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Most people — including the suspiciously endless profusion of well-wishers and acquaintances who had mysteriously found Edward Horniman’s phone number since he became the Thirteenth Duke of Halstead — told Eddie that he would enjoy country life. That it was better than city life. Better than life in London, at any rate: the knife attacks were up, and so were the prices, but the quality of everything was down since Brexit. Salads cost five fucking pounds, in the city. It was ridiculous. Better, he was told, to live close to nature, where he could grow his own food and not be a victim of highway robbery every time he stepped foot inside a Waitrose. 

“They sell their own ice cubes, mate,” one of his old housemates told him. “Their own fucking ice cubes.” 

Ice seemed to be the problem today, too. Because while everyone who lived in London told Eddie that life in the country must be better, easier, simpler, slower, and that above all the traffic must be less infuriating, it was clear that very few of them possessed the basic understanding of geometry indicating such a thing was impossible. Huge parcels of land were big and unwieldy. The roads themselves were not to blame: they had to skirt the chunks of property, now that common fields were mostly a thing of the past. The only people who could get around with any efficiency these days were the ramblers (and possibly, Eddie suspected, the Travellers), as English law was still somewhat friendly to people crossing fields as the crow flies, provided they did so on foot. 

So when Ahmed claimed to be delayed by “these narrow country lanes,” Eddie believed him. It was impossible to drive them at speed. Doing so was dangerous, especially this time of year, when the rapid succession of rain, sleet, cold snaps, and rapid thaws conspired to destroy the pavements and coat what remained in black ice. Alongside roads where one landowner or another had refused to trim their trees, so the boughs formed an arcade of sorts, the shadows sometimes kept the ice in place long into the afternoon. Today was one such day. 

At least, Eddie assumed so, because up ahead in a curve in the road was a major accident. They’d seen an ambulance and fire service truck arrive. “Probably headed to Rokers, same as us,” Geoff mused. “Poor bastard.” 

The first big snow was coming, which meant Geoff had put in an order of feed and bedding meant to see the stables through the onset of real weather. Mr Lawrence had also put in a big order of heating pellets for the AGA. Ordinarily, Geoff said, he’d pick up the order himself, but would His Grace like to kit himself out with some real boots? 

“Your stride seems different these days, Your Grace,” was his gentle way of telling Eddie that no, he could not wear the same wellies he’d worn when he was seventeen; he was a grownup man of nearly forty and had to break down and start acting like it. Ergo, a trip to the tack-and-feed for the kind of boots he could tramp around the farm — farms — in. 

Eddie did not have the heart to tell Geoff that the reason his stride was so different was the fact that his right side twanged with pain if he so much as turned his head wrong. The source of this pain was a bullet that had gone through him there about two weeks ago. A bullet shot by a man that Eddie then shot with the same gun. A bullet precipitated by the arrival of the Glass family in his life, itself precipitated by the death of his father. 

(If, indeed, Archibald Horatio Landrover Horniman was in fact his father. Eddie occasionally had doubts. The times he went out doing normal dad things with Geoff was when he most felt them.) 

Geoff himself had cleaned the wound and applied the stitches, the morning of the 12th. He’d dosed him with antibiotics ordinarily reserved for farm animals. In all likelihood, he’d saved Eddie’s life. So there was no real reason for Eddie to hide the injury from anyone but Mother. But he could avoid drawing undue attention to it, because the cold black rage that flitted across Geoff’s features when he saw the injury made Eddie mildly nervous about leaving Geoff alone with Susie Glass. 

Geoff probably had a hundred ways to kill Susie within easy reach. Not just his arsenal, but all his herbs: there were certain potted plants in the cottage that the children had never been allowed to touch, ever, and in retrospect Eddie suspected it wasn’t because of their delicacy but their toxicity. Then there was his strength: at sixty, Geoff was still tougher than most men half his age. Eddie had never seen Geoff hit a woman, but the one time he’d seen him hit a man, that man did not get up. 

To be fair, that man was Freddy’s connection, and he was a skinny little tweaker covered in open sores and bruises, but he was jacked to the gills and feeling no pain when he took a run at Freddy. Geoff’s fist reached out like a conductor tapping a music stand to start a symphony. The other chap dropped like a sack of potatoes. And that was how they got Freddy to his birthday dinner, the year he turned twenty-one. Twenty years on, Geoff seemed to have achieved a state of zen, but his loyalty to the family remained complete and total and without question. Eddie had no doubts whatsoever that if he asked, Geoff would drown Susie in the lake like an accused witch. 

“What’re you doing, up and about?” she’d tetched at him, earlier that morning. He’d avoided her the past two Mondays; on the thirteenth he simply was not getting out of bed (he claimed to have a fever, and implied to Mother that perhaps someone at Johnston’s party had given him COVID), and the twentieth, he was still moving slowly. Three weeks on, though, he couldn’t avoid it any longer. 

“What’re you doing, coming out here in this weather?” he’d asked, rather than answering. “It’s freezing rain out there, at present. Not exactly safe driving conditions, is it?” 

(This was a completely reasonable question and not at all a symptom of hypervigilance and anxiety; the Met Office and BBC Weather had issued weather warnings for their — his — post code.) 

“You’re not the only person I see on Mondays, Your Grace,” she’d informed him, tartly. 

Eddie had frowned. “I’m in a secret pact with one of my neighbours?” 

She’d rolled her eyes. “I see my father, if you must know. It’s a short drive.” 

(It was a short-ish drive. Shorter than the drive from London, certainly. So perhaps she had a point.) 

“When do you start winding down for the holidays?” he asked. 

Susie scoffed. “Never.” She’d cast her sharp eyes, made silver by the subterranean violet glow, at Jimmy’s pound-shop Christmas decorations. “It’s everyone’s busiest time of year. Us included.” 

“Do we do anything, at the holidays?” 

Her brows hid themselves under her fringe. “We?” 

“The team,” Eddie said. “For morale.” 

“You mean do I host a holiday luncheon, during which everyone drinks rum punch and the women on staff do their best to avoid being trapped alone with their creepy manager?” 

“Well-”

“The answer’s no, Your Grace. I do not.” She smirked. “Because I don’t employ creepy managers. A man gives one of my girls the eye, and that eye’s coming out.” To make her point, she hooked her finger in her mouth, hollowed her cheeks, and pulled quickly to make a pop! sound. 

“Right,” Eddie had rasped, and for the first time in two weeks, his bullet wound was not the only inconvenient pain competing for his attention. 

“One of the benefits of operating outside the law is that we need not perform fairness where none exists,” she continued, airily. Susie was, as far as Eddie could tell, completely unaware of the fact that she’d created a looping gif that would haunt his brain’s memory cache until death or dementia took it from him. “We do not have an HR department. I am the HR department.”

“Has there ever been anything like that, here?” Eddie asked. 

“What, an HR department?” Like her father, she said it more like haitch than H. 

“Harassment.” At her nonplussed look, he added: “I don’t know how these people relate to each other; do they get on? What happens if not?” 

Instantly, Susie’s expression smoothed. “It’s not the Army, Your Grace. There’s no protocol.” 

But I like protocol, Eddie wanted to say. I like rules. I like hierarchy and clear commands and knowing people are safe where I put them and trusting the people above me. 

Despite his silence, Susie seemed to understand exactly what he wanted to say. Her eyes searched him for a moment, and then she asked: “Would you like to sit down? You’re looking a bit peaky.” 

“Bullets tend to have that effect.” 

“Jimmy, I told you to give His Grace your pain salve,” she snapped. 

“I tried!” Jimmy insisted. “He wouldn’t take it!” 

Susie’s reproachful gaze turned back to Edward. “Edward.” 

“I have painkillers-”

Susie snapped her fingers, and a veritable gift hamper of tins, tinctures, salts, and sprays was in her hands. There was cellophane and raffia and ribbon and everything. “Happy birthday.” 

It wasn’t for a while, yet. “How did you-”

“Assume I know, Edward. Always assume I just know.”

She’d left shortly after that, and then Geoff invited him along to Rokers, so in fact they’d left within almost a half hour of each other. In fact, Eddie thought as he leaned out the window to observe a retinue of red lights that were by now almost Roman in scale, it was even possible that Susie was trapped in the same jam. 

Are you in this same jam? 

He dropped a pin into the text thread. There was no answer. Then again, that was likely for the best. Did he want Susie to text and drive? Of course not. That was probably how this whole thing started.

“Would you mind asking Her Grace if she wants anything?” Geoff asked. 

“Sure,” Eddie said, and did. Mother’s eternal three dots rolled back and forth, in her window. There was still no answer from Susie. Did Leyhill make people give up their phones? Eddie didn’t remember having to give up his phone. It was scanned, obviously, but he didn’t recall having to give it up. 

“What’s she say?” Geoff asked. 

“Who?”

Geoff blinked. “Your mother, Your Grace.” 

“Oh.” Eddie checked. “She’s still deciding, I think. Probably some deep craving she feels mildly ashamed for indulging.” 

Geoff blanched. So did Edward. His stomach flipped over. Eddie wished, suddenly, that his stitches might open up, so he could request a trip to the A&E and also possibly a lorazepam. “I mean, like, shortbread,” he croaked. “Or cigarettes. The kitchen can make shortbread, but they can’t make cigarettes.” 

I can make cigarettes, he thought, crazily. Not Silk Cut, but probably a great deal healthier for Mum in the long term. 

“Did I tell you Susie gave me a gift hamper full of THC salve?” he asked, quickly. “And tinctures, and the like? Even bath salts. The magnesium kind, not the…” He gestured. “You know.” 

“No,” Geoff said. “You didn’t tell me. That’s nice. She’s, um…” Geoff’s ears were still very red. “Kind. Miss Glass is kind, like that. Very attentive to detail. She grows orchids, you know.” 

Eddie blinked. “No, I didn’t know that.” 

Geoff seemed extremely grateful to change the subject. “Instead of pets, she told me. She’s not home enough for a dog or cat. So she keeps fish. And orchids.” 

Eddie really did not need to know that Susie surrounded herself with soft, silky, delicate things that needed to be wet to live. “Not home enough?” 

“Her father’s got her going hither and thither, as I understand it,” Geoff said. “And the boxing. The gym, I mean. The one she manages.” 

Eddie thought how of how the crowd simply melted away from Susie and her brother as they entered Joey Bang*Bang’s match. He’d noticed it without noticing it. His mind was on Freddy and Pete and the money and the acid-yellow wrath burning a hole in his gut. But when he thought of it later, he remembered how sharply Jack Glass looked at other men looking at his sister. And the soft sway of her spine. And how the red light turned her cheeks pink. 

You grow orchids?  

Staring down at his text thread with Susie with mounting horror, Eddie typed: 

Geoff told me about it. 

I think he’s jealous.  

Of the orchids, I mean. 

He’s always wanted to try them.  

“Oh, dear,” Geoff murmured. Eddie looked up. A lorry crawled along the laneway. It was one of the Willoughby's. In the flatbed sat a man carrying a massive claw made of steel, with a petrol tank attached by hoses. It was the kind of hydraulic tool used in vehicle crashes. It was perhaps a little unusual to find at an ordinary residence, but people who owned diggers and loaders and tractors — farmers — might have need of them. If their equipment flipped over. If someone were pinned inside.

“That’s a…” The word had slipped Eddie’s mind. He wasn’t good with crashes. Until now, he’d assumed that the accident up ahead was simple human error. A blind curve, black ice, a distracted driver. But if they needed the jaws of life — that was the phrase — it meant the accident was serious. It meant people were dead, or dying. It meant a car flipped over, full of dead people, full of dead girls, in the snow, in the cold, crying, asking why he couldn’t help-

The phone was at his ear before he was even aware of it. “Susie, call me back, please.” 

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Geoff said, quietly. “Probably just Willoughby trying to insert himself. As usual.” 

“Should I go?” Eddie asked. “I should go, shouldn’t I? It’s my road. My fire service. Sort of. Isn’t it? Doesn’t Hetheringham have a volunteer fire service? Should I join that?” 

Eddie leaned out the window again. The line of cars remained unmoving. Worse, it remained quiet. Which meant that whatever had happened up ahead, it was serious enough to keep the other vehicles in complete silence. He tried to count the number of cars, but the bend in the road made it impossible. Wasn’t there some sort of equation for number of car-lengths as time? Like how the number and maturity of maggots on a corpse indicated time of death. If he counted how many cars there were, would he know when the accident had happened? Would he know if- 

His phone pinged. “Finally,” he muttered, but it was Mother. “Saddle soap,” Eddie said, numbly. “Mum wants more saddle soap.” 

“Easy enough,” Geoff said. His eyes tracked from Eddie’s phone to the windscreen to the rearview and sideview. “I was planning on oiling all the tack before the cold set in, anyway.” 

Eddie typed:

Text me when you get this .

Nothing. Not even read. Jesus Christ. Eddie was going to be sick. His shoulder throbbed. His right side burned. His jaw was rusty wire. He tasted tinfoil. “I have to see,” he said, opening his car door. 

“No, Your Grace.” Geoff’s voice was leaden. Seeming to realise he hadn’t forbidden Edward anything in at least twenty years, he softened his posture and said: “It wouldn’t do for the duke to be seen complaining, would it?” 

“I wouldn’t be complaining; I just need to know if-”

If she’s dead. If she’s in pain. If she’s scared and alone and cold, bleeding out with no one there. If Susie Glass is surrounded by broken glass. 

“I know,” Geoff said, softly. “I’ll go.” 

Geoff left the car and ambled up the road. As soon as he did, another chap did the same. Eddie lifted his phone. “Susan, call me back, please. I mean it.” 

The silence inside the vehicle was impossible for him. His cuticles were a wreck. Stupidly, he stared down at his phone, and realised he had no photo of Susan. No way to prove the relationship, aside from her number in his phone. What would he even say? He’d have to call her father. And Jack. Was she allergic to anything? What if they gave her the wrong thing? What if they gave her an MRI and forgot one of her rings or chains or earrings, and some vital piece of her sheared free of her flesh, like a shrapnel bomb in reverse? 

“God-fucking-damn it, Geoff, come on,” he growled. 

Did Eddie even have Jack’s number? He thought he might. Susie had given it to him. It was high up in their thread. His fingers slipped back and forth, trying to retrieve it: “Jack.” 

“Who’s this?” He’d woken Jack up. It was 13:45. 

“Jack, this is Eddie Horniman.” 

“Oh. Fuck me. Hi, Your Grace.” 

“Do they requisition phones, at Leyhill?” 

“…What?” 

“Do they take phones away, at Leyhill? I need to reach your sister and she isn’t answering.” 

“Something wrong?” Jack asked. 

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “She left about a half hour ago, and the roads are all covered in ice, and there’s been an accident up ahead, and I don’t know-”

“Okay.” Jack’s voice was wary. “Did you call Blanket?” 

Eddie’s face flooded. Christ, he was an idiot. “I don’t have his number,” he lied. 

“I’ll call him.” 

“Thanks.” 

Eddie’s knee jigged up and down. He chewed dead skin away from his thumb. What on Earth was taking everyone so long? Was Eddie Horniman the last man in England with any sense of time’s passage? 

Presently, the other cars finally started moving. Eddie spotted Geoff jogging back along the road. “Couldn’t see it,” he said, when he hauled himself into the driver’s seat. “Cars started moving before I could get there. We’re way at the back of it, if you can believe that.” 

That meant the accident had happened a while ago. Possibly even a half hour to forty minutes ago. “Fuck,” Eddie whispered. 

“She knows these roads, Your Grace. So do her people. And it takes a lot to flip a Defender.” 

“It flipped?” 

“Something did,” Geoff said. “It’s a three-car pileup, Your Grace. One of them’s flipped, probably coming round on the ice, and t’other two hit it coming and going. One of the other chaps said he spoke to the police and that’s what they told him.” 

Eddie thought he might actually vomit. “Jesus.” He peered at Geoff through his lashes. “Lethal?” 

Geoff sighed briefly. “Think so, Your Grace.” 

Eddie thought the phone might snap in his hands. Jack hadn’t called. Neither had Blanket. Oh God, please, he thought. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have killed that chap in Jethro’s flat. I shouldn’t have let Freddy kill Tommy Dixon. I should have come home sooner, and stopped Dad from starting all this. It’s my fault. But please, do not punish this woman for all the things I did and didn’t do. When I said I wanted out, I didn’t mean it like this, I didn’t mean her, dear Christ-

“Why are they detouring us?” Eddie asked, as they veered left.

“To make room for the chopper,” Geoff said, pointing.

Too late, Eddie heard the noise above the ringing in his ears. There it was: a MediVac, hovering, waiting to grab up whoever was left and get them to hospital. That meant that he couldn’t even call the hospitals, he realised. Whoever was in that crash hadn’t even been admitted, yet. 

Geoff kept driving. Eddie kept staring. First out the window and then at his phone. Then at his own feet on the pavement as they entered the tack-and-feed store. Then at the poured concrete flooring of the store. The odd places where it had heaved and cracked. They were playing Christmas music. The Carpenters, “Merry Christmas Darling.” 

His phone buzzed. He answered without looking. “Eddie Horniman.” 

“Why the fuck are you blowing up my phone?” Susie asked. “I got calls from Jack and Blanket and Keith, I’ll have you know, and Dad-”

Eddie didn’t hear the rest, because his knees went out. Suddenly he was sitting on a bale of hay in the middle of a Christmas display, in which the Nativity was depicted in chainsaw carvings. His other hand covered his face. His eyes first, and then his mouth. His shoulders shook. Exhaustion thrummed through him, and pain: in his side, his shoulder, his thumb, his jaw, his lip where he’d unwittingly bitten away dead skin until it bled. 

“Edward?” Susie was asking. “You there?” 

He cleared his throat. “There was an accident.” 

“You were in an accident? Where? What hospital?”

“Not me. Three-car smash-up. Black ice. We were stuck behind it. Had to detour. I thought…” Eddie wanted to sleep for a year. This was beyond embarrassing. “It happened just after you’d left, and I thought maybe…”

“I’m still in Hetheringham,” she said. “Like I’ve been telling you. I had a massage. That’s why I couldn’t answer my phone.” 

“A massage.” The words wouldn’t join up together in his head. His mind strongly resisted putting the words Susie and massage in the same sentence. “You had a massage.” 

“Pumpkin seed oil. For autumn. There’s a very charming inn and day spa in the village. I usually book a treatment in between seeing you and Dad.” 

“Oh,” Eddie said, stupidly. He wiped the corners of his eyes with the heel of his other hand. “Are we that much of a strain, the two of us?” 

“Today you are, apparently,” she muttered. “I should get a secondary treatment, just to deal with the stress of my text messages. The cherry-almond foot scrub seems nice.”  

“Sorry,” Eddie said. “Bill me.” 

“I think you need an appointment more than I do at the moment, Your Grace.” 

“Maybe,” Eddie admitted. 

“I’ll make you one,” Susie said, smoothly. “I’ve got the form right here. What’s your primary area of focus?” 

He frowned. “I graduated with-”

“Where’s it hurt most, Edward?” 

Nowhere you can touch. Nowhere you can see. “I dislocated my left shoulder, once. It hurts in bad weather.” 

Susie made a sympathetic noise. “What shall we say on the form?” 

Always assume I just know, she had said. So she already knew. She must know. It was news, at the time. Or so he’d been told. His memory from then was out of order. Like a shattered windscreen: clear, but in jagged pieces. Hard to touch. Like his memories of childhood.

“I was in a car crash,” Eddie said. “A couple of years ago. Lorry went over a landmine and we rolled off a cliff. We flipped. My fixer died. Lots of people died. There’s bone fragments, in the shoulder. Floating.” 

A little girl standing over by the dog kibble was staring at him, bug-eyed. Eddie made eye contact with her, and she darted away to join her mother. “I see,” Susie said, softly. 

Now that Eddie knew to listen for it, Susie sounded torpid. Relaxed. A few minutes ago she’d been naked, covered in oil. Moaning. Sighing. Possibly under the very strong hands of some other man, experiencing something very close to pain, and then its relief. Some other man who got to ask her things like, Is that too much, or can you take a little bit more?  

Whoever they were, Susan saw them after she saw Edward. Because he was a literal pain in her neck. “I cracked a tooth, too, if you can believe that.” 

“I can believe that. In this line of work, we do cater to a lot of people with chronic pain.” 

“Pun intended,” Eddie said, smiling for the first time in what felt like hours. 

She giggled. He thought of JM Barrie: the laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and that was the beginning of fairies. “Ten points.” 

“I’m sorry for…” He didn’t know how to say it. “Being weird. You have enough people nagging you about driving safely, I’m sure.” 

“Not really,” Susie told him. “I’ll never have enough, actually. I can have lots of people worrying after me, and still never have what’s broadly considered the regulation amount.” 

“No?” Ask. Ask if there’s someone at home. Ask if you’re overstepping. Ask if she peeled off that green dress for another man after she left you. Ask, for fuck’s sake. Just fucking ask. 

“No,” she said, quietly. “Jack was ten, when our mother died.” 

The floor dropped out from under Edward’s feet. There was only void beneath. “Oh. Susan, I-”

“So it’s nice.” Her voice was brittle. “Refreshing. In a way. You’re not henpecking, Edward; you’re just…evening up the score. Correcting a cosmic imbalance.” 

We need not perform fairness where none exists, she had said. Because what was a little larceny here and there, when life was already so cruel? Where was the harm, when there was already so much harm being done? 

“Not that you should overdo it,” Susie continued. “Like the old song goes: people will say we’re in love.” 

All possible words died in Eddie’s throat. 

“Which would be bad for you,” she added, filling his silence. “Dangerous. Someone might hurt you, to get to me. Is it still called fridging, if it happens to men? Anyway. You take my point.” 

“Fridging?” Eddie squeaked. 

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, Your Grace.” 

“Hey,” Eddie protested. “Just because you’re the HR department doesn’t mean you can get away with harassment.” 

“Oh no,” Susie purred. “Should I be run in for sensitivity training?” 

I would love to train you to be more sensitive, he thought. In all sorts of ways. “Quite possibly.” 

“Do you have some literature I should review?” 

Geoff’s boots entered his field of vision. Eddie looked up. “And how,” he drawled. “I have to go. Text me when you get in, will you?” 

“I fail to recognize how that qualifies as sensitivity training, Your Grace.” 

Eddie stood. “It trains you to be more sensitive to my needs, Susan. I need to know when you’re safe home, because I had a traumatic experience that causes me undue anxiety about vehicular hazards. And, frankly, I need to know that you aren’t dead because of me.” 

“Oh.” He actually heard the change in her voice when she sat up straighter for him. The rush this gave him went all the way down to his toes. “That’s all right, then. I can do that.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Thank you. For worrying.” 

Her mother was dead. Her dad was in prison. Her brother seemed chiefly concerned with his cock, and his ranking, in that order. And Susie Glass could drop everything and go out with Eddie on a Saturday night in formal wear, without once checking her texts. Someone had to worry about her. 

“Good-” Saying goodbye felt like a curse, somehow. “Good luck. With your dad.”

“Good luck with your shoulder,” she said. “Try the salve. It helps.” 

No, you hang up, Eddie thought, out of nowhere. “I will.”

“It’s only Mondays, right?”

He frowned. “Excuse me?” 

“You only need to know when I make it back from yours. On Mondays.” 

Eddie’s heart and Eddie’s gut tried to switch places. This was a test. It had to be a test. Of how unreasonable he might be. How many boundaries he might press. Every night, he thought, anyway.Tell me every night. 

“And when you get back from trips,” he blurted. “Or through customs, anyway. I imagine it’s no picnic, given everything.”  

If Susie asked what Eddie meant by “everything,” he’d mention her last name and her dad’s conviction and how in many countries, customs officers were Army washouts who couldn’t pass a psych eval. What he would not mention were her eyes and her legs and the very real possibility that mouthbreathing morons pawed through the knickers in her checked luggage on a regular basis. Geoff gave him a look that said, Are you taking the piss?

“Okay,” she said, lightly. “Cheers, then.”

“Cheers,” Eddie said.

She rang off. Eddie pocketed his phone. “Alive and well, I take it, Your Grace?” Geoff asked. 

Eddie smiled. “Safe as houses.” 

Susie texted at the entirely reasonable hour of 18:38. 

Home

Stopped @TianTian.  

And then a picture of raw fish, pink and gleaming, covered in spicy red sauce, scallions, and sesame seeds, on a bed of purple rice threaded with shredded carrots and cucumber, and adorned with yellow pickled radish and cubed avocado. For reasons he did not wish to examine, Eddie felt ridiculously pleased she was eating something healthy.

Colourful. In for the night? 

YYG

Good.

Night  

Followed by a soldier emoji. 

“Goodnight, princess,” Eddie said, out loud. The words echoed strangely on the sweating green tiles of his father’s ensuite. To his strangely muffled mortification, text-to-speech appeared to have put the line in the chat already. (Princess? Where the fuck had that come from? He didn’t even call Rosie that name. Clearly the THC content in those bath salts was a lot higher than he’d estimated.) So he sank beneath the water, soft and fragrant with the extracts made from his land and her labour, and let his pain recede into it.