I climbed out, immediately feeling cold again, and wrapped myself in a towel. And watched a tiny fish skeleton float around the now brown water. I cursed some more, let out the hot bath I’d waited forever for, and washed my filthy hair in cold. Because I wasn’t ruining another tub full, damn it!

By the time I finished, scrubbed the tub down with a towel, and heated up yet another bath, I was thoroughly chilled. And wondering if all this effort was even worth it. But the steam seduced me, and I climbed back in.

And, oh yeah.

Oh, yeah.

God, so worth it!

It would have been even better if I could have shut my brain off and just enjoyed it, but while my body felt tired and sleepy and sore, my brain was doing just fine. In fact, it was better than fine. It had woken up, thrown off the confusion, and was ready to rumble.

In retrospect, taking a bath was probably a mistake. Bath time was me time, when I took advantage of the brief solitude to look back over my day. It had become a habit to get reflective, and the fact that I didn’t want to do that right now didn’t seem to matter.

Cut it out, I said, querulously. I’d done enough thinking! I wanted to rest.

My brain did not cut it out. Instead, it brought up the problem of my love life again, making me want to throw something, only there wasn’t anything handy. Not even a loofa, which I guess wasn’t a thing in Edwardian London.

I sank down under the water, as far as I could go without drowning, but it didn’t help. I wasn’t sure what would. But I wasn’t going with the incubus’s advice to just pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened.

I’d broken up with Mircea partly because he’d kept something from me—something huge. I couldn’t turn around and do the same thing to Pritkin. I had to tell him. But what if he didn’t understand? Or what if he did, but couldn’t get past it?

What if I lost him?

The demon had acted like I was silly for worrying about such a thing. We had a war to fight and here I was, freaking out over my relationship. But he didn’t get it: this wasn’t just about a relationship. It was about my ability to fight at all.

This war was a constant, daily slog that had been going on for months. And no, everyday wasn’t like this one. I’d have been crazy a long time ago if every day was like this one! But even on good days, when nothing was pressing and I could lay out by the pool at court, and watch the little initiates splash each other in the water, the war was always there.