Chapter 6

Six

WESLEY

T he water never ran cold, even while I huddled beneath the spray until long past my skin pruned from the damp. When I unfurled myself from the ground, my muscles groaned with stiffness. Part need to run, part tension. I stood, reinstating my human form and rubbed my hair, now shoulder length instead of the short cut I adored.

A bar of soap sat on a small stone shelf. I reached for it, knowing it hadn’t been there when I entered the shower, but the solid cake smelled like lavender. I brought it to my nose, recalling the delicate bars the little King made from time to time with infusions of lemon grass, lavender, and occasionally a touch of blue bells. I’d been swiping them from him for over a decade. Soap, some tea, and once or twice, a slice of cake.

He either never noticed, or blamed the puck, or someone in his pack. Once he left the purview of the king of wolves, our connection had stretched more digitally. I’d gone from the deer he greeted from time to time near his garden, to a vague memory.

Glamour had its uses.

Where are you? The voice whispered softly. I couldn’t tell if my imagination created it, or someone looked for me. Would Sebastian care? He didn’t seem to like me much, though I’d tried to show him brotherly regard. Admittedly I had little skill in familial affection. Copying what had been done to me as a child was considered trauma to mortals. Rather I tried to remain aloof and protective. Was that wrong?

My stupid curse of visions offered no solution.

I lathered up with the soap and washed completely, feeling clean for the first time in ages, then set the soap down and turned off the water, hesitating to get out as the steam warmed my lungs. A stack of fluffy towels sat on a bench beside the exit of the shower. I knew neither had been there before, but the kitten had vanished too. He might have wandered out, growing bored with my long wash. Or this strange realm could have absorbed him back into some wild chaos of magic to create me towels.

I examined one, which felt like cotton and not fur. I dried off, trying to keep the idea of a kitten turned into a towel by magic and rubbing it all over my body out of my head. A breathy mew made me freeze, but a small bit of fluff rubbed over my ankle.

“Where did you go, pest?” I asked. “Did you report to your master that I’m finally clean?” I finished drying off as the kitten returned to its loaf position, and I went to the sink. A toothbrush, tube of paste, and a comb sat there. “I could use some lotion too,” I told no one. Toiletries were more than I’d received anywhere else, and old routines comforted my racing anxiety. “Now I need something to wear, and maybe you can tell your boss that it would be okay to let me go home?”

Did I still have one? I rented an apartment near the little King’s realm, with money from long years of planning to tie me close to him. If decades or centuries passed, it might all be ash by now. Drawing close to the monarchs of the courts had been both dangerous, and for safety. Everyone wanted a seer, even if that seer was considered volatile and incoherent most of the time.

I never told the little King or his mate what I was. Why? Fear? Worry they’d turn on me like all the other courts did with a demand for answers I didn’t have? And now knowing that the destruction of magic hadn’t been prevented… what was the point?

The kitten mewed, a long cry that made me look its way with the toothbrush in my mouth and foam everywhere. It sat beside the door next to a thin chair with a stack of clothing sitting on it.

I spit out the foam. “Um…” Was the kitten some sort of realm servant? Why make it helpless and sweet-looking? I put the brush down, rinsed and spit, washed my face, and reached for the stack of clothing.

Jeans, a T-shirt, a hoodie, loafers, and even boxers, the pile could have come from the little King’s closet. I frowned at it, thinking I had better couture at home, but what the hell. Everything fit. More magic I assumed, though couldn’t sense the ghost-like prickling that came from someone else’s glamour touching my skin.

I paused to stare in the mirror, another thing that hadn’t been there, and winced at my gaunt face and the troughs of discoloration around my eyes. The length of white-gold curls brushing my shoulders softened the hollowness of my long time without food or light. I picked up the brush, combing the strands back and securing it into a band that magically appeared on the vanity top. A man could get used to things appearing when called.

“How about a pretty man with a big dick who wants to kiss my feet and worship me instead of hurt me?” I asked my reflection, pausing a few seconds like someone would appear and somehow not scare the ever-living shit out of me. “He should be rich too. I have expensive taste.”

No one showed, and that was okay. The kitten stood in the doorway, fluffy little face looking up at me with bright blue eyes. I reached down and picked it up, tucking it in the front pocket of the hoodie as I made my way back to the kitchen. It wriggled around, sticking its little nose out of the hole but settled down as though it were perfectly fine being my new pocket pet.