Kieran nodded, smiling faintly. “Damn right, we will.”

I grinned at that.

“Well, now that we cleared that up, I know you have a lot of questions,” Casteel said, turning me toward the bathing chamber. “But let’s get this stuff off you first.” He paused. “And into something clean.”

I glanced down at my hands, my nose wrinkling as I saw that they were spotted with purple. “Is it even blood?”

“I honestly can’t say for sure.” Casteel led me to the vanity in the bathing chamber and turned on the faucets. He grabbed a bottle and squirted some of that rich, pine-scented soap onto my hands. “Whatever it is, it smells weird.”

I nodded as I rubbed my hands together. “It reminds me of stale lilacs.”

His brows knitted as he grabbed a bar of soap. “You know, you’re right.” He turned, handing the soap to Kieran. In the mirror, I watched him strip off his ruined shirt and toss it aside as he turned on a faucet to the shower. One of the overhead showerheads came on. “The one you said was on the wall,” Casteel said quietly, drawing my attention. “He spoke?”

I nodded as I rubbed the liquid soap up my forearms. “He wasn’t like the others. He was either mortal or Atlantian.”

“He wore a silver mask,” Kieran said, the muscles along his back and shoulders tensing as he dipped his head under the spray as he scrubbed his face and his closely-cropped hair. “Like Jansen did at the ruins. He also had those damn bone bindings with him.”

“What?” Casteel barked out.

“He did,” I said, running my hands under the warm water.

“Those bones will never touch your skin again.” Casteel’s voice was full of smoke and blood, and eyes as cold as frozen amber met mine. “That, I can promise you.”

“I promise myself that,” I murmured, as a cold slice of unease pierced through me when I thought of the Unseen. “No one has spoken the name of that village in years.”

Casteel’s jaw clenched as he ran his palms up my forearms, washing off the soap. “I knew where the inn was located because I did some digging into your background before we met, but that wasn’t readily available information.” He scooped my hair back from my face as I reached for more of the soap. “We don’t know how many people Alastir shared that knowledge with.”

He held my hair as I quickly washed my face. When I was done, the scent of stale flowers no longer clung to my skin at least, and Kieran had turned off the water. “Thank you,” I said as he handed me a towel.

“Alastir claimed there was another at the inn, correct?” Water dampened Kieran’s throat and chest as his gaze met ours in the mirror. “Called him the Dark One?”

I backed away from the vanity, lowering the towel. “He did. Why?”

“Is it possible that Alastir simply shared that information with others?” Kieran answered. “Or is there the chance that he was speaking the truth? That another was there.”