I stick my hands in my pockets and study her. This is her peace offering. She’ll go back inside what she sees as a bastion of depravity.

“Alright,” I say.

And together we return to the castle.

Serenity

SOMETHING’S HAPPENING BETWEEN me and the king. It’s been happening for a while, but it’s not slowing down.

I stretch my legs out in the tub. I can still feel the phantom fingers of the king as they moved up my calf last night. The sensation reminded me of another time he ran his hands up my legs, only then I’d been trying to seduce him. Both times, he’d backed off.

Both times, I’d felt conflicted by his reluctance.

I hear the rustle of sheets in the adjoining bedroom, pulling me back to the present.

The king’s awake.

Heat courses through me, and I hate myself a little that he can make me feel this way at all. And that while I might be in the bath, my mind is with the king.

It takes him all of thirty seconds to make his way to the door.

I startle as it opens, water splashing against the walls of the tub. I cover myself with my arms.

“What are you doing in here?” I demand.

I hadn’t locked the door because I had thought Montes would give me privacy here of all places.

I obviously thought wrong.

He’s naked and sleep-ruffled, and in this moment, I can’t possibly reconcile him with the evil dictator I’ve hated so passionately.

“There’s my wife.” Even his voice is rough and uncultivated in the morning. It’s just one more small intimacy that I get with the king.

His molten eyes move from me to the water. “Now I know who’s been using up the palace’s water supply.”

“Are you going to let me take my bath?”

“That’s not a bath,” he says, “that’s a puddle.” He bends down, uncaring that I’m clearly uncomfortable, and sticks his hand in the water. “And it’s tepid.” Montes turns on the hot water spigot.

“What are you doing?” I ask, alarmed.

“Taking a bath,” he says, stepping in. “My wife thinks it’s good to conserve water. I’m supporting the cause.” By joining me. This man is slippery.

“You can uncover yourself,” he adds. “Your nudity doesn’t offend me.”

My gaze slits.

He settles against the opposite side of the tub, stretching his legs out until they brush mine, and he drapes his arms along the rim. It’s a good thing the basin is large enough to comfortably fit two people. Even so, he’s still crowding me.

Is this what married couples do? Step on each other’s toes until the notion of privacy is entirely done away with? I can’t escape this man.

I uncover myself and lean back against the tub, all too aware of our nakedness.

Montes settles that heavy gaze of his on me, and he wears his acquisitive look. This isn’t just a bath if he has it his way.

He picks up my foot and begins to rub it.

“Montes—” I try to jerk my foot from his grip.

“I’m helping you relax, nire bihotza.”

“I will kick you.”

He sets my foot back down and returns to staring at me.

“I have a question for you,” I say.

He raises his eyebrows. “She has an interest in her husband? Who would’ve thought?”

“‘She’ is sitting across from you and ‘she’ would appreciate it if you stopped referring to her in the third person.”

His mouth curves into a smirk. “No death threats for me this morning? I’m disappointed.”

“If you don’t stop referring to me in the third person, I’ll drown you in this puddle—as you so eloquently put it.”

“There’s my girl.”

“I’m not your girl.”

He leans back in the tub. “Don’t you have a question for me?”

I work my jaw, annoyed he’s caught me in a web of my own making. “Why are there no women in your government?”

“There are.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean my inner circle of advisors and officers? There were once women. They ended up being too soft for the job.”

“That’s your reasoning? Fuck you, Montes, and all your sexist ideals.”

“They’re not ideals. The women couldn’t stomach it.”

And the one woman that—according to him—apparently can has stomach cancer. I’m not going to peer at that one too closely.

“Had you ever considered the fact that maybe what you saw as weakness was instead compassion?”

“What, are you a champion now for women’s rights?” he says. “Odd since you seem to clash with most of them.”

In fact, I got along quite well with the women I lived with. It’s just the ones here that I can’t stand.

“I clash with most people. That has nothing to do with it.”

He pushes away from his end of the bathtub and moves towards mine. He’s eating up the final space between us, and there’s nowhere for me to go.

Montes looms over me, his glistening torso close enough to touch. That dark hair of his hangs near his eyes as he looks down at me. Just when I think he’s going to make a move, he reaches up and shuts off the water.

It goes to show you how captivated by this man I am that I don’t notice until now that the water level is past my shoulder.

Montes is hovering over me, his knees on either side of mine. The crook of his index finger dampens my chin as he tilts my face up. “We can hire more women. Is that all you wanted to talk about?”