Chapter 20: The Purification
The steam was the first thing to welcome her, a thick, fragrant blanket that coiled around her the moment Sakura opened the carven door to their private chambers at Cliffhold. It smelled of sandalwood and crushed lavender, of the mineral tang of hot water piped directly from the volcanic springs beneath the palace complex. After the cold marble and colder stares of the Hall of Probity, it felt like walking into a living breath.
Exxon had been quiet during the carriage ride home, his hand clasped around hers, his thumb stroking her knuckles in a slow, absent rhythm. The fury and pride had banked into a simmering, protective intensity. He’d barked a single order to the staff upon arrival: “Draw the master bath. Ensure we are not disturbed.”
Now, he led her through their receiving room, past the low table still scattered with the morning’s correspondence, and into the cavernous bathing chamber. The room was an ode to water and warmth. The far wall was sheer, polished obsidian, reflecting the glow of a dozen low-burning braziers. In its center was the bath itself, a sunken pool of green-veined marble, large enough for a dozen people, with steam rising lazily from its placid surface. Arcane glyphs, inactive now, were etched around its rim for heating or cooling the water to one’s preference.
“Okay, Ambassador,” Ariana murmured, her voice raspy from the strain of the day. She began fumbling with the intricate frog closures of her scholar’s robe. “Your turn to do the deciphering. My fingers feel like sausages.”
He was there in an instant, his own elegant, long-fingered hands brushing hers aside. “A privilege,” he said, his tone low. He worked the closures with a deftness that spoke of intimate familiarity. The heavy wool parted, and he helped her shed the garment, letting it fall into a damp heap on the warm tiles. Her simple underthings followed. He knelt to remove her slippers, his hands cradling each foot with a reverence that made her throat tighten.
She stood before him, utterly exposed in the steam-shrouded light. Her body was a map of their life together: the soft, familiar curves he knew by heart, now dramatically altered by the taut, enormous swell of her pregnancy. Her skin was flushed, marked here and there by the day’s tension.
He didn’t speak. He simply looked, his hazel eyes dark and unreadable in the gloom. Then he rose, his own robes whispering to the floor. He was all lean muscle and intent. He took her hand and guided her down the shallow steps into the pool.
The water was perfection—scalding enough to melt the lingering chill from her bones, but not painfully so. She sank into it with a groan that was almost a sob, the buoyancy an immediate, blissful relief on her aching back and swollen feet. She leaned her head against the smooth marble edge, closing her eyes. For a long moment, there was only the heat, the silence, and the faint, herbal scent.
She heard the soft ripple of him entering the water. Then his hands were on her shoulders, his thumbs pressing into the knotted muscles at the base of her neck. She sighed.
“I can still see you up there,” he said softly, his voice close to her ear. His fingers began to work, kneading with a perfect, knowing pressure. “Standing alone in that vast room. All those old vultures staring, waiting for you to stumble.” He leaned forward, his lips brushing the damp shell of her ear. “And you just… took their little puzzle apart. You made it look like a child’s toy.”
“Wasn’t a little puzzle,” she mumbled, leaning into his hands. “It was a nasty piece of work. Deliberately misleading.”
“Which is why it was chosen. Vor’s doing, I’d stake my title on it.” His voice held a new, cold edge. Then it softened again as his hands slid down her arms, soaping them with a cake of lavender-infused tallow. “But you… you unpicked every malicious stitch.”
He moved behind her, his chest warm against her back. He washed her with a meticulous, possessive care. The gentle drag of the soapy cloth over her collarbones, the careful attention to the sensitive skin beneath her breasts, the long, sweeping strokes down the slope of her belly. His touch was clinical and tender all at once, a cleansing ritual. He rinsed her by cupping his hands and pouring warm water over her skin, the stream tracing paths through the suds.
When the soap was gone, his bare hands returned, slick with the water. They glided over her shoulders, her ribs, the incredible, hard curve of her stomach. He palmed the swell, his fingers splayed, feeling the shift and stir within.
“He’s active tonight,” Exxon murmured.
“She,” Ariana corrected automatically, a faint smile touching her lips. “Celebrating. We both are.”
His answering chuckle vibrated through her back. He pressed a kiss to her damp neck. Then his hands slid lower, over the rise of her hips, down the outsides of her thighs. He massaged the tense muscles there, his touch firm and grounding.
“Turn around,” he said, his voice a low vibration against her skin.
She did, shifting in the water to face him. The steam curled between them, softening the sharp angles of his face, turning his eyes to liquid gold. Water droplets clung to his dark lashes, to the ends of his long, ink-black hair, which floated around his shoulders like seaweed. He looked like some river deity, beautiful and untamed.
He didn’t reach for her. He just looked, his gaze traveling over every inch of her with a hunger that had nothing to do with the physical. It was a hunger for possession, for confirmation, for wiping away every vestige of the day’s judgment.
“They looked at you and saw a problem to be solved,” he said, his voice quiet but razor-sharp. “A complication. An incongruity.” He lifted a hand, traced the line of her jaw with his wet fingertips. “They are fools.”
“They’re just scared,” Ariana said, placing her hand over his, holding it against her cheek. “A foreign woman who can unmake their precious secrets without a drop of magic in her veins? It undermines their whole world.”
“Good.” The word was final. He shifted closer, the water swirling around them. His hands settled on her waist, then slid around to cup the full, heavy weight of her backside, pulling her firmly against him. The hard, hot length of him pressed into the softness of her belly. “Let it burn. Let their world burn. We’ll build a better one.”
He kissed her then, deep and slow, a tasting of her lips, her tongue. It was a kiss of reclamation. When he pulled back, his breath was ragged. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth, then lower, to where her breasts floated, nipples peaked and dark from the heat.
“I need to taste you,” he whispered, and it wasn't a request. It was a stark, desperate statement of fact. “Let me wash the memory of their eyes off your skin. Let me cleanse you of their doubts with my tongue.”
Before she could answer, he was moving. He guided her back to the shallow steps, settling her on the submerged marble so that the water lapped at her waist. He knelt before her in the pool, the water level at his chest. His hands spread her thighs, opening her to the steam-filled air and the heat of his gaze.
He didn’t dive in immediately. He leaned forward, nuzzling the inside of her knee, placing a soft, open-mouthed kiss there. Then another higher up her thigh. His breath was hot, a shocking contrast to the enveloping warmth of the water. He took his time, kissing a slow, deliberate path up her sensitive inner skin, his inky hair trailing in the water, brushing against her.
By the time his mouth finally found her center, she was trembling, her fingers clutching at the smooth edge of the step behind her. He didn’t start gently. He laid his tongue flat against her, a slow, languid stroke that drew a broken cry from her lips. Then he devoted himself to her with a single-minded intensity that left no room for thought, for memory, for anything but sensation.
His mouth was a thing of precision and patience, of varying pressure and perfect rhythm. He licked into her, drank from her, his hands holding her hips down as she arched against his face. He found the tight, throbbing bud of her pleasure and worshipped it with flickering舌尖, with gentle suction, with the steady, building pressure of his lips.
The world narrowed to the steam, the lapping water, the devastating skill of his mouth. The cold scrutiny of the Conclave, the brittle vellum, the rasp of Niko’s voice—all of it dissolved under this liquid heat. He was rewriting the day on her nervous system, replacing every moment of tension with pure, shimmering pleasure.
“Exxon,” she gasped, her head thrown back. The sound echoed off the obsidian wall.
He hummed against her, the vibration shooting straight through her core. His fingers joined his mouth, slipping inside her, curling in that way he knew unspooled her completely. The dual sensation, the water rocking around them, the sheer overwhelming devotion of it—it was too much. The climax tore through her, a silent, shattering wave that clenched her stomach and stole her breath. She shook with it, her cries muffled by the dense, steamy air.
He stayed with her through every pulse, softening his touch until she was boneless, sliding down the step until the water cradled her shoulders. Only then did he rise, water streaming from his body. He gathered her into his arms, her back against his chest, both of them submerged to their chins. He held her as she floated, spent and purged, in the quiet sanctuary of the bath.
“There,” he murmured into her hair, his voice thick with satisfaction. “Now you’re clean.”
She could only manage a weak, breathless sound of agreement. She let her head loll back against his shoulder, her eyes closed. The water held her. He held her. For now, the world outside the steam held no claim. The memory of the trial was still there, but it was distant, sepia-toned, stripped of its power. He had, for a little while at least, translated it into something else entirely.
His arms tightened around her. “They will never touch you again,” he whispered, and it wasn’t just a promise. It was a vow, etched into the steam between them. “Not while I draw breath.”