Chapter 7: Scouring Shame
Steam rose in thick, ghostly coils, wrapping around Leandra’s body like a second skin. The air in the royal baths was heavy, damp, and scented with the cloying sweetness of Eldermere orchids—a conquering king’s perfume. She hated it.
She stood waist-deep in the central pool, the heated water sluicing over her hips. In her hand, a pumice stone scraped methodically, harshly, over the skin of her inner thigh. The pink flush of abrasion bloomed under the gray stone’s path. She scrubbed harder, focusing on the spot where his grip had bruised her, where the memory of his palm was branded into her nerve-endings.
“You’ll draw blood.”
Annelise’s voice echoed softly off the marble vaults. She was perched on the pool’s edge, her feet dangling in the water, watching with the unnerving stillness of a hawk. Her gown was rucked up around her knees, a practical concession to the steam. She held a crystal glass of iced wine, the condensation dripping onto her thigh.
“Good,” Leandra muttered, not stopping. The scrape of stone on skin was a clean sound, a pain she controlled. It was better than the other feeling, the one that lingered beneath the ache: a deep, throbbing pulse of satisfaction her body refused to forget. She switched to the other leg, attacking it with the same furious focus.
“He won,” Annelise said, sipping her wine. “On the grain tariffs, the patrols. All of it. The scribes are finalizing the accord now. It’s his accord.”
“I know.”
“Old Kaelen is spitting nails in the east wing. Says you folded like a summer gown.”
Leandra finally looked up, her green eyes sharp in the mist. “Does he.”
Annelise held her gaze. “I told him if he valued his teeth, he’d swallow them. But the sentiment… lingers.” She tilted her head. “What happened in that chamber, Lee? One minute you were carving him up over the Silvervale, the next you were agreeing to his every term. You looked… pale.”
A tremor ran through Leandra’s shoulders. She turned away, dropping the pumice stone. It sank with a soft plunk. She watched the ripples disrupt her reflection in the water—the fractured image of a red-haired princess, her crown placed carefully on a dry ledge, her skin glowing and raw.
The silence stretched, filled only by the trickle of fountain water from a stone griffin’s mouth. The griffin was an Eldermere symbol. They were everywhere here.
“He touched me,” Leandra said, the words barely louder than the water.
Annelise went very still. “In the council chamber? With twenty men in the room?”
Leandra gave a short, bitter laugh that echoed harshly off the walls. “Under the table. While Brannock whined about his cousins.” She closed her eyes, seeing it again. The slow crawl of his hand. The rough press of his fingers. “He… he made me come. Right there. I couldn’t stop it. My body just… betrayed me.”
She heard Annelise set her glass down on the marble with a definitive click.
“And then he used it,” Leandra continued, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “The second it was over, the second I was… vulnerable, he pushed for the agreement. He saw my focus shatter and he struck.” She slammed a fist into the water, sending a warm wave sloshing over the edge. “I came for him. In front of my own council, his council, everyone. I came for him like some common whore.”
The crude word hung in the orchid-scented steam, ugly and true.
Annelise slid into the pool, the water enveloping her dark dress, turning it heavy and dark as ink. She waded over, not touching Leandra, just standing close. “Listen to me. You are a queen in all but title. Your body is not a separate country. What it does, what it feels… that’s still you.”
“It wasn’t me,” Leandra hissed. “It was a reaction. A trick of nerves. He manipulated it.”
“Did he?” Annelise’s voice was gentle, which was worse. “Or did he simply find a lever no one else was looking for? You’ve spent years making yourself a fortress of intellect and will. He found a back door. That’s not a moral failure, Leandra. It’s a tactical vulnerability. And now you know it exists.”
Leandra stared at her friend. The steam condensed on her eyelashes like false tears. “It felt like a failure. It felt… cheap.”
“I know.” Annelise reached out, finally, and took Leandra’s scrubbed-red hand. Her touch was cool. “But he showed you his hand, too. He wanted to humiliate you, yes. But more than that, he wanted to win. And he used that to win. The petty tyrant who needs to prove his dominance in the middle of a treaty negotiation is not invincible. He’s insecure.”
The words filtered through the fog of Leandra’s shame. She saw it again—Darius’s face as he leaned close, his knuckles glistening under the council lanterns, the raw heat in his whisper. ‘You came for the entire council.’ It wasn’t just cruelty. It was possession. A claim staked.
A slow, cold clarity began to seep into her, cutting through the steam and the self-disgust. She pulled her hand from Annelise’s grip and pushed her wet hair back from her face.
“He thinks he owns me now,” Leandra said, her voice changing, firming. “He thinks my body’s response is a leash he can pull.”
“And is it?”
Leandra looked down at the water, at the distorted reflection of a woman who had just been unmade and was now pulling the pieces back together. The heat between her legs was just a feeling. The shame was just a feeling. They were data points.
“No,” she said. She walked to the steps and climbed out of the pool. Water cascaded from her in streams, puddling on the etched sigils of the floor—the Eldermere lion forever wrestling the Valtorian falcon. She picked up a linen sheet, wrapping it around her body with a swift, decisive motion.
Annelise watched, a faint smile touching her lips. “What are you thinking?”
Leandra walked to where her crown sat, a simple circle of silver woven like thorny vines. She picked it up, feeling its familiar, cool weight. She did not put it on. She held it in her hand.
“He exposed a vulnerability,” Leandra said, turning the crown over in her fingers. “But in doing so, he exposed one of his own. He needs to prove his dominance. That’s a hunger. And hunger makes people predictable. It makes them reckless.”
She looked at Annelise, her green eyes clear now, sharp as broken glass.
“If he thinks he owns my pleasure,” Leandra said, her voice low and steady, “then I suppose it’s time I showed him the price of the property.”