Safi had no idea what it meant.
As she stood there, a gentle pressure at her wrists drew her attention back to Caden. He was sawing off her ropes, and against her greatest wish, tears gathered in her eyes. Not from relief or gratitude, but from pain. A burst of it that clattered through her bones. “These need cleaning,” Caden said, and although there was no command in his tone, Lev immediately hopped to.
She left the room. Better odds.
“Sit,” Caden ordered, and Safi stumbled to the free side of the bed. It brought her closer to Vaness than she’d been since their capture. Hell-flames and demon-fire, the empress looked awful. Her shredded feet, her muddied legs and arms, and that colossal collar still locked around her neck.
Dizzy, Safi sank onto the bed’s edge; the empress didn’t stir, and it took all of Safi’s energy to keep her eyes open until Lev finally returned with soap and fresh linen strips.
Then Zander returned too. With food—real food and real bread and real water to wash it all down. The smell seemed to rouse Vaness, and though the fish was too rubbery and so spicy it made Safi’s tongue shriek, she didn’t care. Neither did the empress. They wolfed down the meal, and then before Safi could even try to speak to the empress about, well, anything at all, Vaness was back on her side and asleep once more.
Meanwhile, Lev and Zander scampered off again, and Caden dragged the stool between the bed and the door. Then he removed his armor. Piece by piece. Layer by layer. Gauntlets, brigandine, chain mail, gambeson, and finally his boots. Each item he placed meticulously in a pile beside the washbasin.
The Hell-Bard commander shrank and shrank until he was half his former size and down to nothing more than his underclothes. Then even the undershirt was peeled off and added to the massive pile of gear, revealing someone Safi couldn’t recognize.
Caden was not a Hell-Bard now. That person had been grim and terrifying and quick to attack. Nor was he the Chiseled Cheater, who was sly, charming, quick to quip.
This Caden was lean and scarred and muscled. He was duty, he was darkness, he was … heartbreak. Yes, something about Caden seemed hollow. Lost.
Similar to someone else Safi knew. Her uncle.
With the full washbasin at his feet, Caden soaked a cloth, then scrubbed and hissed and scrubbed some more at the wound on his shoulder. All his blades remained sheathed but within easy reach. So though his pale chest was bared and his face screwed up with pain, Safi didn’t doubt for one moment that he could kill her.
Lions versus wolves, after all.
What would Iseult do? Safi thought numbly. Not get caught, for one. But Iseult would also learn as much as she could. Food might have made Safi more tired, but surely she could conjure something useful from this foggy mind.
She cleared her throat. It hurt, and her next words tasted of black pepper. “What happened to you, Hell-Bard?”
“I was injured.” Caden’s chest shuddered as he dabbed at the bloodied gash on his shoulder. It looked deep, and there wasn’t much depth on his frame to begin with. Ropy muscles were wrapped tightly to the bone.
It brought to mind a different chest on a different man. The first physical characteristic, really, that she’d seen of Merik as he flew through the air of a Ve?aza City wharf.
Safi frowned, shaking away thoughts of the past. Of Merik’s bare chest. Those memories wouldn’t help her here.
“How did you get injured, Hell-Bard?”
“A blade.”
“Oh?” Safi’s tone was sharp now. The Hell-Bard commander was as good at dodging questions as she was at lobbing them. “And whose blade would that be?”
“My enemy’s.” For several long minutes, the only sounds were the splash of water when he dunked his bloodied cloth. The drip-drip-drip when he wrung it out. The huffing exhales when he cleaned a wound in need of more than just water to heal.
It turned out, Caden had more than just water. He pulled a clay jar from his pile of filthy gear, yet rather than apply it to his own wound, he soaked a fresh strip of cloth in the basin and crossed the room to Safi.
She refused to cower. Even when he trudged in close enough to grab her. She simply thrust out her chin and braced her spine.
He looked, as he always did, unimpressed. Or Un-empressed, she thought, doubting he would appreciate the joke any more than Vaness had.