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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WAX

T he forge was fixed at the back of the compound, behind the barracks. Its hearth was lit but not roaring—there was no steam, no oppressive heat, no blacksmith or armorer in sight.

A tragedy. I wanted to see how they worked their hammers, shaping, reshaping. There was something enticing about hitting something again and again and not breaking it.

Rory dropped his breastplate on the floor, his gauntlets—and the rest of his upper-body armor I did not know the name of—upon the floor. He wasn’t wearing chainmail, just a pale, padded shirt.

“So.” I tapped my foot. “You’re going to kill the Omens.”

“Happily.” Rory dragged a low footstool into the middle of the wide room. “Your pedestal.”

He retreated to the wall, losing himself at a long row of shelves—digging and fidgeting and flinging. “We start the armor today, then I’ll send the order to the blacksmith at Petula Hall. We’ll find chainmail you can wear in the meantime.”

“Where’s Petula Hall?”

“The Chiming Wood. It’s Maude’s house.”

“And where is your house, Myndacious?”

“Don’t have one.” There was more flinging, fidgeting. He pulled several glass jars from the cabinetry. They were filled with rough chunks of a cloudy, yellowish material. “Still fixed on Myndacious , I see.”

“I like the way it rolls off the tongue.”

“I’ll bet.” The last thing he pulled from the cabinet was a cast iron pot the size of my head. He brought them to the hearth, an impressive juggling act, then upended the jars into the pot and set it over the grate. “What did Hamelin want?”

“To reminisce. Nothing breathtaking.”

Glass clinked. “Not a shining review.”

“I didn’t bed him, you know.”

The lines of Rory’s back went taut.

“What you said. The night we met. About me being sheltered and indistinct—bereft of fun .” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I took it to heart. So I arranged our excursion to Coulson Faire with every intention of getting naked with Hamelin in the grass and doing something adventurous. To prove you wrong.” Heat touched my cheeks. “I wanted to show you that I wasn’t too good for a knight—just too good for you.”

His hands had stilled. When he spoke, his voice was low. Tight. “What stopped you?”

“Turns out fucking someone just to spite you leaves a lot to be desired.”

Arms braced, Rory’s hands splayed on the counter. “I wanted to get under your skin,” he said quietly. “I saw you on the wall that first day at Aisling, all in white, looking down your nose at me, so patronizing and pious. I wanted—” He peered over his shoulder at me. “I don’t know. To sully you, maybe. To rip the shroud from your eyes so you’d know what I knew—that nothing is holy. That the Omens were a lie. That you were no better than me.”

He looked away. “But I regretted it. You should not have to bear, nor marshal, my derision. I was cruel. And whatever you did to spite me after—well. I deserved to hate it, watching you disappear into the trees with Hamelin.” He gave me his eyes over his shoulder once more. “I’m sorry I was such an ass.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

The forge remained quiet but for the sounds of Rory at the hearth. Slowly, a sweet smell filled the space. Not saccharine or fetid but… inviting. “What are you heating?”

“Beeswax.”

“You’re making me armor. Out of wax.”

“It’s to measure you, you twit. I’m going to put it on your clothes.”

I looked down at my billowing Diviner dress. “I hate to break it to you, but this is hardly the shape of my body.”

“I’m acutely aware of that, thank you.” He hunched over the pot, muttering aspersions into the wax as it melted. “First things first.”

He dipped his thumb into the wax, came forward—planted himself in front of me. Even with me upon the footstool, he was taller. “I need to clean your mouth.”

“Because I said fucking ?”

He bit down on a smile, then nodded at my bottom lip, split by the Harried Scribe’s blow, then again from the tussle in the alley. “It’s for your wound . The cut on your lip.”

“Oh. Sure.”

He waited.

“Must I spell it out? I permit you.”

Rory rolled his eyes. Brought his wax-laden thumb to my mouth. “You don’t like it when I’m a bad knight,” he muttered, “and you don’t like it when I’m a good one.”

I reached out. Smudged blood he’d shed sparring from his own bottom lip and wiped it on my dress. “Have you considered that’s because I don’t like you at all?”

There it was again. The stain of a flush upon his olive cheeks. “Yeah. I’ve considered that.”

It stung a bit—the stroke of his thumb over my bottom lip. Rory kept his gaze to my mouth, pressing wax over my swollen, broken skin. “What were they doing?” he asked. “The men you brawled with?”

“Stalking girls.”

“And that made you angry?”

“Shouldn’t it?”

“Of course.” Each word held an edge. “I think children are particularly vulnerable in Traum.”

I considered biting his thumb. “You’re talking about Aisling again. About Diviners.”

“Merely noting that the abbess always plucks foundlings.” His finger dropped from my bottom lip. “And always girls, to do her bidding.”

“Maybe foundlings are less likely to question that which is taught to them in kindness,” I murmured. “And the abbess was kind to me. She took care of me. Told me that I was special. That dreaming was divine. As to why she chooses girls—I learned it’s about pain. How girls bear it best. Which rather contradicts what I just said about her being kind, doesn’t it?”

A horrible fissure began in me, disrupting everything I’d believed in. “She starved me for affection, for praise, then gave me just enough to whet my palate. I’d have done anything she asked of me. But if she’s the sixth Omen, the moth , she never cared for me, did she? I was but a piece of parchment to scrawl her false story upon. A cog in her machine.” I bit the inside of my cheek. Turned to the wall. “I feel so stupid for my part in it.”

Rory’s voice rooted in me like a fisherman’s hook. “You’re not stupid.”

Brow knit, he examined my shroud. Not with irritation like he often did, but like he had finally been afforded a glimpse through it. “Her care came with conditions. You bent yourself to fit them, and now… now you see yourself as this terrible burden. Like you’re nothing if you’re not the best, the most useful version of yourself.”

I did not like that. Being so thoroughly charted. “Thereabouts.”

He must have known that I wanted to peel my skin off and scrub it under water, because he withdrew his scrutiny. Retreated to the cabinets. “It’s not true, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to be good, or useful, for someone to care about you.”

I watched his back, running my tongue over the wax-covered split in my bottom lip, the texture grainy, sweet from the beeswax—and salty where his thumb had been.

When Rory faced me once more, he held a needle and a spool of gray thread.

“I’m going to tailor that dress to your body,” he said. “Trim the excess fabric. Spread wax on it. When it hardens, it should form a delicate exoskeleton with measurements accurate enough for Maude’s blacksmith to make you a custom suit of armor.” His smile did not touch his eyes. “Your Diviner dress will be ruined. Is that acceptable?”

“Try not to enjoy it too much.”

He rounded my body and gripped gossamer like it was the scruff of an animal, wadding excess fabric in his fist until it pulled closely against my throat, breasts, diaphragm.

I drew in a stiff breath.

“You all right?”

“Fine.”

Rory sewed me into my old, ratty dress. When he was done along my back, he moved to my left side. “Hold out your arm.”

I did, and he gripped my forearm. Large as his hand was, it didn’t fit around my bicep. He made the smallest hum of appreciation, then set to sewing my sleeve until it wore me like a second skin, then did the same for my right sleeve.

“You sew well.”

“Do I?” In and out went the needle, the thread whispering after it. Rory’s brow knit in concentration, and I took the moment to study him. His dark lashes. His cheekbones. The ruined charcoal around his eyes.

“I’ve seen knights from the Chiming Wood wear charcoal like that. Maude does it, too.” I nodded at the three gold bands in his right ear. “Those make you look like you’re from Coulson Faire.”

He kept sewing, running the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip in concentration. “I’m not from any one place.”

“Where did you live the longest? Castle Luricht?”

His eyes shot to my face. “Benji’s loose-lipped.”

“His grandfather’s story required credence. You were it.”

“What joy is mine.” He sighed. “It’s true. I lived for a time at Castle Luricht under the Artful Brigand. I also lived in Petula Hall with Maude. But the longest I was ever at one place was likely here in the Seacht. Pupil House II, to be exact.”

“Because you’re a foundling.” I peered down at him. “You might have said earlier.”

“Not my fault you were delusional enough to mistake me for nobility.”

“How then were you knighted? I thought—”

“That one needs to be born within one of the hamlet’s noble families to be knighted? You’d be correct.” Rory stepped back to the cabinets and retrieved a large pair of shears. “There are, however, exceptions.”

My sleeves—which had been tented—were now pulled tightly against my arms. Rory ran his hand down my left arm—down the new seam he’d sewn—and brought the shears to the excess fabric. “Keep still.”

I dreaded it would feel like a mutilation, him destroying my Diviner’s dress. But the sound—shears, cutting though gossamer—was strangely satisfying. I shut my eyes and listened to it, imagining myself an insect, the first piece of its cocoon coming away.

The room smelled aromatic now, the beeswax fully melted upon the hearth. When he was done trimming my dress, Rory snagged a loose cloth, and maneuvered the pot of melted wax from the hearth onto the countertop. “I’ll need to work fast before it hardens,” he said, pouring the wax into a pitcher. He dipped his finger in to test it. “It’ll be warm at first.”

“That’s fine.”

“If it’s too much—”

“It’s fine.”

Rory’s eyes, dark and derisive and guarded, had never been easy to read. They still weren’t. But when he looked up, pinning me with a glare, I was suddenly certain those eyes were deeply unhappy with me. “Have it your way.”

He came forward. Lifted the pitcher. Poured a line of wax from my shoulder to my wrist. It didn’t burn, but it was warm enough to hurt.

I didn’t say a thing.

Rory knuckles went white on the cusp of the pitcher. “This isn’t Aisling.” He took a full step back. “Don’t be such a fucking martyr.”

I bit down. Martyr . “Pith, Myndacious. I said it’s fine .”

He didn’t move.

“The wax will harden,” I snapped.

It didn’t. After a few minutes of staring daggers, he approached once more. The next pass of wax down my arm wasn’t so unbearably hot. Rory molded the wax over my sleeves until it was indeed a kind of exoskeleton, immobilizing my joints in place.

He said the names of the pieces of armor as he worked, as if tethering himself to the task. “Pauldron,” he murmured, his hands manipulating the wax over my shoulder. “Rerebrace.” He pressed over my bicep, then my forearm. “Vambrace.”

He was entirely efficient. By the time the wax had hardened there was not a piece of my arms he had not run his hands over. He did the same to the line of my shoulders, then my back, stopping at the distinct line of my waist. When he was finished he rounded my body, gave me a pointed look—

And dropped to his knees.

I tightened everywhere.

“May I?” Rory poked my thigh. “The fronts of your legs?”

I nodded.

He painted my legs through my dress with broad strokes. When I dared look down, he was pushing fabric aside to get to my shins, and the fabric looked so sheer, and he in contrast so corporeal, like he was tangling with a ghost.

“Hold still.”

“I am.”

“You’re tapping your foot.” Rory gripped my calf muscle. “ Now you’re still.” He finished my left leg and turned to the right. “Greaves,” he said, running the wax up my shin. He cupped my knee. “Poleyn.” I heard a tremor in his inhale. Fresh wax poured over my thigh, followed directly by the stroke of Rory’s open palm. “Cuisses.”

“Will I be afforded a helmet?”

“If you like. Though it may be difficult to see through both visor and shroud, and only one will protect you from injury.”

His meaning was plain. Take off the shroud. But he didn’t say it—he seemed determined not to. Rory simply raised himself to his feet and eyed his work. The last bit of my body not encased in wax was my abdomen. My sternum. Breasts. Ribs. Stomach. Every vital thing that resided behind a breastplate.

The red returned to his cheeks.

“You’re nervous,” I said, grinning. “Why is that?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“But you’re blushing. Dying to fidget with that stolen coin in your pocket, maybe. Touching a Diviner must make your heretical heart truly uneasy—”

Rory came toward me until our noses were flush, speaking within an inch of my mouth. “You know what I think?” he murmured. “I think you like that I’m a bad knight. It’s why you feel so righteous, flaying me with your tongue—why you enjoy throwing me down and grinding your heel into my pride. It does something to you.” He wet his bottom lip. “I’d bet my oath your whole body is awake right now, aching and eager at the thought of putting me in my place.”

I couldn’t think. He was breathing against my mouth and I against his and the sound wasn’t like any hunger I’d known. Torrid and depraved and desperate—

“You want to throw me down,” Rory said, eyelids dropping as he whispered into my parted lips. “And I, prideful, disdainful, godless , want to drag you into the dirt with me.”

He pulled back, his eyes as black as the Harried Scribe’s inkwell.

“I’ll ask Maude to do the rest.”

He rounded the stool. Walked away. The door to the forge closed. I stood alone in a shell of wax, staring at the wall, willing my breathing to slow.