Chapter 193: The First Gentle Thing

BONNIE

They left me to it, which caught me off guard. Delta sent me a swift, sympathetic glance from the doorway before the door clicked shut behind her, leaving me alone with the bath.

In the next room waited a deep copper tub, half sunken into a tiled alcove, steam unfurling from its surface in slow, lazy spirals. Dried lavender and crushed rose petals floated on the water. Plush towels were piled on a stool nearby. A silver dish of soap gleamed on the ledge, and a row of oils lined the wall, each in a delicate glass bottle with a handwritten label.

I stared at all of it for a long moment.

I remembered the sentinel quarters as a place of long corridors, functional rooms, and the constant hum of life carrying on around me. The bathrooms were communal, with tiled floors, steel showerheads, and water that never seemed to stay hot for long. There had been a laundry room at the end of the corridor, where washing machines rattled through the night and the air always smelled faintly of detergent and damp clothes. The bedrooms were modest, furnished with narrow beds, metal lockers, and desks crowded with personal belongings. Everything had its place, though little of it ever felt truly private. Even within the royal estate, the quarters were built for efficiency rather than comfort, meant to house those who guarded the family, not those who belonged to it. I had learned to live with the noise of doors opening at all hours, the murmur of conversations through thin walls, and the heavy footsteps of sentinels returning from their shifts. It had never been luxurious, but it had been more than I could have afforded on my own.

I slipped out of my nightgown, hung it with care on the hook, and eased myself into the waiting water.

The heat wrapped around me, gentle and close as an embrace.

A sound escaped me, one I would have sworn never happened—a long, helpless groan rising from my chest as my shoulders slipped beneath the surface. Water closed over my collarbones, scented steam curling over my face, and every muscle that had been knotted since the courtyard finally let go. My knees floated, my neck dropped back against the rim. For the first time in what felt like a year, nothing demanded anything from me.

I stayed like that for a long while, listening to the quiet crackle of the overhead light and the faint drip of the tap.

A bubble formed near my knee.

It was a lazy thing, a pearly little sphere that rose from the soap film on the water’s surface and lifted into the air, wobbling as it went. I watched it drift toward the wall, catching a glint of window light along its curve, until it touched the tile with a faint pip and was gone.

A smile found me before I even chose it.

Then, on a whim, I looked at the water.

Come up.

I did not speak it aloud. I didn’t even mean to. I simply wanted, with the same easy longing that makes a child reach for a cup, and a thin, round ball of water lifted itself from the surface and hovered before me, trembling in the air. I held it with something other than my hands, an invisible pressure I could feel but could not explain. It wobbled, tilted dangerously to one side, and I frowned. The sphere steadied at once, its surface smoothing beneath the faint light.

A second one rose from the water, followed by a third. They floated beside the first, each one quivering slightly, catching the light in tiny, shifting reflections. I stared at them, scarcely breathing, and tried to understand how I was doing it without a word, a gesture, or even the faintest idea of what I was supposed to be doing.

It did feel good.

I lifted my fingers from the bathwater and flicked them, sending the bubbles spinning around each other in a slow orbit. They caught the light, their translucent surfaces shimmering as scented petals clung to their curved undersides. I made them larger, then smaller, until they were no bigger than beads of glass. One drifted toward the ceiling, and I drew it back with a thought, watching it descend into the others without bursting.

A quiet laugh escaped me. I had never done this deliberately before, not like this, without fear or desperation driving me. In the courtyard, though I could hardly recall any of it, my power had been a weapon, a flood that had answered some instinct I barely understood. Here, in the warmth of the bath, with the soft glow of the lamps reflecting off the marble and no one watching, it felt different. Effortless, almost familiar. As though I had always known how to do this, as though some part of me had been waiting all these years for the chance to remember.

"Mama, look what I can do."

The thought arrived uninvited, and my grip faltered because of it. One of the bubbles dipped.

I caught it before it fell and let out a slow, steadying breath.

It had been there all along, hadn’t it? The thing in my hands, in my blood. My mother had seen it when I was too young to understand. She had wept for it. Hours ago, I tried to convince myself this new power was something I had found, some strange gift that had awakened in me by accident, when it was something I was born holding.

I wondered whether Lily of the Valley would give me anything like peace.

It seemed unlikely. It was the place where she had died. It was the place where I had killed a Beta with a glance and set a few sentinels’ bodies to ash. Nothing in those grounds could be called restful. But it was also the last place my mother had stood, and for the first time in years I felt something other than dread when I thought of walking through its gates.

Maybe all I needed was a clear head. A few hours away from elaborate lies and carefully laid schemes, from the royal politics that seemed to follow Lysander everywhere. I was certain Lysander needed the same. Just the open road, the steady stretch of asphalt beneath us, and memories stirred by the trees lining the way. Perhaps, with the world finally quiet enough, I could make sense of what the goddess had told me, turn her words over in my mind until their meaning became clear, and stop feeling as though I was drowning beneath the weight of them.

And maybe, though I hated to admit it, some part of me had half expected him to come.

My father Lycaon.

I had gone to sleep braced for it. After the dream of my mother, after seeing her face for the second time in more than a decade, I had waited for that cold, patient presence to slip in behind my eyes and speak to me from the edge of the meadow. I had told myself I would refuse him. I had rehearsed the refusal.

But he had not come.

There had been no whisper in the dark, no tall figure waiting at the end of a dream.

And what bothered me, truly, was that the silence dampened my spirits. I could not explain it. I did not want to hear his voice. I did not and would never trust any word that would ever come out of his mouth. But a man who had shown me my mother’s face had been oddly absent the one night I needed to ask him what else he knew, and some small, traitorous part of me missed having something to push against.

My concentration wavered, and the bubbles burst.

Water came down all at once, splattering across my shoulders, spilling into my hair, and slapping against the tiles. I yelped, sputtering as I swiped it from my eyes, while scented petals stuck to my cheeks. The last bubble, which had been floating innocently near the ceiling, dropped straight into my lap with a final, undignified splash.

For a moment, I sat there dripping, water trickling down my face and shoulders.

Then I laughed. The sound came out breathless and embarrassingly loud in the quiet bathroom, echoing off the tiled walls. I clapped a wet hand over my mouth, as though that might somehow contain it, but the corners of my lips refused to cooperate.

"Get a grip, Bonnie," I muttered to myself.