Jean descended into the bathhouse and paused on the threshold. Warm, wet stone. Cedar smoke braided with cinnamon from the braziers in the corners. The air itself felt inhabited.
The ancestors of the Rosens had built this bath into an ancient grotto where thermal springs had once bubbled up. Honey-coloured travertine sheathed the walls now, polished to a matte glow, and across the vaulted ceiling nymphs, grapevines, and sea-waves wound in the hand of a long-dead master. The pool was faced in ivory marble and warmed by magic. Crystals set into its floor pulsed with a pale green light that flickered up the walls like the play of surf on cave stone.
Sophie sat on the bottom of the pool. Naked, knees drawn up, arms looped round them. Her hair drifted about her head in a golden cloud. In the crystals' greenish wash she seemed to be trying to fold smaller, to hide inside her own knees.
She rose, took air in one quick breath, and sank back down.
Kali sat on the rim with her feet in the water, eyes fixed on each splash and every chain of bubbles climbing toward the surface. Damp strands clung to her neck and shoulders.
"How long has she been down there?" Jean asked, lowering himself beside her.
"Since first light." Kali kept staring at the water. "Surfaces, breathes, goes back down."
"Have you tried?"
"Can't fit where she told me to shove it."
Jean looked at the set of her shoulders, at the fingers clamped on the polished rim of the pool.
"She didn't mean it..."
"She did." She went small. "And she's right."
Jean set a plate on the stone between them. Sophie rose again, breathed, caught his eye, and looked away. She didn't look at Kali at all, simply sank back to the bottom.
He held the plate out to the water.
"Gâteau Saint-Honoré. Your favourite."
Sophie surfaced clinging to the far side of the rim, as far from Kali as she could manage, and looked. The pastry was immaculate. A golden wheel of choux puffs cemented in caramel, crowned with a drift of whipped cream and brittle threads of burnt sugar. The scent of vanilla, butter, and scorched caramel tangled with the spiced smoke of cedar and cinnamon, and for an instant she was eight again, thieving down in the kitchens where the old cook had always turned her back long enough to let a small girl steal cream with a finger.
"Whhhe..." She cleared her throat. "Where did you get it?"
"I made it."
"...Yourself?"
"Jacopo told me you could lure a mermaid out of the sea with one." Jean's mouth curved. "I thought I'd test the theory."
Sophie reached up a water-pruned hand and took a piece without leaving her sanctuary. She ate it with her eyes shut. Crisp sweet caramel, the yielding vanilla custard, the faint bitter edge of burnt sugar, the cool cream softening it all. Every layer dissolved on her tongue in sequence, and for a single second there was nothing else to think about but the brittle, velvet sweetness.
She opened her eyes and looked at his hands. Small burns dotted his fingers.
"That caramel put up a fight?"
"I had to fetch the cook. He laughed at me for ten minutes."
Sophie stayed at the rim, water to her collarbones.
Jean broke off another piece and held it out. She took it, ate it, closed her eyes again, as if trying to stretch the moment in which there was nothing to think.
"I brought a towel," he said. "And your robe. When you're ready."
Sophie looked at Kali from under her brows.
Jean turned from one to the other.
"She's been sitting here since dawn. And not because she's hiding from me."
"I—" Kali began.
"I enjoyed it," Sophie cut in, barely above a whisper, still staring into the water. "Yesterday. What I... oh gods... I have never... nothing compares."
She stopped.
Kali leaned forward, honestly puzzled.
"But that's lovely, isn't it?"
Sophie tightened her grip on the rim.
"No. I... we... her..."
Kali pressed a palm to her own chest.
"I can feel your delight." She kicked her heels in the water, looking down. "The kitten liked it too."
Sophie raised her face. The water on it was not all from the pool.
"How am I supposed to live with this?"
Kali pulled her feet out of the water, hugging her knees.
"Your fear presses on me, but I don't understand it."
Jean sat beside Kali, rubbing the fresh caramel burns on his fingertips.
"That was me. Yesterday. I savoured every second of it."
Sophie sculled backward a few strokes, framing them through a square of her wet fingers.
"You... wanted it? Or was it Kali—"
"It was me. She only... opened a door. I stepped through on my own."
Sophie sank until only her eyes showed above the water and studied him, then watched Kali. She rose just enough to speak.
"I don't know what to do with this."
She went silent again, only the eyes above the water.
"Could we go to the House of Emerald Harmony? The Purples always run there when the roof caves in."
Sophie paddled closer and laid her chin on her folded arms at the edge of the pool. Water slid from her face.
Jean lowered his legs into the water beside her.
"They will ask about Kali. We can't."
He reached out. Sophie took his hand, and he helped her up from the water. He wrapped her in the robe. Kali lifted the towel and blotted her hair with the care one takes with burned skin.
"But it's an elysium. All conflicts stay at the gate. No one would touch us there."
Sophie settled between them on the pool's rim. Jean held out another piece of the pastry.
"We have no idea who, apart from Lucien, is hunting her, or why. Going there would announce her to the whole capital." Jean shook his head. "Perhaps no one would touch us inside. But we would not come out."
Sophie nodded. She broke a piece off the pastry and held it out to Kali.
"Here. My lovely burden."
Kali took it with a smile.
Jean set an arm round both of them, drawing them close. Sophie let her shoulders drop, burying her face in his neck. On his other side, Kali went rigid, then softened under his hand, finally turning to the pastry.
Jacopo appeared in the doorway of the bath and bowed his head.
"Messire. The lanista Giuseppe Meazza has arrived."
Jean raised a hand.
"We'll receive him in the Sala d'Armi. Tell him we shall be up directly."
Jacopo bowed and withdrew.
Sophie pulled the robe tighter.
"Should we hurry?"
"No." Jean helped her to her feet. "Dress. Compose yourself. Giuseppe will wait."
Kali moved closer.
"Or let me."
She laid her hand on Sophie's shoulder. The air shivered. The damp strands of hair gathered themselves dry and braided into a simple tail. The robe dissolved and gave way to linen training trousers and a short sleeveless tunic. A wide belt cinched her waist, and narrow leather thongs bound her feet.
Sophie blinked, drew a hand over her dry hair.
"Thank you."
"Come." Kali gave her a hand.