I didn’t know how long we’d been trading blows with practice swords. Long enough that the sun had shifted across the inner yard and sweat had soaked through both my shirt and Yasafina’s tunic.

  We circled each other on the packed earth while Veridian guards pretended to focus on their own drills and failed. Training always slowed when the Queen’s captain and the barbarian decided to knock each other around.

  She feinted low, her wooden blade dipping toward my knee, then twisted and came in high. I brought my own stick up to meet it, wood cracking against wood. The impact shuddered down my arms. She was no Yrsa Valteria, but she made up for it with precision.

  We traded another half dozen moves in quick succession. She drove me back three steps, and I used a small opening to hook my leg behind hers. She slipped, but caught herself with a hand on the dirt and flowed back up before I could capitalize.

  If either of us had wanted to win, we would have started spending Aura. As it was, we kept our Classes on a short leash.

  She bounded in again. I let the blow glance off my guard, stepped into her space and set my shoulder against hers. We locked for a breath, the world narrowed to strain and balance, then both gave ground at the same moment.

  “Call it there,” she said, breathing hard.

  “You conceding?” I wiped my forearm across my forehead. Sweat stung my eyes.

  She gave the slightest flick of her ears. “We are not using Skills and you barely awakened Aura a few days ago. A wooden stick fight proves little.”

  That was as close to “you’re strong enough” as I was going to get.

  My chest rose and fell like bellows. She wasn’t much better off, shoulders heaving as she straightened and planted the practice blade point-down in the dirt for a moment.

  “You’ve been doing this every morning?” she asked once her breath smoothed out a little. “Then evenings with Ragna, if the reports are right. And drills with the knights between.”

  “Trying to get ready before I cross half a continent,” I said. “Apparently Ethenia collects monsters with good marketing.”

  The teleportation field wasn’t ready yet, the mages were working on it. But it shouldn’t take too long. Soon, Ragna and I would walk out of Thalassaria.

  “The Trials, yeah,” she nodded. “And gods know what else in that scary place. It was the seat of an Arcane King back in the day, if you know that term. But you will not walk into that coliseum sharper because you broke something in Solstara.” Her gaze traveled over me in a quick sweep. “Go find water. Real food. Then sleep.”

  “Orders already?” I rested the end of my stick on the ground and leaned on it. “I thought I was supposed to be the one leaving command structures behind.”

  “Take it as advice,” she replied, her graying hair flying in the wind. “If you limp into Ethenia because you refused a bath, the Queen will blame me anyway.”

  “That would be unjust,” I said. “You gave good hits. How old are you, by the way?”

  “The bath,” she insisted, ignoring the compliment. “Then food. Then sleep. In that precise order, Valtherian. You smell like three days’ march.”

  “That’s rich, coming from someone who fought through undead last week.”

  “I bathed yesterday.” There was a very small thread of satisfaction in her voice, like a cat that had found cream. She might as well have been one, the way her ears twitched. “If I had access to the royal baths the way you do, I would bathe every day until the pipes broke.”

  I paused, halfway through turning away. “The what?”

  Her eyebrow rose. “The royal bathhouse.”

  “Since when do I have access to that?”

  “Since Her Majesty placed a title on your shoulders that opens more than council doors,” she said. “You have not used it?”

  “No one told me it came with hot water,” I muttered. “All this time I’ve been scrubbing in the soldiers’ troughs.”

  Yasafina shook her head once, faintly incredulous. “Go to the Erebian wing. Northern side. Follow the warmer air. There is a large room with white stone and a pool deep enough for a whole fleet. The water feeds from the volcanic spring under the ocean; it stays hot all year long. Very fun place… You remember you are not made only for work.”

  She sounded almost wistful describing it. That was new.

  “You really liked it,” I said.

  She looked away at the guards, who had suddenly discovered very intense opinions about shield angles. “It was… adequate,” she said. “For a day when I had been given leave from blood and boots.”

  “High praise,” I said. “All right. You’ve sold me.”

  She snorted. “Be grateful I am not taking you there by the ear. Go before I change my mind.”

  I put the practice sword back on the rack and picked up my real axe, the haft familiar against my palm. Yasafina’s gaze flicked to it and then away.

  “Leave that outside the pool,” she said. “If you drown, it will not save you.”

  “If I drown in a bath, I deserve it,” I said.

  ****

  The air grew warmer the deeper I walked into the northern wing. Pillars here were carved with older patterns, looping Erebian knotwork instead of Thalassarian waves. A few servants bowed quickly from doorways as I passed, their eyes following the seal on my belt or my hair or both.

  I stopped a girl with a tray of folded linens before she could flee.

  “Royal bathhouse?” I asked.

  She almost dropped the tray, it made sense since I was twice her size, staring down at her. My height became more obvious indoors, especially for civilians.

  “Th-the baths, my lord?” she stammered. Her gaze slid down to my still-damp chest and the way sweat trailed down my chest before she jerked it back up to my face. “Yes. Yes, of course. If you go straight ahead and then left after the arch with the lion carving… but I can show you, if you wish.”

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  Her ears had turned pink. That was almost impressive under brown skin.

  “Lead on,” I said. “And don’t call me lord. Thorvyn is fine.”

  “Y-yes. Thorvyn.” She mangled the barbarian consonants and tried again, then gave up and walked so fast enough that I had to take long strides.

  We went through a carved stone arch where a lion’s head glared down from the keystone, then turned left. The floor tiles changed from plain stone to something smoother, faintly warm under bare soles even through my boots.

  Steam drifted out from under a heavy pair of doors ahead, carrying a hint of mineral and some herb I couldn’t place.

  The maid stopped there and bowed again.

  “The changing room is just inside,” she said. “You can leave your… things… there. There are towels. You, um, wrap one around yourself before going through the inner door. Please… take your time.”

  Her eyes tried very hard not to drop to the axe in my hand.

  “I’ll try not to flood the place,” I said.

  She gave a helpless little laugh and fled back the way we’d come, almost tripping over her own hem.

  The doors were heavy but swung easily when I pushed. Warm air washed over me, dense and steady instead of the dry heat of a forge. Inside was a low, wide chamber lined with benches and cubbyholes. Light filtered in through high, smoke-glass windows, turning the steam into slow ghosts.

  Hooks along one wall held stacks of white towels. The opposite wall had polished metal plates hung at head height, not quite mirrors, but close enough to show a blurry version of my own sour face.

  There was no one else.

  I set my axe down carefully in an empty cubby, resting it in a way that wouldn’t send it clattering if someone brushed it.

  Clothes came off in the usual order. Boots, trousers, and the single black shoulderplate that I always wore even while sparring. It was mixed with volcanic iron and the bone of the dragon we’d slain. The air was warm enough that gooseflesh only prickled briefly before settling.

  My muscles looked different when I didn’t see them through sweat and armor. Stronger than the first day in Netherwood. Marked by fights I hadn’t expected to live through.

  Had it truly been so long since I opened my eyes in this world…?

  The towel was big enough to go around me with some spare. I folded it once and tied it at my hip, knot tight. No reason to be entirely comfortable.

  The main bath was exactly the sort of beauty Yasafina had described and more.

  The room was a high-vaulted space where white stone walls met an arched ceiling. The pool dominated the floor, sunk low with a lip of smooth stone. Water lapped at its edges, steaming gently. Lion-headed spouts along the far wall poured thin streams of fresh hot water into it that sent ripples across the surface.

  Lamps burned in sconces high enough that their light didn’t glare, casting everything in a soft, steady glow. It smelled of warm rock, clean water, and a faint hint of herbs rather than the harsh lye from the soldiers’ washing barrels. I already loved this place.

  I stepped down until the water reached my calves and my skin nearly sang. Heat soaked into the bruises Yasafina had gifted me and the older ones I’d stopped cataloguing.

  “Nice.”

  For a moment I thought I was alone.

  In my defence, it was a steamy place so it was a little difficult to see through unless I focused my Dragon’s Eye. Someone shifted on the far side of the pool.

  A figure sat with her back to the stone, blue hair piled up in a loose knot, shoulders bare above the water. Another shape lounged not far from her, red hair pinned sloppily at the back of her head, a familiar scar peeking at the base of her throat.

  They both turned when they heard the splash of my step.

  “Thorvyn the Weakling!” Ragna grinned outright. Isolde’s eyes went a little wider before she smoothed her face by habit.

  I went still, one hand half-raised from my side. The water reached just below my knees.

  “Ah, hey,” I said.

  “About time,” Ragna said, leaning her arms back on the stone. Water beaded along her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing anything the water didn’t provide. “We were taking bets on whether you’d get lost in the palace corridors and die of thirst before finding the place.”

  “I thought this was communal,” I said. “Didn’t think it was… occupied.”

  “It is communal,” she said. “For very few people.”

  Isolde cleared her throat, and the crown on her head hummed. The sound didn’t quite hide the flush already gathering on her cheeks from the heat.

  “This was my doing,” she said, and there was a careful steadiness to her voice that made me pay attention. “I asked Yasafina to send you here at this time.”

  I stared at her for a second, then at the water, then at Ragna, then at the door behind me.

  “Then this is a trap,” I said. “For my self-control.”

  Ragna laughed. “The great Thorvyn, defeated by warm water and pretty women. The bards will love it.”

  I considered retreating. My skin liked the heat already. The rest of me wasn’t sure it liked anything about the situation.

  “If you walk out now,” Isolde said, watching me very closely, “I will understand. Truly. And I will take it as an answer.”

  That landed somewhere behind my ribs.

  She wasn’t a girl slipping into a bath by mistake. She was a queen who had gone to the captain of her guards and asked for this, then taken off her royal robes and come here anyway. If I left, that wouldn’t just be sparing her embarrassment. It would be rejecting that choice.

  “Yasafina really undersold the place,” I said. “She never mentioned the royalty.”

  The corner of Isolde’s mouth twitched. “She is not paid to advertise.”

  Ragna splashed water in my direction in a lazy arc. “Get in here before you get cold.”

  I sighed, which did nothing except make them both watch the way my chest rose and fell. “All right,” I said. “If anyone complains to the priests, I’ll tell them it was your idea.”

  I stepped down until the water reached my thighs, then my hips. The towel clung instantly, weight shifting as it soaked. It felt more ridiculous and more necessary at the same time. Ragna’s gaze dipped under the surface and up again. There was mischief in it.

  “You know some people take those off to bathe,” she said.

  “I’ve heard rumors,” I said. Isolde burst out laughing.

  “Planning to wash the towel too?” Ragna continued.

  “It’s serving its purpose.”

  “What purpose is that, exactly?” Her grin widened. “Are you embarrassed, Stormborn?”

  “I’m cautious,” I said.

  “You weren’t cautious when you leapt at the Undead King’s chest,” she said. “Or when you decided to scream at Marius in his own study. But apparently hot water is where you draw the line.”

  “You’re enjoying this too much,” I said.

  “I’m enjoying the rare sight of you looking like you want to be anywhere else,” she said.

  Isolde shifted beside her, half-laughing, half-hiding her face with one hand. “Ragna…”

  “What? You wanted him honest, didn’t you?” Ragna said. “This is what honesty looks like when it doesn’t have armor on.”

  I gave her a look that usually preceded someone getting tackled in a spar.

  “You’re pushing it,” I said.

  “Or what?” she asked, teeth flashing. “You’ll–”

  I stood up. Water sluiced off my chest and stomach in a sheet, trailing down to the knot at my hip and then pouring back into the pool. The towel clung lower now, heavy with heat and water, as it then slid down.

  The towel floated in the water.

  For a moment I towered over them, nothing hidden above the line.

  Ragna shut her mouth with an audible click. Isolde’s eyes went round; then she jerked her gaze up to the ceiling with the guilty speed of someone who’d just stared straight where she shouldn’t.

  My face showed no reaction. I sank back down until the water closed over my stomach again. “Happy?” I asked.

  Ragna cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said, voice rougher than before. “No. Maybe. I need to reevaluate a few things.”

  “I warned you,” I said.

  Isolde’s fingers had curled on the stone beside her. She took a moment before trusting her voice. “T-thank you for… taking my invitation seriously,” she managed.

  “Honestly,” I said. “I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about this after everything.”

  “Well.” She drew in a slow breath you could almost see. “I do.”

  Well, she’d certainly chosen an interesting place to talk.

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