“You’re right,” he says, and despite the heat of the room, a chill lopes down my back. “But I will tell you this now, Goldfinch, and you will hear it. When it comes to your life, when it comes to the option between you living and dying, I will always step in. I will always choose to do whatever needs to be done to ensure that you fucking live.”
My inhale gets snagged against the rungs of my ribs, banging against it with hollow uselessness.
“I hate that I had to use my power against you, but don’t mistake my guilt for regret, because you will be sorely mistaken. I would do it again in a fucking heartbeat.”
His gaze is too intense, his words too hard-hitting. My eyes lower, my own guilt bubbling up as much as the heated water.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that,” I confess. “I’m not mad at you for that at all. If I were in your position, I’d have done the same thing. I’m grateful you were able to stop me. I wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t intervened. I will always be in your debt.”
He doesn’t say anything at first, and I worry that I’ve really upset him, but then I suddenly feel his hand lift my leg. I startle, because I didn’t hear or see him move, but now he’s right in front of me, his deft, strong fingers massaging into the sore arch of my foot as he stands in the water in front of me.
Our eyes lock as he presses into every sore inch, thumbs circling, hands moving my foot up and down. “You are not indebted to anyone, Goldfinch, least of all me,” he murmurs as he continues to release the tension and the pain, like the real magic is in his touch. “You are priceless. You are worth more than gold. And the world owes you so much more than what you’ve been given.”
I think a tear might drip onto my lashes, but I pretend it’s the plugged-up steam.
Slade and I stay quiet after that. He massages both of my feet until I can’t suppress the groans, until my arches no longer feel stretched and sore. Then his masterful hands move up to my calves, his firm touch pressing into the knots, rubbing every tender part. Because that’s what he always does for me. He finds every aching part and helps me work through it.
Even when I don’t want to.
CHAPTER 24
SLADE
Finally, the storm has broken.
The sky is bruised, with clouds of black and blue clinging to the horizon as night starts to give way.
With it, the air has finally stopped blowing, and all that’s left of the blizzard from the past several days is what it dumped on the ground. A good six feet now borders all of Drollard, though the villagers were diligent and made sure to constantly clear off the paths and the fronts of houses, while the mountainside shelves helped to keep some of the snowfall from piling up in the pavilion. With the snow left to collect everywhere else, Drollard feels extra sheltered from the outside world.
I stride through the village with my hands buried in my pockets, and the only reason I don’t slip over the icy paths is because of the grains of salt and sand that have been scattered around like birdseed.
I pass the slant-roofed homes, though all is quiet and still since it’s not yet dawn. Smoke puffs up from the chimneys and breathes against the ceiling of the mountain’s overhang, dissipating into the sky.
The pavilion is empty, save for the parked carts that the villagers use to gather supplies whenever they get a shipment in. A few arthritic trees cling to the ground, their knobby limbs and bent branches holding up tufts of needles and snow.
Just beyond, the pavilion is covered beneath the lip of the mountain’s overhang, and it’s here, past piles of firewood, past the stone fire pit, where the door to the Cellar is located. I check there first, but aside from a large room stocked full of supplies and a single cold-weary guard, there’s no one there. He gives me a nod as I pass, and I then disappear into a split in the mountain just beyond, where the walls have been smoothed and filed back just enough to let a person through.
The cracked path is long and jagged, and for a while, I’m walking completely blind, no light afforded anywhere in the miserly fissure. When I finally make it to the end and squeeze out, the mountain is slightly more generous. There are a few blue lines spread through the cave’s anemic walls, casting off the palest of glows.
Despite being out of the elements, it’s colder inside here. The kind of cold that’s stagnant and inert, the kind that never leaves. Yet despite that, I find myself growing hot as I get closer to the iron door set into the shadowed rock. By the time my footsteps bring me to the barred window so that I can look in, the cold is only acknowledged by the clouds of exhale that leave my mouth.