Page 59 of Into Ember

“Your meal, as promised,” Anya says. “The bath is through there. We’ll come for you in the morning, my queen.”

All three of them curtsy, deep and sincere, and file out. I watch the doors close and then it’s just us. Six people and a houseplant standing in the middle of a royal apartment, nobody saying anything.

Gunnar drops onto a couch that probably predates his father and stretches his arms across the back of it.

“So does the executioner live here too, or do we send out?”

His face drops, he leans forward with his elbows on his knees. He sits there for a moment until his face turns smug.

“You do that, you’re never getting round two and we both know you want it.”

Erik groans. My face heats and I have never wanted that executioner more in my life.

Or at all.

Chapter 23

Erik

The bathing room is through the second door, and the women in gray went all out.

A tub the size of a small boat, copper, steaming. Someone hauled that water up here bucket by bucket and timed it so it would be hot when we arrived. Petals floating on the surface. Candles on every ledge, two dozen of them, and the light they throw is soft and moving, and I approve of the work. Then I remember who ordered it, and approve less.

For her. All of it. The realm has been getting ready for her for two weeks and I can’t figure out why.

Besides the obvious. They called her queen. This castle has stood for as many generations as the stories of female dragons have existed, and until yesterday I would have called its purpose about as far-fetched as the stories themselves.

I look back into the main room. Elara is at the table, picking at a bowl of grapes. She hasn’t looked at me since the staircase. She knows exactly where I’m standing anyway. She’s doing it on purpose.

If she starts eating, the water cools. Because the argument between her and Gunnar is already starting and the bath doesn’t have time for that.

“Ella.”

She looks over. Still mad. Good. Mad means she still cares what I do.

“Come on,” I say, quietly, and hold the door.

She comes. Mad the whole way, arms crossed, but she comes, and I shut the door behind us. The room goes small and gold and quiet. It’s exactly what she needs.

“What are you doing?”

“I owe you an apology.”

“Oh, I know you do, Erik.” Arms still crossed. “But I don’t know if an apology is going to cut it.”

I wait. Waiting is the thing I’m good at.

“Though…” Quieter now. Her eyes go somewhere near my collar. “I know that standing up to that old woman… Ezra. That wasn’t easy.”

I step toward her, shaking my head. “It was nothing.”

“Bullshit, Erik.”

It wasn’t nothing. Telling the eldest of the Vestry no in her own chamber is the kind of nothing they write into Legion records with your name attached. My dragon wanted her nowhere near Elara and my body agreed and the word was out before the consequences finished lining up. I’d say it again. I’ll likely have to.

She doesn’t need the details tonight. Tonight she needs the bath.

I smirk. Can’t help it.