pleasure of beating me. “Follow me,” the first guard ordered, turning back towards the door.
The second guard who had unlocked my shackles prodded me in the side roughly to get me moving. My knees felt like they would give way at any moment, but I took a wobbly step forward and then another and another. As soon as I got close enough to the wall to use it as a crutch, I did. My hands fell on the stone and then slipped alongside the rough surface as I followed behind the first guard, out of my cell.
My original hope when they had told me I’d be leaving my cell was that the bathing chambers would be somewhere else. Despite their threat to beat me if I attempted an escape, I was planning to try, but as soon as I realized that they weren’t taking me out of the tower, my hopes plummeted. No, wherever they were taking me, it was clear that it was in the same tower—likely just a different room made for bathing.
I was led to a small chamber barely bigger than the cell I’d been in for the last week. The door slid open and I was shoved inside. There was nothing in it save for one barrel in the middle filled to the brim with water. I sighed. It was still better than nothing, I supposed. The fact was, being cooped up in the tower’s cell for a week, I was starting to smell like the backside of a horse. My nose wrinkled as I leaned down and sniffed my shirt to confirm. Yup. Definitely needed this.
"Soap." One of the guards tapped a bar of soap on my shoulder, and I took it. "That's your tub, beast."
"Thanks," I said. Beast, indeed. I shook my head and reached a finger into the barrel. The water was cold. I shivered just as it reached up to my second knuckle. This would not be a long bath, that was for damn sure.
I waited for the sound of the door to close as they left, but when it never came, I turned back and my eyes widened. The three guards stood there, blocking the exit with their bodies as they glared at me. “Um … are you going to leave?” I prompted. “I can’t get undressed and bathe with you in here.”
“You cannot be trusted,” the first and tallest one snapped. “Get on with it.”
Horror sank into me. They were serious. “Can you at least turn around?” I replied. The Princes were one thing, but there was no way I’d feel comfortable letting just anyone see me naked!
The head guard narrowed his dark eyes on me before slowly turning to face the door. He then nudged the other two and they did the same. It wasn’t much, but it was better than having their eyes watching me as I undressed. I reached up to my shoulders and grasped the fabric around my chest and began to tug upward until I stripped the dress off. After I was finished undressing, I realized that the chamber itself was just as cold as the water. Goosebumps broke out over my skin, and I couldn’t stop shivers from stealing over my body.
“Hurry it up,” one of the guards snapped.
I hooked my foot around the stool next to the barrel and dragged it forward, then using it as a step ladder, I climbed up and into the barrel. Water sloshed out over the sides and I gasped as the cold water sank into my skin. The guard on the farthest right turned and looked back.
I squeaked and sank into the barrel up to my shoulders until the majority of my body was covered. “Turn around!” I huffed.
He glared at me but turned back. There was no getting used to the cold water. It just wasn’t possible, but just dipping myself into the barrel made me feel ten times better than I had the hour before. I turned my body so that even if they looked back at me, all they would see was my spine. With care, I lathered up the hard cake of soap and used it to try and scrub the worst of the grime and dirt off my skin.
The soap they’d given me wasn’t great. It scraped across my skin, leaving light pink marks. Once I’d done my best with my body, I moved the lather up to my hair. My hair was normally a golden blonde but now was a dirty