Page 41 of The Witch's Rite
“Alden!” I call out, lifting a hand in greeting. But his only response is a glance and a nod, and then he goes back to what he’s doing. We’ve never been particularly warm with each other, but his cold shoulder feels wrong.
Immediately, my gaze flicks to the cottage.
Has something happened with Aurora? Did they fight about something? Aboutme?
I leap the porch stairs and open the door. Inside, the air is warm and smells of peppermint and ginger, a potent mix that tickles my nose.
“Aurora?” I call out, already yanking my boots off and propping them beside the door.
“Up here!” she replies, her voice echoing down from upstairs.
I head up, my feet light on the creaking stairs. The door to the washroom is cracked open, and floral scents drift out.
“Aurora?” I ask again, gently pushing the door open wider. She’s sitting in the old copper bathtub, her head tipped back, cheeks rosy from the warmth. There’s a tiny window above her, and it lets a few golden sunbeams shine through. When she looks up at me, her soft smile calms my rapidly beating heart. If she’s smiling and relaxing like this, surely nothing bad has happened.
I ease into the steamy room, then close the door behind me. There’s a small footstool in the corner, and I grab it and set it beside the tub, then take a seat. Aurora’s hair is wet, and it sticks to her face and shoulders as she sits up and turns to face me.
“Hello, my knight,” she says, voice lilting softly.
“My queen.” I let my eyes drift down to the water, where Aurora’s body is draped along the bottom of the basin. Then I catch her lips with mine. She returns the gesture, but something feels... off. I break our kiss and tip my head. “Is everything all right?”
Aurora looks away from me and doesn’t answer, opting instead to trail her fingers through the water. What doesn’t she want to tell me?
My gaze shifts toward the little stand beside the tub, laden with bottles and vials. “Which one for your hair?” I ask quietly.
She smiles. “The pink one, please.”
I roll up my shirtsleeves and then fetch the bottle with the pink concoction inside, and when I pour a bit into my hand, the smell of roses washes over me. Aurora turns to face away from me, scooting back so I can more easily reach her.
As soon as I start sudsing up her hair, turning her head into a halo of glistening soap bubbles, a memory comes back to me. It’s from many years ago, when I was a child. I recall my mother doing this same thing for me and my sister when wewere but wee little things that spent our days playing in fields of dandelions and traipsing through mud. She’d bathe us each evening, soaping up our matching red hair and washing the mud from our cheeks, then would tuck us into bed with a kiss and a song.
Aurora sighs, settling into my touch, and I swallow the lump blocking my throat as I massage her scalp with my fingertips.
It feels like now’s a good time to tell her what I didn’t get the chance to say in the pumpkin patch last night.
“About the game of secrets... I didn’t get to tell you mine.”
A tiny laugh bubbles up from her. “I have one for you as well,” she says softly. “But you go first.”
I swallow. She’s facing away from me, and it’s easier this way, not having to look her in the eye.
“When I told you I have no siblings, I wasn’t being entirely truthful.” There’s a long pause. Aurora doesn’t push. “I had a sister. She was two years younger than me, but you’d have thought us twins.” Remembering her bright green eyes and freckled cheeks makes me feel warm inside. It’s been so long since last I spoke of her. “She was my best friend. It was rare to find one of us without the other.” I massage Aurora’s temples, careful not to let any soap suds drift into her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed pink, her skin warm from the bathwater.
A few moments pass, the only sounds the sloshing of the water and the whisper of my fingers through Aurora’s long hair.
“What happened?” she asks, voice soft, gently coaxing.
It takes me forcing down the lump in my throat before I can speak. “Lucy died when we were very young... and it was my fault.”
At this, Aurora sits up slowly, her hair slipping through my hands. She turns to face me, reaching up at the same time to twine her wet fingers between my soapy ones.
“How’d she die?” she whispers.
My sigh is a pained, fluttering thing. “There’s a pond on the grounds of our family estate. Mother told us to be careful, that the ice was thin. But we were young, and I didn’t listen well then.”
A clawed hand grips my heart and squeezes like a vise. It makes me catch my breath and wince. I’ve not spoken this aloudsince the day it happened, since I went screaming and crying to my father in his study, tugging his sleeve and begging him to come quickly, to save her.
At that time, so young as I was, I didn’t know it was already too late.
