Echo rolled the tin of healing balm Ivy had given her between her palms. The metal was cold against her skin, and its contents would remain solid until her body heat warmed them up. She felt her cheeks redden as she remembered the conspiratorial look on Ivy’s face when she had pressed the tin into Echo’s hands and said, “For the wounds on his back. You’ll enjoy applying it more than I would.”
And that was why Echo found herself standing in front of the door to the room that Caius had claimed for himself. She had just raised her fist to knock when she heard an indistinct curse come from the other side of the door. She didn’t know what exactly Caius had said, but she knew that it was in Drakhar and that he sounded like he was in pain.
Echo pushed open the door and poked her head inside. “Everything all right?”
Laughter bubbled up in her throat at what she saw.
Caius was trapped inside his sweater.
His raised arms were held captive by the sleeves, and his voice was muffled by a layer of wool over the lower half of his face. “Everything is perfectly fine.”
That he managed to deliver such a statement with unflagging dignity was impressive in its own right. He turned away from Echo as he attempted to extract himself from the sweater, and her laughter came to an abrupt halt.
She understood then how he had become entangled in his own clothing. The angry welts on his back had scabbed over, but the scabbing had tightened the skin. Caius’s movements were restricted lest he open the healing wounds and start them bleeding anew.
He paused when he noticed Echo’s silence. “Is it that bad?”
Echo nodded before realizing he couldn’t see it. “Yeah,” she said. “It looks even worse now than it did when …”
When she had found Caius, chained up and left for dead by Tanith. The remainder of her sentence went unspoken. Some things didn’t bear repeating, not when the wounds were – literally – so fresh.
“Let me help you,” said Echo. That was why she had come to find him, after all.
Caius did not protest as she gently liberated his arms from their woolen prison. As carefully as she could, she slipped the sweater over his head, wincing in sympathy as he let out another string of Drakhar curses. She understood a few of them from the handful of profane phrases Dorian had taught her during their time in hiding. Some of them were truly filthy.
“I’m shocked and appalled to find a prince with such a deplorable potty mouth,” she said, feeling neither shocked nor appalled.
His laugh was laced with a twinge of lingering pain. “I was a soldier before I was elected prince,” he said. “You learn all the best turns of phrase in the barracks, I assure you.”
He stood before her, bare-chested, without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. It wasn’t until he cleared his throat that Echo realized she had been staring.
Heat crept up the back of her neck as she pulled her gaze away from the expanse of tanned skin in front of her. She looked up and found Caius looking back at her, his green eyes dark. A slight but undeniable smirk danced at the corners of his lips. She wanted to insist that it wasn’t simply his physique that had overwhelmed her. The long red scars that crisscrossed his torso were hypnotic in their awfulness. But her momentary lapse seemed to amuse him, and it would have been unkind to tell him she was gawking at the evidence of his sister’s cruelty. That was what Echo told herself as she held up the tin of healing balm like a shield between them.
“I got this from Ivy,” she said. “It’s for your back.” And your front.
Caius plucked the tin from her hands and opened it. He sniffed the gelatinous goo inside. “Not bad,” he said. “These things tend to have a rather unappealing odor about them.”
“It’s the crushed mint,” Echo supplied. “Ivy uses it to mask the stench.”
Caius hummed in agreement. “Will you help me put it on?”
Oh, gods have mercy.
“Yes.” Echo was proud of the fact that she managed to speak the word like a sane human being instead of squeaking it. And she was even prouder that she hadn’t said “Please.”
He’s in pain, she reminded herself. You unbelievable letch.
Caius sat on the edge of the bed, one leg dangling off the side, the other folded in front of him. Echo settled behind him, keenly aware of the crumpled blankets and the closed door and the overall coziness of the room. A fire burned merrily in the small hearth set into the far wall, bathing the space in a soft amber glow.
Echo placed the open tin on the sheets beside her. She scooped up a generous glob with one hand. The balm was still cool, so she rubbed it between her palms to warm it. Caius’s silence amplified the intimacy of the moment. Rarely did he allow himself to appear vulnerable in front of an audience, but he had shown no reluctance to bare his wounds to her eyes. Maybe it was because she had seen them before, and with him in a far worse state than he was in now. Or perhaps there was no artifice between them anymore. Once, he’d hid behind a mask, pretended to be someone he wasn’t to trick Echo into trusting him. It had worked, for a time, but masks fell. They always did. The truth outed itself. The walls dividing them had crumbled, slowly, gradually. He knew that Echo possessed knowledge of him she shouldn’t have – Rose’s memories supplied her enough detail to fill in the gaps in her understanding of him – but there was something else there, something beyond her access to the firebird’s vessels that had opened a channel between her and Caius. He had let her in. He’d let her see the parts of himself he’d kept hidden for so long, and in turn, she had opened up herself – through conversations shared under starlit skies and chaste touches that offered more comfort than she could possibly express. With Caius, Echo could be herself, not a symbol or a savior or a soldier. And with her, he didn’t need to be a leader or a prince or a beacon of hope for his people. This room, with its messy bedding and crackling fire, was perhaps the only place in the world where the two of them could just be.
She brought her hands, shiny with balm, to his back. He flinched when she touched him, even though she was careful to place her fingers on a spot of unblemished skin first; then he relaxed with visible effort.
“Okay?” Echo asked. Her hands still rested on the curve of his shoulders on either side of his neck. She could feel the tension in his muscles even as he fought against it.
He nodded. “Okay.”
She kept her touch light as she spread the balm over the worst of his wounds. Her fingers traced the abraded skin as if following a road map, starting from his shoulder blades and wandering down the column of his spine to the slight dip of his lower back.
It didn’t take long for whatever herbs Ivy had mixed into the balm to work their magic. Caius’s head drooped forward, and every now and then he exhaled soft sighs of relief.
Echo was only halfway done when he spoke. “Thank you.”
Don’t say any time. Do not say any time.
“Any time,” she said.
A quiet chuckle made the muscles in his back twitch beneath her hands.
“Sorry.” She winced. “That was crass.”
He turned his head slightly so he could meet her eyes over his shoulder. “Don’t you dare apologize. I’m not made of stone. It’s nice to feel appreciated.”
Echo groaned. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Should I not be?”
“No,” she grumbled, working the salve into a particularly nasty cut.
A tightening of his eyes was the only sign of discomfort he allowed himself. “Then I shall endeavor to behave in a more suitably somber fashion if it pleases the lady.”
“Lady.” Echo snorted. “You can take the urchin out of the street, but you can’t take the street out of the urchin.”
Another soft chuckle. “I’m sure we can make a proper lady of you yet. All we need is a nice frilly dress, a parasol, maybe a fan. A goat to sacrifice to the gods.”
She slapped his unharmed shoulder as he laughed. A tiny snort might have escaped her.
“Make that two goats,” Caius added.
“Shut up and let me work,” Echo said. A lightness blossomed in her chest as the tension seeped out of the room. The warmth was pleasant, as was the company. It felt unbearably good to remember that not everything was war and death and loss. Echo wanted to bottle the moment and carry it with her so she could remind herself of that comforting truth when she needed it most.
Caius’s head rolled forward as Echo dug her thumbs into a knot of muscle low on his back. Her efforts were rewarded with a grunt of pleasure as the knot loosened under her touch. A different kind of heat flared in her cheeks, this one having nothing to do with embarrassment.
“I knew you would come for me.”
Caius’s voice was so quiet she had to lean in to hear him. Her hands still against his back, the skin tingling from the salve. They were so close that the hairs at the nape of his neck stirred with her breath.
“No matter what Tanith did or where she took me, I knew you would find me.”
Echo inhaled and exhaled slowly, mesmerized by the way his skin twitched as her breath hit it. “I was afraid I wouldn’t,” she said. “Or that I’d be too late and you would already be …”
Dead. She couldn’t bring herself to say that. They had lost so much between the two of them that the mere thought of adding his name to the growing list of the fallen was too much to bear.
With careful movements, Caius turned to face her. She wondered if her expression mirrored his. It was open. Raw. His pupils were dilated, perhaps because of the dim light. Or perhaps they’d been like that because she’d been touching him. His eyes hid nothing from her. He reached for her hand, unbothered by the slippery balm coating her skin. His thumb worked circles into her palm, an echo of what she had done to the stiff muscles of his back.
This close, she could smell his skin, even with the thick, cloying scent of the balm. Oil, the kind she knew Dorian used to clean his weapons. A faint whiff of woodsmoke, probably from tending the fire in the hearth. Beneath that, the slightest hint of apples. She never knew where it came from, but it was always there.
Takuminarsivalliajuq, she thought. An Inuit word to describe a person who becomes more beautiful over time. Nothing about Caius had changed intrinsically, but as Echo looked at him now, it was as if all the other times she’d looked at him didn’t really count. He was different now. She was different.
From this distance, she could see each individual scale on his cheekbones. She could have counted them if she wanted to. They caught the light from the fire, glistening in a way that reminded her of stars dappling the surface of a lake. His lips parted on a long exhalation, drawing her eye.
“Caius …”
His eyes closed lazily when she said his name. He leaned in, his forehead coming to rest against hers. It would have been easy for him to close the space between them, to press his lips against hers. She wouldn’t have resisted if he did. But he didn’t.
Echo’s heart beat so loudly in the quiet that she thought Caius could probably hear it.
“Thank you,” he said again.
She knew he wasn’t talking about the healing balm. He meant Thank you for saving me. For not leaving me alone. For caring enough to come for me.
How easy it would be to tell him. To pull back the curtain on the last secret she had: the mark with its branching shadows slithering beneath her skin. Unlike the other occurrences of the kuçedra’s poison, this one did not transfer through touch. She had touched and been touched since then and no one had suffered for it. No one but her. It would be such a simple thing to lay herself bare before him now, when all artifice and armor had been stripped away.
She felt the mark pulsing with every beat of her heart. She and Caius were both scarred, in their own ways. Echo recognized it in him because she knew what it felt like to feel cold inside. To be cut off from things other people took for granted: compassion, empathy, love. She knew the harsh bite of neglect. And she knew what it felt like to discover those things, to come to know, without a doubt, that there were people in the world who cared. Who loved her. Caius hadn’t been truly alone, but a part of him had withered after Rose, like a garden without a soul to tend it.
For a while, they simply sat like that, breathing the same air. He wouldn’t push. Wouldn’t make demands. If the gap between them was to be closed, she would have to be the one to close it.
So she did.
Her lips brushed his softly, a tentative exploration. He stayed still, allowing her to angle her head just so, letting her direct the intensity of the kiss. She kept it light. He sighed, the feel of it tickling the sensitive skin of her mouth. His thumb continued to rub small circles on her palm, a counterbalance to the soft pressure of the kiss.
Echo had expected a spectral interruption in the form of Rose’s presence at the back of her mind, but none came. She was alone in her head.
She pulled away, just enough to break the contact of their lips. When Caius leaned back, his movements a mirror of her own, her hand snaked up to rest on the back of his neck, keeping him close. He tensed, but didn’t retreat another inch. Echo stroked the baby-fine hairs at the nape of his neck and felt him relax into her touch. His lashes fanned out against his cheeks, dark against his too-pale skin.
“Is this okay?” he asked softly.
“This is okay,” she replied.
He let out a slow breath as he leaned into her. They held each other up like that for a while. Echo would have been perfectly content to stay that way. Or, better yet, to let her tired body tip to the side and sleep there, face to face, knee to knee. She remembered the way he had rolled into her side when she’d crawled into his bed the night they had rescued him from the ruined temple. After weeks – months – of danger and gut-churning terror, it had been the first bit of peace she’d known. She wanted to feel that again. She wanted Caius to feel that again.
She pressed her lips to his, deepening the kiss. His hands found her waist, pulling her closer. With a shaky exhalation, he broke the kiss. His lips trailed over her cheekbone, along the curve of her jaw. They found her neck and the fluttering pulse there. She spared a moment’s thought for the black mark hidden beneath her shirt, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
BANG.
The sound of the door crashing open had them both jumping away from each other, like guilty children caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
Dorian stared at the two of them in dismay. A feathered head poked over his shoulder.
“I knew it,” Jasper hissed. “You owe me five bucks.”
“Can I help you?” Caius asked, remarkably casual, considering where his lips had just been.
Echo flushed scarlet.
“It’s Tanith,” Dorian said, finding his composure. In his hand he cradled a pendant, one side a mirrored surface, covered in smeared blood. “Our contacts at the keep have sent a call for help. Caius, she’s massacring them. We have to go back. Now.” Dorian started to exit, but then turned back. “If you want to try to get her blood, this is the best chance we’re going to get.”