DOFAB#3

Chapter Twenty-Nine

~ KINLEY ~

Four days have gone by in the beat between a hummingbird's wings. There are no more moments to myself. Every step, my new shadow accompanies me. When I wake, go to sleep, or take a turn about the castle, Thrage is there—watching, waiting, and learning. I can't escape him, not in the mirror when I'm doing my hair or in my dreams he somehow always infiltrates. I'm supposed to be keeping an eye on our greatest enemy. Instead, I spend my days being followed by a mass-murdering entity I'm not sure is more alive than bark. Even the creatures of this earth possess the soul Thrage is said to be missing.

Endless ebony stares back at me, milky water and floating rose petals lapping at my nose. Thrage sits crouched in the corner of the room, a likeness of a gargoyle adhered to the edge of the stone bath I bathe. It seems now even my baths are under surveillance, and I thought being under my sister's watchful eye was stifling.

"Can I help you?" The peace I thought I found is once again being disrupted.

"Me's got tired of waiting," he answers in broken dialect, head tilting in a reptilian style as he tracks the movement of steam rising from the bath.

Me's is tired of him, period.

"Where did rest of hunger go?"

Rest of hunger isn't meant to be seen.

"It's a milk bath."

"Millick bath," he parrots back, swirling a lengthy pointed nail in the hot milky water. "Millick bath swallow hunger. Thrage rescue master from millick bath monster."

Before I can get a protest out of not needing to be rescued, I'm sputtering out the wave of water that went up my nose.

"Thrage disappear too. Thrage been chomped in two." Thrage panics, sloshing water everywhere as he spins around to find his missing half. "Thrage still here." He stands up abruptly, pants drenched. He inspects his intact torso. "What is this Millick bath?" Thrage slaps the water, sending it spraying over me by accident.

"It's water. Hot tinted water!" I cross my arms over my exposed top as the water level has been drained to below the chest thanks to his fit.

"Wa-ter?" He cocks his head, lifting up a palmful of water and letting it run through his fingers. "Why clean in dirty water?"

"It's not dirty. It's—" Rien in his sisters' kingdoms! I spin around, cementing myself to the tub's ledge, though it doesn't matter. I can feel the precision of a blistering arctic blue as if a scalpel were slicing through me.

"Having fun?" Tristan's voice is as steeped in the same frigid tone his gaze pelts me with.

"It's a millick bath. Hunger like clean in dirty water me's thought eat her, but no millick monster like springs in underworld."

A brisk swoosh of air hits my backside, Thrage unfolding his wings as I reach for the nearby robe. He keeps his wings extended until the silken fabric is securely wrapped around me. A courtesy he's extending due to Tristan's presence as he's twice before gone behind the changing partition I've attempted to use when undressing.

"Hunger shy. Only me's see master's tasty flesh, though she yells at Thrage every time."

"Is something the matter?" I pass Thrage, who's still standing in the bath staring Tristan down.

In truth, since Thrage's declaration, I have not seen Tristan much. Once when I was on the balcony overlooking the courtyards. He was talking with his father and, though he looked my way, he never came to me. There is so much left to say and yet no time to say it. What does it even look like for an eevie to be paired with a vampire? Sometimes I wonder if the whole encounter was a dream brought about by the brukha's strength potion, but then I see that flash of ebony that lives beneath my skin, and it all becomes very real.