The bath was deep and steaming. Mother and daughter sank into it facing each other, and for a while there was only the sound of water and small broken laughter and the trading of three lost weeks in fragments.
Then the door opened, and he came in.
Sable's ears pricked. "Master, come, join us, she needs help reaching her back, I always helped father when..."
Her voice wobbled on the last words, and her eyes were suddenly wet, and her mother's heart seized at it, because that crying was not grief crying, that was fear crying, that was a girl desperate to please something and terrified of failing at it. A girl trained in a single night.
The mother's eyes narrowed over the water.
