29
MATTEO
It had taken longer than he’d expected for Captain Ibanez’s soldiers to search the palace and find all the remaining people. Matteo had sat on the gilded throne and passed judgment upon them. The servants, he had encouraged to return to their positions in the palace—particularly anyone with culinary skills. They could not leave, but they were free to roam about the halls, except for the royal wing, where he and the new king would be staying. The courtiers, he’d sent to the dungeons. He was confident that the dauphin would release them once Sanian soldiers no longer occupied his palace. It was petty, perhaps, to place them there, but he wanted them to suffer a little for all that they had done to Nora. Only his conscience stopped him from taking their lives.
Nora had looked dead on her feet so she went to lie down and get new bandages. Anger stirred in his belly at the thought of her wounds.
Matteo did not want King Pierre’s rooms, so he was given a family suite with his own bathing room. There was already hot water and bubbles in the large golden claw-foot bathtub. At least the Kauls knew how to make themselves comfortable.
Stripping out of his uniform, he wondered how many days he had worn it in a row. He was too tired to count, but it smelled of sweat, horse, and blood. He stepped into the tub and lay back until the water reached just below his nose. He dismissed the man who had been sent to wait upon him and asked him to wash his dirty uniform.
Once alone, he closed his eyes, reveling in being clean for the first time that week. Matteo did not know how long he lay in the hot water but long enough for the temperature to turn tepid. Reluctantly opening his eyelids, he spotted a scrub brush and began at his feet. Washing between his toes, his legs, his torso, his arms, and finally his back. He dried himself with a towel and put on a fancy banyan that must have belonged to a courtier. He turned to pick up the matching slippers and he almost yelled in surprise.
“Here you go,” Nora said, handing him the slippers.
Matteo took them from her hands. “Did my guards let you in?”
She shook her head slightly and gave him a mischievous look. “No, I did not see the purpose in letting anyone know that I was coming.”
A smile tugged at his lips. Royals had very little privacy and he did not blame her for not wanting to announce her presence in his room to the entire company.
“Do you mean to murder me or have your wicked way with me?”
Color stole into her pale, freckled cheeks. “What does it matter? You don’t seem very concerned either way.”
Matteo threw back his head and laughed. Oh, how he’d missed her. “That makes me think of a poem.”
Nora pretended to grimace, but the corners of her mouth peeped up into a slight smile. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes!” he said. “How can she kill me? Let me count the ways: she can kill me with a knife, a dagger, a sword—”
“Stop!” she said, pushing his arm playfully. “Or I’ll push you back into the cold water.”
He smirked. “You could come in with me. Rub-a dub-dub, two royals in a tub.”
“No more rhymes. We need to talk.” Nora shook her head as he took her hand. Matteo always forgot how strong she was. She practically jerked him into the adjoining room.
A large fire burned in the hearth and candelabras lit the bedchamber. He noticed that Nora’s bandages around her neck and wrists had been changed. The bruising on her face had softened from greenish-purple to an unfortunate yellow color. There was one chair by the fireplace and then an enormous bed with a canopy over thirty feet high. He waited for Nora to choose. To his surprise, she sat on the edge of the bed.
Matteo took a seat next to her and lightly took her hand in his. “I cannot begin to describe my despair when I thought that you were dead. Our informant in the palace said that you’d been tortured and killed.”
Her impossibly blue eyes bored into his own. “I was dead. . . . It hurt, like I was falling through each of the seven purgatories.”
“Then, how?!”
She turned her hand in his, placing her palm up. With his other hand, she helped him trace the rigged scar that ran across the face of her palm. “My soul was split when I was a child. I took half of another’s soul, and they took part of mine.”
“Who held the other piece?”
Nora didn’t say anything but continued to stare at him with an intensity that he could not meet.
“Elea,” he whispered.
Her undying loyalty to her cousin now made sense. They had been carrying more than the same name. They held each other’s souls. Nora had called it faith, but such workings in Sania would be labeled as magic and paganism.
Nora nodded. “The part of my soul that still remained in my body died. It spilled out in the blood. But Elea’s soul was not tied to my blood, so it tethered my body to the earth until the other half of my soul could be reunited with it.”
“And now you have a whole soul again.”