The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,62
shutting off the shower, and carried me to the tub, pulling out of me as he did. He climbed us both into the tub, sitting down in the hot water, my back against his chest as he pressed my head against his shoulder.
He kissed my neck, my cheek. “Just rest. Let’s be warm for a few minutes.”
I nodded. “That was…just what I needed. Thank you.”
He laughed in my ear. “Don’t thank me. I should be thanking you. It’s hard to come down from the battles. It’s why people party until the early morning hours afterward. But I’d rather lie here with you and just be.” He put his hand over my heart. “Listen to your heartbeat. Eat. Laugh. Sleep. Whatever you want.”
Lazy and languorous as we were in that moment, a sharp thought snuck in, and I tensed. “Nox? How are you feeling?”
I could feel the rumble of his laughter against my back, his breath puffing against my wet hair. “Ah, there is a crude term for it, but basically, I feel like I have just made love to an incredible woman. Content? Satisfied? Hopeful, maybe.”
His words made me glow all over, but he hadn’t answered me, not really. “Physically, I mean.”
“You mean the injury from the… What did you call them?”
“Burrs.”
“Yes. I won’t lie, the places where they entered my body, the wounds, still ache. I suppose it will take a while for that to go away, but with the fugue of battle, I didn’t think about them until you mentioned it just now. I would imagine it’s like your branding scars.”
Beneath the water, I touched my forearm. I could feel the raised welts where my men had burned their numbers onto me, but there wasn’t any pain. “No, they are all healed.”
“Already?” He seemed shocked.
“Yeah. That salve Astor makes for burns, the stuff you used on me when you found me at the crash site, it’s kind of magical.”
Nox was quiet for a long time, breathing in and out, his chest rising and falling steadily against my back, making the water quiver on its surface. Steam curled up into the air, warming even the exposed parts of us, blanketing us in warmth. This tub was large enough I could stretch my legs out straight and still not touch the far end with my toes, and Nox’s arms held me the whole time, as if I were something precious. It was bliss, even without the luxury salts and oils I was used to.
“It really isn’t,” he said after the longest time.
I’d forgotten what we were talking about, honestly. “Eh?”
“The salve,” Nox clarified. “It’s effective, yes, but unusually so on you. I’ve never seen anyone heal the way you do. And that’s just the physical part. Mentally and emotionally… I mean, you fell from the sky, almost burned to death, discovered yourself abandoned on an entirely new world, and you’ve adapted so easily. Bianca, I’m not understating when I say that if anything is magical here, it is you.” He paused and then added, “You’ve certainly ensorcelled me.”
Ensorcelled. What a word. This man was adorable. I leaned my head back against his chest and closed my eyes.
He had a point, but the magic wasn’t me. Nothing about me was magical or wondrous. “I’ve ingested a lot of medications over the years because of my heart condition. They boost my regenerative capabilities, I guess. And the emotional stuff. I feel like I lived my whole life before the crash just waiting for something to happen. Every time I’d get excited or hopeful about something—like teaching poetry—I’d get some bad medical news or politics would shift, and the exciting thing would end and my life would fall back into its rut of being a Cervantes, being my parents’ kid, my brother’s sister, a piece of someone else’s household with no expectation that I’d ever get to go out on my own or be a person myself. And then I get here and the waiting is over. My life started. I’m alive.”
“For which I am grateful,” he said, dropping a kiss against my hair. “And I still think you’re magic.”
The aches of the day bled out of my muscles, and the longer we talked, the cooler the water became. When I shivered, Nox suggested we get out and move to the bed, maybe sleep. Honestly, it had been a day. Sleep would be good.
Except then he stood, climbed over the lip of the giant tub, and held a hand out to help me,