“This. Is. Glorious,” she stated. I stretched out beside her and felt my chest swell with joy. Once, I’d thought that if I was in bed with her, there was only one activity I’d want, but honestly, right now? I was pretty sure there was no greater contentment than just seeing her safe and happy and within arm’s reach. After so much time apart, her very presence was a miracle.
“There’s a shopping center across the street,” I said. “I’ll grab us some stuff . . . unless you want to come with me? I’m worried about leaving you alone. . . .”
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Besides, there’s an amulet in Ms. Terwilliger’s bag that could blow a hole open in that wall. Just hurry back.”
I fully intended to. I sprinted across the street, only realizing halfway through that I was violating basic rules of Moroi safety by going outside at night alone in a strange area. Hell, we were taught at a young age that being out alone at night in known areas was dangerous. I’d never imagined I’d reach a point in my life where Strigoi were no longer my first priority when it came to personal safety.
I’d undressed Sydney enough to know her size and bought her some basic clothes and toiletries. At a neighboring deli, I opted for turkey sandwiches and a variety of small snacks, hoping that’d be bland enough after whatever her stomach had been through. I cut myself off there, since I still needed money for poker stakes. The whole round trip took about twenty minutes, but when I got back to the hotel, Sydney wasn’t in the suite’s living room or bedroom. My heart stopped. I felt like someone in a fairy tale, who’d just woken up to realize everything he thought he’d won was just a dream, falling apart to stardust before his eyes.
I noticed then that the bathroom door wasn’t quite closed and that the light was on. I hesitated outside. “Sydney?”
“Come in,” she said.
I opened the door and was nearly knocked over with the cloying scent of jasmine. Sydney was in the tub, nearly up to her neck in bubbles, and the room felt like a sauna. “How hot is that bath?” I asked, eyeing the steam hovering in the air.
She laughed. “As hot as I could make it. You don’t know how long it’s been since I was really, truly warm.” A slender arm reached out and picked up a small plastic bottle with the hotel’s logo on it. “Or just smelled something . . . pretty. Everything was so sterile in re-education, almost medicinal smelling. I kind of went crazy with this stuff and used the whole bottle.”
“We’ll have them send up more if you like it that much.” I lifted up the bottle and read the label. It was just a cheap bath gel. “Or get you some real jasmine perfume when I have my poker winnings in hand.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, sinking a little deeper into the suds. “After what I’ve been through . . . this stuff is the height of luxury. I don’t need anything fancier.”
“Maybe we could talk about what you’ve been through,” I suggested. “You can help me understand.”
“Another time,” she said evasively. “If you brought food back, I’d rather have that right now.”
“And leave your boiling cauldron behind?”
“There’ll be more baths,” she said simply. “And I already managed to shave my legs, which was half my goal. Four months. Ugh.”
She then stood up without warning, treating me to a view of her body, na**d except for a few clinging suds and wisps of steam. It warmed my heart—and my blood—that things had stayed the same enough for her to not feel self-conscious around me. I had to work to keep my shock off my face, though. I had noticed she’d lost weight when we got her out of the facility, but I hadn’t realized the extent of it until now. I could practically count her ribs, and even she, with her history of obsessive weight control, had to know that she’d far exceeded healthy limitations.
“Not what you expected, huh?” she asked in a sad voice.
I wrapped a towel around her and drew her close to me. “I expected to see the most beautiful woman in the world, to feel my heart skip a beat in her presence, and to want to carry her off to bed for a night neither of us will forget. So to answer your question, I got exactly what I expected.”
A smile split her face, and she leaned into me. “Oh, Adrian.”
In the other room, I showed her my purchases, and she laughed as she sifted through them, pausing to lift up a fuchsia T-shirt. “Have you ever seen me wear this color?”
“No,” I said. “And it’s about time, especially after those.” I pointed at the pile of khakis on the floor. “Which we’re going to burn.”
She laughed again, and it was the most exquisite sound I’d ever heard. She went with the fuchsia shirt and a pair of white shorts. “You’re the best,” she told me.
I soon found out I wasn’t the only one in her heart, however, when we settled down to eat our dinner. She summoned Hopper out of his inert state, and tears spilled from her eyes when he transformed from a rigid glittering statue to a dull-scaled, weak little creature that was nearly as skinny as she was. She cradled him to her chest and rocked him, telling him the kinds of nonsensical things people do to comfort pets and small children. She told him over and over that everything would be okay now, and I almost wondered if she were comforting herself as much as him. She kept breaking off little bites of her turkey sandwich for him and was halfway through when I finally realized what was happening.