21
I lay in the pool, trying not to wonder at how the water had been heated. It might have come from a fire burning far beneath the ground. Or, there was the far more terrifying option―I was sitting in a bath warmed by magic. In a camp protected by magic. After following a man whose blood held magic.
I scrubbed my hair with the sweet-smelling soap, digging my fingers into my scalp hard enough to hurt.
If Karin had been here, she’d have been positively giddy at being surrounded by magic.
Karin wouldn’t have made it through the mountains.
It wasn’t a pretty thought, but I couldn’t come up with a way to tell myself it wasn’t true.
My eyes stung with missing Harane and all the people there. Or who had once been there.
I ducked beneath the water, rinsing the suds out of my hair. I stayed
