Half an hour later, both of us had discarded our soaking wet underwear, and I left a trail of wet footprints across the carpet as I made my way back to the bathroom with the medical cooler Penn had delivered to my residence. Penn hadn't said anything about my attire, or lack of it, when I'd answered her knock on the door in just a towel hooked around my hips and water drizzling down my body, with the oaty scent of the soothing itch treatment wisping off my skin. I didn't offer an explanation either, but I figured she knew where both of us were and why, judging by the way she'd clamped her teeth down on her bottom lip to stop the smile when she'd turned to leave.

When I re-entered the bathroom, Nelle was submerged up to her neck in the milky water, covertly scratching away at her hip. She glanced over and her gaze slid eagerly over the medical cooler as I carried it to the vanity. "The antidote for poison oak, fresh from Lower House Simonis," I said, popping the cooler on the vanity's counter and opening the box up. Plucking the antidote out, I held the vial pinched between my fingers. The gummy liquid was the color of pomegranate flesh.

Nelle snatched the antidote out of the air when I tossed it to her. She quickly uncapped the vial and tipped her head back to swallow the concoction down. Her nose wrinkled and mouth puckered at its foul taste as she smacked her lips. She leaned over the side of the bath to offer back the empty vessel, and I placed it back inside the cooler, clicking it shut.

Unwinding the towel from my hips, I wandered over to the warming rack and hung it over the metal railing. Slipping back into the bath, my body stirred the water and buffered the tendrils of steam as I waded toward Nelle.

"Thank Skaldi and the Simonises" she breathed with relief, as the medicine boosted with magic worked its way through her system. Both of us watched in fascination as the rashes faded from her flesh until finally, it was just her natural honeyed skin glowing in the bathroom.

"Better?"

"So much better," she grinned.

I stood behind her and continued where we'd left off before Penn's arrival disturbed us. My fingers followed the grooves of her spine and I kneaded all the knotted stressed muscles.

Earlier, Nelle had removed her underthings and allowed me to lather her up with the special soap to help the itching, and I'd carefully glided the bar all over the curves of her soft body. Surprisingly, she'd surrendered completely, allowing me to gather up her long hair and froth it up with shampoo before she'd dipped back into the water to half-float, the blond locks fanning and whirling in the water, while I carefully dragged my fingers through the silky length, teasing out the suds. Afterward, I'd applied conditioner to her hair, and she'd pressed back, almost purring in contentment as I'd massaged her head until she'd become limp and compliant, sighing in pleasure. Then I'd twisted her hair into a crown and continued to knead down her neck, my fingers digging into the tight muscle in her shoulders.

Now, Nelle canted forward, her hands braced over the lip of the bath while I stood behind and massaged down her back. "Oh my gods... So good," she moaned, before urging me, "Lower... Yes, right there."

We'd talked over the past half hour, and on occasion actually laughed. I'd asked more about her childhood to keep her distracted from itching her raw skin, but there were times we'd fallen into a comfortable silence, entirely at ease with one another without the necessary urge to fill the dead air with chatter.

However, there was something I was curious about. "You made a wyrm burrow."

Nelle's spine stiffened beneath my hands, and I instantly regretted mentioning it. "Yes, it would seem so," she replied in a too-quick too-sharp voice, indicating she didn't want to talk about it. A moment later, her body softened along with her voice. She twisted around to face me, and my hands fell away from her body to drift by my sides in the water. She hesitantly met my gaze. "The sway...it wasn't awful," she confessed quietly. "I was content."

"Happy?"

She nodded with a shy smile.

"Did you want to kiss me?" I asked. Unease scraped along my bones regarding our kiss in the burrow. Nelle couldn't look at me. Those dark eyelashes fluttered anxiously before they lowered to brush the swell of her upper cheeks to hide her gaze. "Yes," she whispered.

"Do you want to kiss me again?" I husked, shifting closer.

Mutual desire swirled through the steamy air as she opened her eyes. Her pupils waxed like a dark moon and they slipped over my face to linger on my lips. "Yes," she breathed.

My heart rapped a riotous beat as I bowed my head. "Do you want to do more than just kiss me?" She didn't answer me with words. Instead, she reached upward. My skin was electrified wherever her tiny hands touched as she glided them through the wet ends of my hair and around the back of my neck. She drew me down as she rose up on her tippy toes to press her lips stained pomegranate-red against mine. "Maybe while we're here," I murmured against her lips, my hands sliding down her sides to wrap around her thighs and lift her up. She hitched her legs around my waist and I sank us both down into the water. "How about I dirty you up all over again?"

Her joyous laugh vibrated inside my mouth.

So I did, holding off until I'd kissed and touched and tasted almost every part of her body and she was begging me to take her. I turned her around to kneel on the sunken seat that encircled the bath, and I buried myself inside her from behind on a lustful groan that vibrated through every cell in my body.

I pulled Nelle upright, holding her tightly to me so her back was pressed to my front, and she wound a hand around my neck for support. I slipped a hand around her jaw to angle her head gently toward mine so I could steal wet, dirty kisses as I thrust, shifting the pace of my strokes between maddeningly slow and pistoning fast, driving up her moans and whimpers as my hips clapped against her pert ass and the water roiled and splashed and slapped the stone. My hand drifted downward to tease her exquisite breasts before slinking between her legs to strum my fingers over her clit, circling and pinching to tip her over the edge. This time as Nelle orgasmed, pulsing and clenching my cock, bending my mind inward with the intense pleasure blazing from her to me, she silently cried a name. A name I couldn't hear, but I could read it on her lips. And it wasn't Crowther.

Afterward, with stupid grins and teasing touches, we washed each other with the strawberry soap she favored so much, and I rinsed the conditioner out of her hair. She sat on my lap, resting against my chest with my arms banded around her middle, my fingers drawing patterns on her belly. Both of us were lazy and sated and not wanting to do anything else but relax in each other's company.

Nelle traced a languid trail over my arm, winding her fingertip over a line of Ukkenskrit. "Is my tale tattooed here?"

"No," I murmured back, brushing a lock of wet hair behind her ear. "None of us had the heart to do it." Even Kenton hadn't wanted to inscribe Nelle's capture on his skin. Jett had maintained he would have if we hadn't had to alter the tale to hide the fact we'd brought down a wyrm. However, I'd detected the faintest trace of unease from him.

"Oh?"

Her surprise tingled beneath my skin before it mellowed into satisfaction.

I felt Nelle's body tense before she half-twisted around on my lap. Her gaze flitted to mine, away, and then back again. She gnawed on her plump bottom lip as if unsure how to say something.

"What is it?" I asked, frowning.

"Last night you were having a nightmare." Sympathy shone in her gaze as she placed a hand on my chest, over the wyrm brand. "You were calling out for your mom."

Sorrow thickened in my throat, and I was about to nod when I suddenly realized what I was looking at. I had my very own monster hunter, right here, perched on my lap. Hope burned bright through my veins, and my tongue tripped over the words as they rushed out. "Do you know of a Horned God called Florin?"

A notch formed between Nelle's eyebrows as she considered my question. The wrinkle smoothed away when she shook her head, no.

"I keep having this recurring memory of when I was a kid. I'm in this room, a lair of sorts, and it's old and full of antiquities... A shop I guess, selling weird things, like shrunken heads and weird body parts, rare weapons, and lethal poisons."

"Things the witches like to fawn over?"

I nodded. "There's this shop sign that begins with the word Purveyor. That's all I remember." I couldn't see past the memory any earlier. I had no idea what had occurred before and how my mother and I had gotten to Florin's lair.

Nelle turned back to face forward and swept her hands back and forth through the water, ruffling the surface as she thought about it. Her nose scrunched when she turned back to me and said, "Antiquities you say?"

"Yeah."

She raised an eyebrow. "Like rarities?"

"A-huh." I guess that was another way to describe them.

"Purveyor..." she breathed, mulling over it. And then she suddenly slipped off my lap. Water splashed around her as she spun around to face me. A sly look sharpened her gaze.

A jolt of excitement speared through my chest.

My little bird knew exactly where I'd been.

Nelle straddled my lap and slipped her arms on either side of me to splay her hands on the lip of the sunken bath. The sound of her fingertips drumming against the stone rim beat through the air, just before she admitted, "I might know where you'd been before."

My voice rose up in eagerness. "Where?"

One freckled cheek rounded as her mouth twisted into a smug smirk. "Why, I do believe you've been to see the Purveyor of Rarities."

I repeated the name, "Purveyor of Rarities," feeling out the way it rolled off my tongue. "Where is this Horned God? How can I find him?"

"I know exactly where to look." She leveled her gaze with mine and a bossy glint gleamed in her eyes. "Take me to Ascendria and I'll show you."

***

Graysen rubbed the flat of his fingers across his mouth as he intently scanned my face. In a low, gravelly voice, he asked, "Are you sure you know where to find Florin?"

I nodded, my smirk broadening into a grin.

Anticipation was a taut note curling through my body while he took his time thinking about it. "Okay, little bird, we'll go to the city."

"Now?"

"Yes, now."

An excited squeal erupted from my throat. I flung my arms around his neck and peppered his face with tiny kisses while he laughed. Water splashed all around me as I shoved off his lap and hauled myself from the sunken bath, snatching up a fluffy towel to dry myself quickly before fleeing to my makeshift bedroom to dress.

Beyond the window, the golden orb in the sky burned fiercely, turning the blue into a hazy shimmer. Graysen had altered the tower's wild magic to keep the sun's scorching heat out of the rooms, and the air conditioning had dropped the temperature to a splendid coolness that brushed against my naked flesh when I tossed the towel onto the floor. Outside, however, the unseasonably hot day encouraged light, summery attire. I practically skipped to the bureau, tugging a drawer open to pick out a dress in a pale yellow from the top of the pile.

My girlish excitement wasn't just because Graysen had unintentionally handed me a puzzle piece that hopefully fit with something I possessed, but because I was escaping my cage and going outside into the real world. A world I rarely visited, even before, because my parents feared I'd lose control of my powers and show myself as other. I'd been imprisoned on my family's estate since I was a small child.

In a hurry of limbs, I slipped the swing dress over my head and poked my arms through the short sleeves. Light cotton fabric tripped down my figure, tickling my skin, and the skirt belled out from my chest. I reached behind my neck to flick my shower-damp hair out from beneath the collar before quickly buttoning the bodice's tiny yellow buttons.

Exhilaration tremored wildly along my bones. I snatched up a hairbrush from the bedside table and ran it quickly through my hair, wincing as I snagged on a knot. For the first time since being captured by the Crowthers, hope sparkled as bright as the blazing sun, vanquishing the shadows in my soul.

Tossing the hairbrush away, I picked up the old tome that Dustin Reed had given me from beneath the stack of romance novels. Swiveling around, I plopped down on the bare mattress of my bed, empty of the sheets and blankets I'd dragged into my wyrm burrow.

I took a deep breath, expelling it slowly, trying to calm my over-excited nerves.

As soon as Graysen had triggered my memory of The Purveyor of Rarities, I'd been itching to double-check this book. And there'd been something else that had been dancing around the periphery of my mind that came to the forefront. A few nights ago Sage had bounced the book from my bed and it had fallen onto the carpet to splay open exactly where I needed it.

I perched the book upright on my lap, its spine resting along the slender gap between my thighs. My hands were clapped on either side of the leathery binding and I let it go. The book parted like a concertina, the gilded pages fluttering apart to finally settle with a billowing, sweetly musty book smell that I loved so much.

The page the book had naturally settled on was Zrenyth's Mites.

Chewing the corner of my mouth in curiosity, I repeated the action, closing the book up and letting it fall open.

I got the same result.

And again—same once more.

I ran my fingertips along the crinkled bumps in the page, trailing upward to the creases in the corner where it had once been dogeared. I flipped the book over and ran my touch down the spine, before flexing the leather hardcover back and forth feeling how loose the bindings were. I'd suspected a few nights ago the spine had been broken at some point during its ancient life, but now I wondered if the snapping of the spine had occurred much more recently, perhaps the very night Dustin had handed me the book.

I pinched a fat wad of parchment and loosened my thumb hold. The pages fanned free and a flurry of air whooshed outward to ruffle my skirt. The pages flicked by fast, too fast for my eye to absorb any information, but I wasn't really looking, I was thinking.

As the pages flipped by in a rush of parchment, all the things I'd read about in this book tripped through my mind.

Different, different, different...

Same, same, same...

This was a book containing a collection of otherworldly creatures with unique qualities like the Brunnie, but it also included strange desirable items. Gruesome body parts. Weird antiquities.

Rarities.

Turning the book back onto its spine, I let it fall open naturally. The book had two distinct authors and the mites had been written by the latter author who had considerably neater, legible penmanship than the flourishing calligraphy of the first. Out of the two, they also wrote about the more peculiar items. It was my guess that whoever the latter author was had been a scribe of sorts, detailing all the weird and wonderful things that perhaps someone like the Purveyor of Rarities possessed. And if so, this Horned God would have Zrenyth's mites.

I bounced my feet on the floor in excitement.

Holy Skalki, thank you!