Chapter Twenty-Four

The Bath

Tossed once again over a demon’s shoulder, Alodie breathed heavily, heart pounding. In the stinging wake of having been handed over, she cursed him, again and again, no words strong enough to hold the poison of her hate. That bastard. That horrible, terrible, rotten-to-the-core, dog-loving demon.

She’d believed he’d cared about more than himself. Foolish. She had the sense of a flea for having believed otherwise.

Except worse. She’d been thinking with the parts between her legs instead of with her head. She’d let him touch her. It was disgusting. Degrading. Humiliating. And she’d wanted more—much more. How could she have ever thought she wanted him to do that to her? The next time she saw him, she was going to rip his eyes out.

The demon who carried Alodie away set her down atop the hill. Rain had turned the dirt path slick.

The jarl cast her a look. He had dark hair, as dark as hers, and light brown eyes. His severe features might have, in the glow of youth, once been appealing. He was pale. Yellowish, even. Like a corpse after a day and night of being laid out when all the blood had pooled at the back of the body. Skin stretched thin over his skull gave him the gaunt appearance of a man turned cold and sadistic with age.

And the way he stared at her… It was unnerving. Like he saw something in her face and was trying to determine what it was.

He waved a hand toward a few members of the retinue. “See her cleaned.”

Without another word, he turned the other way, demons trailing him.

Alodie stayed a moment, watching. She should have taken a better look at the men of a certain age to see if any of them sparked a long-buried memory. Any of the older ones could have been her father. If he was still alive. Maybe she’d see him. Or maybe he’d recognize her.

One more man whose eyes needed gashing out.

Inside one of their houses, a group of women stripped Alodie bare. Nearby, a great basin of water steamed beside glowing coals. The room was oppressively warm, and a light mist swirled in the damp air. It was narrow and dim, with plenty of activity while people attended to other chores. Wooden beams held up the pitched roof and the floor was dirt.

All in all, it was surprisingly complex and well maintained. The demons lived well, it seemed.

A woman took her hand and helped her into the water. Presumably they weren’t making a soup of her, but it was a little like being a leek tossed into a pot.

Alodie sank down into the water, her whole body relaxing. Oh, that wasn’t so terrible, was it? Who knew submerging one’s whole body could be so wonderful? Even the princess never did this. Maybe the idea of warming water came naturally to demons, eager to return to the hellfire that spawned them.

She let her eyes drift shut. Perhaps there were pleasures in hell after all. Previously, she hadn’t known enough to envision how these people might have lived. If pressed, she might have said in animal dung heaps or pits lined with their own filth.

Instead, they scrubbed her skin and carefully combed out the wet locks of her hair. Though they believed her to be the daughter of the jarl’s greatest enemy, Alodie couldn’t complain about how they treated her.

None of them spoke to her, though a constant chatter hummed around her as they talked to one another. Alodie, lazily trailing her fingers back and forth over the surface of the water, listened, understanding almost all of what they said. This one’s weaving was almost done and she was going to try something else when she started her new piece of cloth; another had an aunt whose sheep was limping; a woman with pale hair had a little boy who wouldn’t stop trying to ride the family sow.

It was almost as pleasant as the warm water, hearing the soothing domestic concerns after the long days aboard the ship with men.

When a woman entered holding a newborn no more than a few weeks old, all of them stopped what they were doing to huddle around the tiny creature and coo, stroking her cheeks and the tiny fingers with warm affection. It was a happily familiar sight. These…these people, they were…different from her. Yet the same in many ways.

Alodie looked away, splashing the steaming water gently and inhaling the gentle aroma of the herbs they’d put in to sweeten the smell.

As they dressed her, she stretched her limbs, taller and longer than she’d felt since before…

With the salt off her skin, the tangles out of her hair, and the water melting tension from her muscles like warm fat over a flame, she could almost remember who she was. If the demon leader came to her now, she might only scratch his eyes with a knife instead of ripping them right out of their sockets in a bloodthirsty haze.

They fed her a spiced dish of meat and gave her a berry wine to drink, the flavor not familiar enough to name.

A figure appeared at the door and called one of the women over where they spoke in low tones. Alodie might not have noticed, except the woman burst out suddenly, rushing from the doorway back over to the group. “Come, come. Outside. Come. They’re going to see Sigurd—”

She went on, but Alodie couldn’t catch the words. Sigurd, though, she did understand. Presumably there were more demons with that name than the one who’d died—his milk brother.

The narrow space emptied. Behind her, one of the dying embers popped. Alodie jumped.

She held a hand against her thumping heart and took a breath. Next to the door, her green cloak hung on a peg. The wool was damp, but that didn’t matter. She tossed it over her shoulders and wandered outside.

The rain had stopped and the clouds were parting. From behind the dark curtain shone a brilliant pale orange glow. The last moments of a dying day.