Page 63 of A Baron of Bonds
“What’s the phrase, though? Absence makes the heart grow fonder? Maybe you’ll enjoy me more when we return to our room.”
“I don’t see how that could possibly be true.”
“We need more tea. And cloaks. And we need to make the meeting in the castle tonight. We have some responsibilities to take care of, Baron Revich.”
He pulled me close, brushing my lips with his thumb. “Alright. Let’s see if what they say is true.”
His lips pulled to the side, just a few inches from mine, and it took every ounce of strength I had left to not push him back against the wall and tear the towel off his waist to taste him again.
“You said you’d stop.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
“Harder?”
“Fuck, Karus.”
“I know. I’m terrible at this.”
“Let’s focus. Where can we get more tea and cloaks?”
It worked. My mind started humming again, sorting through years of memories I had spent in Hyrithia.
“The dress shop where you bought the nightgown had cloaks, and the tea...” I walked the streets in my mind. I could see the city square behind the inns, which centered on a massive fountain that froze over in the winter. I knew a shop of drinks, warm and cold, and I was fairly sure they sold styris tea.
“I’ve got it. There’s a place near the tavern. If they’re still there, I’m sure they sell the tea.”
He pulled his shirt over his chest, his pants already on and buttoned. I handed him his black vest and he smiled, slipping it over his shoulders and adjusting the fit to button across his stomach. My eyes flickered across his strong arms as he rolledeach sleeve slowly, exposing his wrists and the slightly raised veins that traveled down each one.
“How many steps are there to the bottom, Karus?”
“Hmm?” I looked up to his face, knowing he had asked me a question.
“How many steps did we climb to get here?”
Confused, I tried to remember the climb the day before when I had drunkenly stumbled up them with lots of help.
“A few hundred? A thousand?”
He chuckled and grabbed my hand, leading us out of the washing room and to his boots and my slippers, handing them to me to put on. “Let’s go and see, shall we?”
One hundred and five.
There were one hundred and five stairs down to the main room of The Spinning Wheel. There were five levels, each with a landing and hallway with eight rooms total, four on each side.
That was it.
The day before I could have sworn we had climbed an entire mountain to get to the top floor, and today, I laughed when we reached the bottom, leaning into Rev as he snickered into my hair, pulling me closer.
We stopped at the front desk when a new clerk waved us down. She handed us an envelope with the royal seal, and I looked to Rev in question.
“I wrote to the Queen yesterday about where we’d be and where she could find us when she knew the time of the meeting.”
I nodded, looking over his shoulder at the letter inside.
“Ten-o-clock? They must be arriving late, then.”
