Page 14

Washrooms Without Bathtubs

Okay, maybe Naomi had a point about me being too compliant.

For as long as I could remember, she’d accused me of just going along with everything I was told to do.

And she might have been right.

After all, there I was, standing in the most luxurious washroom I’d ever seen, after the most confusing day I’d ever had, putting more effort into figuring out the controls in front of me than coming up with an escape plan.

Though, calling this place a washroom felt like a huge understatement.

It sported a toilet covered in those strange red symbols—the same ones on the Shadow King’s ebony jewel castle and his hands.

There was also an open closet space, complete with places to hang clothes, and a large mirror on top of a unit of drawers, framed in soft, bright light.

The so-called washroom even had a velvet-covered couch.

For sitting, I guessed.

In case, I don’t know, reading books in the same place where you pooped was your thing.

But what it didn’t have was a bathtub.

Just a large glass room with several nozzles and a wall that looked more like a cockpit control panel than something a regular person could operate.

Again, I missed Naomi.

She’d grown up just as sheltered as me, but somehow always knew how to work every piece of tech we’d run into on the way to and in Scotland.

Was she okay?

The image of that awful wolf licking her neck flickered across my mind.

Both of those males had seemed intent on her, tracking her every word and breath, even while going back and forth with Alban.

Naomi’s well-being —yet another question for the brunch list. Which was getting really, really long.

I’d have to find a way to formally write all of them down so I could remember everything.

Just as soon as I figured out how to work this shower.

“Oh, you poor thing!”

Suddenly, the sweet smell of some kind of baked bread hit my nose.

“Look at you, struggling with that sci-fi shower.”

A woman with red hair tied back into a messy bun burst through the glass shower’s open door.

“See, I knew this is how I’d find ye when Tadhg texted that he’d left you here to fend for yourself. Here, step aside, Sadie love, and let me get this sci-fi going for you.”

I blinked at the woman who already knew my name—and that I’d have no idea how to operate the shower.

Not just because she was a stranger.

But because she was huge.

Even larger than me, actually.

A couple of inches taller, with much wider hips.

She was also several months pregnant, if the defined swell under the tight, off-the-shoulders Niall Horan concert T-shirt she wore was any indication.

I not only wondered who Niall Horan was, but also where she’d come from…

and why she had what looked like large bite marks on both shoulders, right above each clavicle.

“Here, watch me work the buttons so you can see how this sci-fi shower works. Sci-fi’s what we call all the god tech, which my outsider husband informs me is not exactly intuitive. In fact, bloody confusing, if you didn’t grow up with it—What’s the matter, then? Have I something on my face? I was halfway through a contour when I got the message from my worthless brother.”

I hadn’t realized I was openly staring at her until she called me out.

I quickly averted my eyes.

“Alright, now you’re not able to look at me. Is it because I said something bad about your Mountain King? I don’t truly believe Tadhgie’s worthless, y’know. That’s just me being Irish. Love and respect of a sibling can only be expressed with complete and utter derision.”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just... You seem to know about me, but I don’t even know your name. And I’ve never met another female who’s larger than me,” I blurted out.

Then clapped both hands over my mouth.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t think about how rude that would sound before it came out. Maybe I should get a writing board, like the Shadow King.”

“Please don’t,” the woman—who was apparently Tadhg’s sister—answered with a roll of her eyes.

“Name’s Brigid. And I’m here to tell ye that Shadow King is the absolute worst, isn’t he, with that thing? Half the time he doesn’t bother to use it. Just aggressively makes you talk to yerself while he sits there, figuring out new scary looks to ensure he always features in the kingdom’s children’s nightmares.”

“So... you like him?” I guessed carefully.

“Sussed it out, didn’t you?” Brigid grinned in a way that would’ve told me she was Tadhg’s sister, even if she hadn’t announced it.

“Grew up with him. And unlike the other two kings, he actually lives down here with us. He’s like a second brother who lets me run the kingdom however I want. Long as I don’t mess with any of his precious god-tech designs. Speaking of which...”

She turned back to the shower’s control panel.

“What’ll ye be having today? A rain shower, a warm massage, or the kind of power spray that’ll strip every inch of dirt off your body?”

I shifted from foot to foot before confessing, “These are not options I am used to.”

“Here, allow me.” Brigid noisily sniffed the air and declared, “Oh, ye smell gorgeous, don’t you, Sadie? Like heather and fresh summer strawberries shipped in from The Above.”

Again, I could only stare.

I’d never had my smell described as anything but odd—or the generous “way more interesting” by Naomi.

Was this why Tadhg kept calling me “Strawberry”?

Like finding out I was a bear, I had no idea what to do with this new information.

“A rain shower’ll do ye just fine, in my opinion,” Brigid said over all my clashing thoughts.

“Here’s the button for that.”

She made a dramatic show of pushing a glowing button with three interlocked triangles.

“Take your time, then we’ll get you dressed in one of the outfits I brought over for you and see to your hair.”

Yep.

Way too compliant.

I dutifully showered with unscented bar soap that smelled the opposite of all the flowery ones I’d made for years to try to cover my odd smell.

Then I somehow didn’t die of embarrassment when I came out to find Brigid waiting with a huge fluffy towel and a bathrobe.

If she cared about my naked immodesty, it didn’t show.

As I slipped into the robe, she went over to a stack of things she’d laid across the velvet couch.

“Alright, I’ve this sports bra for ye. Warning—it might pinch, as you’re even more blessed than I am in the chest area. Lucky bitch. Sorry, Tadhg told me you’re about that puritan life, and I’ll need to watch my tongue.”

Brigid winked at me with what Naomi would have called a “sorry not sorry” face.

”

“In any case, these grannie panties’ll fit a bit looser on you, but they’re brand-new—straight out of a package I grabbed on my last shopping trip in The Above. I just wish I’d known about your imminent arrival or I would’ve picked up something more for you.”

Somehow, I found myself reassuring the sister of one of my kidnappers.

“It’s okay. I’m very grateful you came with any garments on such short notice. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“Ah, we’ll see about that.” Brigid turned back to the pile of clothes.

“I tried to find something conservative in my closet, but the only plain blue things I own are denims—and I’m a firm believer in letting my chest back up all household arguments. Hopefully, this will do you until we can get your dress laundered.”

I’d sworn to stop gaping less than an hour ago, when Brigid caught me staring at her.

But my mouth fell open all over again when she held up a vibrant pink dress covered in strawberries with a scoop neck.

“My outsider husband got this for me as a bit of a joke back when we were in uni together. Because I’m a strawberry blonde, as they sometimes call us. He’s a blondie, so he didn’t know that bright pinks are a hard one for us pale girls to pull off. But I figured the color would look great on you, with all that lovely dark skin.”

She suddenly lowered the dress with a disappointed look.

“Oh, ye hate it, don’t ye. I’ve got options, though—maybe?—”

“No, I want this one!” I all but snatched the dress out of her hands.

Then my cheeks heated at her surprised look.

“I’m not... I’m not that conservative. I only grew up in a conservative community. I’ve actually dreamed of wearing something other than plain blue—which actually looks awful on Black people with dark skin.”

A relieved grin split Brigid’s face.

“In that case, we’ll have to see if I’m right about the color.”

A few minutes later, I found myself standing in front of the mirror Brigid referred to as a vanity—which was appropriate, considering I couldn’t keep myself from the prideful behavior of turning back and forth in the strawberry-print dress that hugged my chest before flaring out just below my waist into a swingy skirt.

“Aren’t ye gorgeous?” Brigid crowed.

“I love when I’m proven right.”

I’d meant to ask Naomi to rebraid them for me the morning before the wedding, but I’d been so excited to tell her about my Alban sighting that I totally forgot.

Usually, I trusted my bonnet and prayer covering to hide their frizzy state.

But it felt wrong, verging on insulting to pair this pretty of a dress with a clunky black bonnet.

“Would you be okay with wearing it down?” Brigid asked as if reading my mind.

“Otherwise, I’ve got some French braiding skills that might work on your hair in a pinch.”

“I can braid too, but I never learned to do neat ones on my own hair. Maybe we can make wearing it down work, though.” I eagerly sat down in the chair in front of the vanity and began unraveling the first of eight braids.

“How long do I have before I’m expected to meet Tadhg?”

“However long we make him wait,” Brigid answered with a snort.

“But here, I’ll help you.”

With no tools but our fingers, it took the two of us much longer than it would’ve taken my mother or Naomi to undo eight cornrows.

I figured this was a good time to get in a few questions from my list.

Brigid answered them the best she could.

Apparently, I’d guessed right—I was in a secret kingdom located beneath the western cliffs of Ireland.

This was where the Irish Bear community had always lived.

But Brigid had no idea how it had been built.

“The rumor goes that the gods constructed it for us before they left, donkey eons ago. Before bears supposedly went extinct in Ireland, even. Most of our lives, the knowledge of how to use the god tech has been passed down from generation to generation. But the Shadow King’s the first of our kind to try to figure out how to employ it in The Above—and possibly replicate it.”

“The Shadow King lives in the black castle, right?”

“Right,” she confirmed.

“And I live with Tadhg, our father, and my husbands in that scary mountain fortress you probably saw on your way in.”

I wanted to ask more about the fortress, but something else she said snagged my attention.

I was pretty sure she’d said husbands , plural.

Not husband .

“So the Irish males really do take one wife in pairs?” I asked her, hoping the question wasn’t too rude.

“Sometimes in threes, even. It was said the tradition was started by the trio of serpent gods that created us. And by the time Christianity came to our shores, we were just too set in our ways.”

“So you believe your kind—bears—were created by a set of three gods?”

“Our kind and the Irish Wolves, too. What does your lot of bears believe over there in Canada?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know....” I told her the long—but actually pretty short—story of how I’d thought I was a she-wolf until this morning.

A she-wolf who’d grown up in a community that taught us our monthly shifts were God’s punishment for the sins of greed and avarice that we were required to spend a lifetime in humble service to our community to make up for .

“Wow, Sades. Gotta admit, your puritan community does not sound like a craic time at all.” Brigid shook her head as she started on another braid, three rows up from my left ear.

“I think I’ll stick with our creation myth.”

But is it a myth?

I wondered.

Leaving an entire planet behind, as we believed our Christian deity had, was one thing.

But the Irish Bears—and, apparently, the Irish Wolves, too—had actual leftover technology they could still use, even if they didn’t fully understand it.

The foundation of everything I’d been brought up to believe was beginning to shift like a house built on sand.

Maybe that was why I found myself asking, “Is it hard... having two husbands?”

“It’s extremely hard carrying their heavy babies, I’ll tell you that.” Brigid rolled her eyes in the mirror.

“Thank the gods a bear’s gestation period is only six months. I hear the poor she-wolves have to suffer through a human nine.”

Brigid visibly shuddered, but then a smile tipped up her wide mouth.

“Nothing about my marriage is hard, though. Even when I’m heaving around this stomach of mine, I feel like the luckiest bear above or below the earth. I’m married to the High Prince, y’know—the High King’s younger brother. Not sure if Tadhg told ye.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” I said.

“I only found out about the High King earlier this morning. I still haven’t met him. Have you and the High Prince been together since you grew up down here?”

“Actually, we didn’t connect until university. And I was already several years deep into a relationship with my other now-husband, who was just an outsider boyfriend back then—with no idea he was dating a bear shifter.”

Brigid shook her head.

“If it had been any other lad besides a bear prince vying for my heart, the two of them would’ve come to blows and made me choose. Which is why I’m always telling anyone who’ll listen that my life’s a pile of four-leaf clovers.”

I couldn’t get over how happy she looked as she moved on to the second-to-last braid above my left ear.

None of the she-wolf wives had glowed like this when talking about their marriage.

Not even Naomi’s parents—and they were the happiest couple I knew.

Though now that I thought about it, when Tara was barking out orders, she sometimes looked upon her one husband, the Scottish King, with a similarly soft expression.

“Are all she-bears as happy as you, or do you think it’s because you married a prince?”

“We just call ourselves bears. Or female bears, if you truly need to make the distinction,” Brigid gently corrected.

Then she smiled to herself.

“And you could have a point there. I love both my husbands ‘equal but different,’ as we say here in the Secret Kingdom.

"But the High Prince is so feckin’ devastating. He’s got this cool white streak running through his hair and these amazing gray eyes—makes you want to dive into them like a lake. And can you believe he’s also a great listener, on top of being dead sexy? Feels like I can tell him anything. I always say he would’ve made a crack therapist if his brother hadn’t made him major in Business Administration.

She paused, the smile turning rueful.

“The only thing I regret is how long it took me to realize he wasn’t a complete wanker like his High King older brother.”

I had no idea what wanker meant, but it didn’t sound good.

“So you like the High King?” I guessed again, moving down to the second-to-last braid on my side.

“Actually, no. I honestly mean he’s a wanker.” Brigid wrinkled her nose, like she’d smelled something foul. “When the High Prince told him he’d decided to come back down here to be with me, instead of making Declan and his company more money they don’t even need up in The Above, Declan—that’s his given name for the human world—completely lost it.”

She started untightening the last braid on her side.

“Told his brother he was wasting his life. Said he’d regret it. Slipped the business card of a wolf shifter divorce lawyer into the flowers he sent in lieu of attending our wedding. I’ll never forgive him for that. Joke’s on him, though. Almost seven years later, we’re all still together, happy as could be.”

In the mirror, Brigid’s bitter look shifted to something softer. “You’ll probably see my forever prince lumbering about the grounds. Can’t miss him. He smells like an entire basket of juicy plums.”

“I’ve never had a plum before,” I admitted.

“Well, I’ll tell you—it’s my absolute favorite fruit now.” Brigid waggled her eyebrows.

I could only imagine my mother’s face if she were the one participating in this conversation. But for whatever reason, my so-called puritan sensibilities had completely abandoned me.

I felt nothing but fascinated—by Brigid’s unorthodox relationship, and by this secret world—as I wondered out loud, “Do all bears smell like food?”

“You could say that.” Brigid shrugged as she finished unweaving her last cornrow. “All bears love food, so we often perceive people as smelling like foods we like. What do I smell like to you?”

I sniffed the air. “Baked bread. The sweet kind we make for dessert.”

“Aw, that means you like me!” Brigid threw me a wide grin in the mirror. “And I think you smell like strawberries, which means we’re definitely going to be friends.”

She chuckled, then added, “My other husband—the human I was dating before I realized I also had feelings for the High Prince—he smells like whipped cream. We all smell good together. And in the bear community, that’s how you and everyone else can tell you’re a true match.”

“Okay... I think I’m actually getting this concept,” I said. “So the Shadow King, who you like, smells like lemons to you, too?”

“Yes. And he’s absolutely in need of a bit of sweetness to make a good dessert. But sweet bread and lemons don’t pair well together, so we could only ever be friends. Do you understand?”

Actually, I did.

For once since coming here, I didn’t feel impossibly confused. This all made a strange sort of sense.

“And the High King? What does he smell like?”

Brigid’s face twisted. “Like rotten celery. Can barely stand to be in the same room with him without holding my nose. He’s a cold one, that High King of ours. Only cares about profits and margins, and smells like the most useless vegetable.”

She shook her head. “I think the only reason he and Tadhg ended up such great pals is that he reminds Tadhg of our da—cold, withholding bastard, he is. But at least Da showed up to walk me down the aisle before kipping off back to his digs in the attic. Declan’s—an’ I’m not even slightly exaggerating here—the absolute worst altogether.”

I furrowed my brow. “Yet your brother deposited me here in his palace and sent you to help me acclimate.”

I finished unweaving the last braid on my side and twisted in the seat to face Brigid directly.

“Why would he bring me here and ask you to come, too, knowing how much you truly despise him?”