Page 81 of Flame and Sparrow

I didn’t ask her to leave only because my skin felt like it was in danger of disintegrating at this point, and I needed her help to work out how to fill the washroom’s giant copper tub with water and whatever else might help cleanse me.

While that tub filled with water, pumped up through a pipe—that, fascinatingly, needed no more help from her after she got it started—she busied herself with picking through the various bottles along the shelf, muttering to herself as she searched.

“This should soothe your skin and help it back toward normal,” she finally said, uncorking a purple glass bottle and pouring its oily contents into the tub. It turned the water nearly opaque, filling the air with a soft peppermint scent as it did.

I didn’t need any more coaxing than this. While Rieta went back to the shelf in search of more remedies, I peeled my clothing carefully from my aching skin and stepped into the steaming tub.

The peppermint water felt oddly thick as it slid across my body, like a gritty mud scraping over me. It was unnerving, unexpected, but not entirely unpleasant. It felt like all of my bone-deep itches were finally being scratched.

I floated in that exfoliating water, oblivious to the rest of the world, until Rieta appeared, looming over me with a washcloth in her hand.

“You’ll need to be rough with this to get at the deeper stardust residue,” she told me. “I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.”

“I can manage without you,” I said, somewhat coldly, as I snatched the cloth from her and sank back into the water.

She looked ruffled by my response, but she said nothing else before bowing her head and leaving the room.

I did as she’d instructed, rubbing my skin nearly raw in the process. Even after several minutes of methodical cleansing, my back still itched between my shoulder blades; I couldn’t reach it well enough to apply proper pressure. Irritated, I closed my eyes and slid down deeper into the tub, trying to use the side of it to help slough off the damaged skin.

I was almost entirely underwater when I heard what sounded like claws skittering along the edge of the tub, and I resurfaced just as something small and brown plopped into the water in front of me.

A scream ripped from my throat before I could stop it—before a single pale golden wing stretched out of the water and gave a pitiful twitch, and I realized it was not a rat or some other nasty creature; it was Moth.

I scooped the griffin up and tossed him onto the shelf beside the tub. He seemed dazed, his face wrinkling in confusion every time he breathed in the peppermint-scented air.

As I opened my mouth to scold him for frightening me, I caught sight of the mirror on the far wall of the room, and I saw Dravyn standing in the doorway behind me. I nearly screamed again, grabbing the washcloth floating nearby and using it to cover as much of my chest as I could.

“What are you doing in here?”

“I—”

“Was this a trick?” I demanded. “Were you lingering in your room, just waiting for an excuse to come barging in?”

“Of course not,” Dravyn growled. “I wasn’tlingering, I just happened to be bringing up fresh towels, and I heard you scream.”

I clutched the washcloth closer to my chest, still fuming as I considered his words. Why was he bringing towels himself? He could have gotten a servant to do that.

Had he been coming to check on me?

The moment shifted from heated to awkward in the span of a heartbeat. I briefly considered sinking below the water again and never resurfacing.

“You…you’ve missed a spot,” he muttered. “In the center of your back. Can you not reach it?”

I started to lie and say I was fine, but a fresh, terrible itch prickled down my spine at that exact moment, and I had to grit my teeth together to keep from crying out at the irritation. My discomfort was far too obvious.

“…May I?” he asked.

I clenched the washcloth more tightly to my bare chest and didn’t reply.

“The skin already looks damaged beyond repair.” I heard him take a step closer, and concern and irritation mingled in his tone as he added, “That fucking goddess and her fucking stardust…”

I gritted my teeth so tightly I thought I might crack them.

“It needs to be dealt with,” he said. “I can send for Rieta if you insist, but we need to be quick.”

Another painful itch rippled out from the spot in question, and I gave in and shook my head; I just wanted this all to be over with. “Don’t send for her. I don’t need any more company in here, just…just do whatever you need to do and then get out, please.”

He went first to the shelf Rieta had been sorting through earlier. While he was preoccupied, I risked leaning out of the tub and grabbing a larger towel, so at least my entire front could be covered. Using that, as well as scooting closer to the back of the tub and sinking as deeply as I could into the cloudy, concealing water, he couldn’t see much of me aside from the spot he intended to help with.

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