she sniffed and turned away. “You’re as insufferable as the day we met.”
“And yet you’re still here.” The statement was dry, though laced with amusement. “But if you don’t want to be, I could use something clean to wear to bed.”
Without hesitation, she stepped from the bath chamber and shut the door behind her. Never in her life had she seen him in a nightshirt, and she doubted he had one now, but something ordinary would do.
It was only when she reached a tall chest of drawers and pulled open the top drawer that she realized what he’d said.
Brant’s shaking branches, how could she be so dim?
An invitation. A subtle suggestion of everything she’d tried to elicit and failed.
Firal gritted her teeth and leaned forward until her forehead touched the drawer’s edge.
Seduction, it seemed, would never be her strong suit.