Chapter 294: Are You Going To Ask Me Something?

She did. The shirt came off over her head.

He did not look at her the way he had in the pool. There was no hunger in it, no fever-sharp focus. His eyes went over her as a physician’s might, quick and thorough and gentle, and when they found the bruises on her hips and thighs, his jaw tightened. He said nothing. He took her hand and helped her down into the water.

It was heaven.

She sank to her shoulders with a long shuddering moan. The heat soaked into every aching muscle. She tipped her head back against the lip of the tub and closed her eyes, and felt something loosen in her chest that had been tight since the ridge.

"Better?" he murmured.

"Gods," she breathed. "Yes."

He knelt behind her at the edge of the bath. She heard the small wet sound of a cloth being wrung out. Then warm hands lifted the hair from her neck, and the cloth moved across her shoulders in slow, patient circles.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

He washed her the way one washes something precious. He did her shoulders and her back, and the long muscles on either side of her spine, and the tender places at the base of her neck. His hands were steady now. Each stroke was slow and unhurried. When the cloth passed over her arms, over the dark prints of fingers that were not his, he paused a little longer.

"I’m sorry about these," he said, very quietly.

"They don’t hurt."

"I know. I’m still sorry."

"You didn’t make them."

"I made some of them."

She opened her eyes. "Thorne."

"I know." His voice was calm. "I know you wanted them. I know you asked. I am not sorry for what happened, Morgana. I am only...." He stopped. "I wish I could have been gentler with you. The first night. I was not."

She turned in the water.

She had not planned to. It simply happened, a slow half turn that brought her facing him, her arms resting on the edge of the tub, water running down her collarbones. He knelt on the black tile with the wet cloth in his hand and his sleeves soaked to the elbow, and he looked at her as though she might say something terrible.

"You were fine," she said. "You were...." She searched for the word. "You took care of me."

"I frightened you."

"A little. At the beginning."

"Morgana."

"And then I wasn’t frightened." She held his gaze. "Do you know what I remember? Not the cold. Not the fever. I remember waking up and you were holding me. And I thought, he stayed."

Something moved in his face.

"That’s what I remember," she said. "That you stayed."

He put the cloth down.

He did it slowly, as though his hands needed a moment to remember how. Then he reached out and brushed a wet strand of hair from her forehead, and his thumb lingered at her temple.

"Hold still," he said.

"Why?"

"Salve."

He took a small blue jar from the ledge, and she watched him unscrew the lid. The ointment inside was pale green and smelled of crushed leaves and mint. He warmed it between his palms. Then he took her arm in both his hands, and began, with great gentleness, to smooth it over the bruises.

It was cool at first.

Then it began to tingle, a faint prickle that sank into her skin and spread, and under it she felt the soreness ease. His hands moved over her wrist, her forearm, the soft inside of her elbow. His touch was warm and deliberate. It was not a seduction. It was care, so plain and so total that her eyes began to sting.

"This is what you do," she said, "when you’re angry at them?"

"This is what I do when I’m not angry at you." He smoothed the salve up to her shoulder. "I have a great many feelings about it. I will express them to Kaelen later, with a sword."

"Don’t hit him."

"I will hit him lightly."

"Thorne." She called out.

"With the flat."

She giggled, and he almost smiled.

He moved to her other arm, and then to her shoulder, and the soft place under her collarbone where a small purple mark had bloomed. She watched his bent head, the dark hair falling across his forehead, the line of his jaw. A thought rose in her and would not leave.

"Thorne."

"Mm."

"Are you going to ask me something?"

His hands paused.

"I don’t know what you mean."

"You’ve been wanting to," she said. "Since I woke up. You keep opening your mouth and shutting it again. You did it three times when Silas came in."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," he said.

"Then ask."

"It isn’t a good question."

"Ask anyway."

He set down the jar.

When he spoke, his voice was low and level, but he did not look at her. He looked at the water.

"Last night," he said. "When I came to the door. I heard you." A muscle moved in his jaw. "And I stood there for twenty minutes, Morgana, in a corridor, like a boy, because I didn’t know if I was permitted to come in. I did not know if you wanted me there. I did not know if you wanted anything but them."

"Thorne....."

"I’m not angry about it. I was angry, this morning, and I said things, but I wasn’t angry at you. I wasn’t even angry at them." His mouth twisted. "I was left out. That is what it was. I was left out of something that I wanted very badly to be inside, and I had no right to be upset, because you did not invite me, and nobody did anything wrong."

She said nothing for a moment.

The water lapped at the edge of the tub. A drop fell from the ceiling and rang, once, on the black tile.

"Come here," she said.