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Dumai disrobed in the warm glow of the bathhouse’s oil lamps. Her foot dipped into the calm water, testing the temperature as had become habit. It was pleasantly cool, inviting enough that she slid into the pool up to her breasts, resting on the long benches lining the edges of the sunken bath.
Fragrant herbs and black salt were placed in small bowls around the bath. Dumai closed her eyes, leaning her head back.
The quiet sloshing of waves as she moved her arms languidly through the water and the mountain air reminded her of home. Of late night baths, sometimes accompanied by her mother, or Kanifa. A simpler time, when she was just Dumai of Ipyeda, when she did not need to weave her way around court and worry about the future of Seiiki.
Not letting herself dwell too long on what could have been, had the saltwalker and her father never found her, Dumai reemerged from the bath, fetching one of the salt bowls closest to her. Her body still ached from the voyage, but soaking in cold water soothed the aches.
The motion of rubbing salt onto her skin helped her focus on something else. She began with her feet; calloused from years of climbing and worked up to her calves and thighs.
Entranced in the movement, she almost missed the woman walking into the bathhouse. Almost, however, as the woman didn’t hesitate to introduce her arrival.
“Princess,” she spoke, a soft echo following her words in the high ceiling of the bathhouse. “Would you mind if I join you?”
Dumai lifted her head, looking at Nikeya; who stood with her hair loose and simple robe already becoming unfastened. Her hand held a small pouch, which she let down onto the floor with ease.
Nikeya’s skin looked much healthier already, none of the sickly pallor from their flight on Furtia remained. But her eyes shimmered in the moonlight, a sight that elicited goosebumps on Dumai’s skin just as her curved smile.
“I believe you will do what you please regardless,” she answered, desperately willing herself to look away from the other woman.
Nikeya only let out an amused huff, closing the door behind her and letting her robe slide off her shoulders. She folded the garment into a neat square and laid it on the floor to join Dumai in the sunken bath.
“I presume you’re doing better now?”, Dumai asked. In fact, as soon as they had landed, Nikeya had split from the two of them to vomit once more; and to lie down for what must have been hours. Dumai had felt quite gleeful that Nikeya had shown weakness for once.
The courtier’s ego already threatened Seiiki’s mountains.
Nikeya smiled – an awfully pretty sight. “Indeed I do. But despite my shortcomings during our ride, my eyes never bled. I must be stronger than you thought.”
Dumai rolled her eyes. “And yet you weren’t strong enough to keep yourself from vomiting on a god.”
The other woman laughed, happy with the back-and-forth. “Well, dear Princess, I suppose dragon-riding is simply not in my blood.”
She crossed the pool to sit closer to Dumai, and sunk into the water with a pleased sigh. Her eyes closed, her lips parted ever so slightly in a sign of serenity.
Nikeya’s pointy collarbones rose from the water in a sharp contrast to the dark hair fanning out around her. Dumai found her gaze drawn to the sight like moths to the flame.
Her response never came, all taunts and jabs she wanted to throw at Nikeya somehow stuck in her throat.
Have I really lost my senses?
Her thoughts strayed back to her father’s words, just before they departed. Dumai was undeniably defenseless, in her solitude and nudity.
Her salt-covered fingers wanted to reach out and touch, to move through the dark strands of hair and see if they were as soft as they looked. Was her skin as soft as it looked, as well?
Dumai changed her sitting, letting one foot move back into the water as she drew her other leg to her chest to work salt over it. The movement sent another ripple of waves through the pool; waves that exposed the supple flesh of Nikeya’s chest. Once, twice, and then the water level had evened out again.
Nikeya’s eyes opened, and she began washing her body in earnest.
Dumai wrenched her gaze away, hoping her cheeks did not betray her.
Not for the first time since she had left her mountain home did she think that perhaps the reason her gaze sometimes lingered on Nikeya too long was the same reason she had never looked at Kanifa. Not properly at least, never in the way women and men looked at each other in the palace. Fleeting looks, giggles and a blush that revealed true feelings.
Whenever she overheard her handmaidens whisper excitedly to one another about men that they thought were handsome, or men that they had grown attached to; she always wondered about the supposed feeling of butterflies dancing in her stomach.
The sensations her handmaidens described, and why she had only ever felt a similar surge of emotion with Nikeya. Albeit usually it was weariness or annoyance that flared up inside of her. The urge to raise her voice, perhaps her hand too, and see if it could wipe the treacherous smile from Nikeya’s lips.
But, like this, if the courtier did not speak in an effort to taunt Dumai, she fought another urge. One that was much softer in nature, but all the more frightening.
The two women washed in silence. When Dumai had polished her skin well enough she rinsed off the last bits of salt with handfuls of bath water. She rose to her feet, desperate to leave lest she did something she might come to regret.
“Are you leaving already, Princess?”, Nikeya asked. She had stood up from he reclined position, the water now reaching only up to her navel.
Dumai managed a nod.
“Your hair is windswept and messy from the ride,” Nikeya remarked, her eyes looking Dumai up and down. “May I brush it for you?”
Her first instinct was to answer that she could brush her own hair. Dumai was not a child anymore, she was nearing three decades of age. And yet, she stayed quiet.
Nikeya rose from the bath completely, taking a step towards Dumai. Curious fingers wrapped around a strand of Dumai’s hair, extracting a pine needle from them. With an amused look, she flicked the needle to the ground.
Dumai still kept her gaze on Nikeya, perplexed with the woman’s confidence.
“You’re not my handmaiden, Lady Nikeya,” she eventually settled on. Her voice did not waver, of which she was somewhat proud of.
Nikeya’s grin widened in a way that made her look like a dangerous animal. Dumai supposed that if Nikeya was as good of a hunter and archer as she claimed, she may as well give a convincing performance of an animal about to pounce.
“I simply aim to please you, Princess,” she said sweetly. Her fingers had let go of Dumai’s hair. But the distance between their bare bodies had not changed. “And I shouldn’t let you visit the Sepuli queen with hair akin to a bird’s nest.”
Dumai forced her lips into a smile, raising her chin ever so slightly.
“In that case, I should decide for myself if your talent in hair-brushing is worth my time.”
Nikeya’s eyes shone with something Dumai could not quite grasp. “In that case,” Nikeya spoke, her hand reaching down from her hair to ghost over her arm and wrist, “please, sit down by the water.”
Dumai watched as Nikeya walked across the bath to crouch down by the pouch and her robe. From the pouch, she took a white comb, and returned. Only then did Dumai move from her place, sitting down with her legs in the water.
She saw Nikeya’s fox-like grin in her periphery, before the woman kneeled down behind her. Two hands moved through her hair, combing through it softly and untucking some strands from behind Dumai’s ears. Her nails had not been recently cut, Dumai guessed, as she could feel the scratch of them on her skin.
A shiver ran down Dumai’s spine at the careless touches.
“I’ve been meaning to ask – how is it to grow up in the mountains?”, Nikeya broke the silence, dutifully grazing the comb through Dumai’s hair.
Dumai pondered her answer. She did not want to say particularly much to Nikeya, not wanting to outright give the Lady of Faces something to turn against her.
“Cold, I suppose,” Dumai mused. “Whenever the fog clouded the view down the mountain, it felt like an entirely different world.”
Nikeya hummed. “I’ve never been particularly fond of the cold.”
She gave away information of her own, which made Dumai keen to prod for more. “Really? I always thought you were quite cold-blooded,” she said instead, not much wiser of an answer.
For her efforts, Nikeya tugged on a strand of hair, apologizing as if it was an accidental feat. Dumai felt the fleeting pain and kept from hissing in discomfort.
“Did no one tell you it is impolite to insult someone who is doing something nice for you,” her brushes became gentle once more, “Princess?” She added with a slight lilt to her voice. Dumai felt the two syllables and a warm breath by her ear.
Then, she did not know if it was the cold water or something unfamiliar that caused her to shiver. Nikeya’s warm body seemed so much closer than before, and a Dumai felt a sudden pang of desire in her lower stomach.
As Nikeya seemed to grow satisfied with the ends of Dumai’s hair, she directed her attention to their roots; running her fingers over her scalp. The massaging sensation made Dumai’s body melt in satisfaction, suddenly feeling boneless and threatening to fall into the warm embrace of Nikeya’s chest like a sack of rice.
Dumai bit her lip, refraining from giving in to her urge. She refused to acknowledge Nikeya shuffling closer to her on her knees. The night was quiet, and Kanifa was asleep when she had left for her bath.
They were alone, basking in the low light of oil lamps and half-crescent moon.
Nikeya’s hands stopped after a while. It could have been minutes or hours, Dumai was not sure of the time as she tried to keep her thoughts from straying too far. She couldn’t. Not with Nikeya, a veritable spy and enemy to everything she and her father planned for the future.
The comb was set down on the floor besides them. Nikeya did not leave, however. She still stood on her knees; a hand’s distance from Dumai’s figure.
“You’re still so tense. I thought bathing would help one relax?”, Nikeya mused, amusement lacing her words. She spoke them into Dumai’s hair, just behind her ear.
The hum that followed, inquisitive and provoking at the same time, was the drop that made the camel flow over.
Dumai turned her body around, fast as lightning, water spilling out over the edge of the bath as her feet emerged. Her hands reached for Nikeya’s wrists, and in a fleeting moment the pair of them were horizontal; Nikeya’s back colliding with the floor, Dumai leaning over her with furrowed brows and a down-turned mouth.
Arousal and anger coiled into one, a scorching heat inside Dumai that left her unsure of what to do now that she had Nikeya beneath her.
She wanted desperately to punch her in the face, but also to kiss and bite her lips.
Her father would not know of this.
Love could cloud judgement, and an affair of love could threaten Dumai’s future as Empress of Seiiki, but what she felt now was purely physical. The need to make Nikeya react in a way that was not plastered on, wipe the condescending expression from her face and indulge in those earthly desires she had been warned about on the mountain.
The Grand Empress had been right – she could not refuse these desires if she never knew what it felt like to give in.
“Are you going to punch me now, Princess?” Nikeya spoke, quieter than before; as if her hitting the floor had wrenched the breath from out her lungs. “That’s quite rude, isn’t it?”
Dumai stared down at her.
“Would you like a reward for your efforts instead?”
Nikeya laughed. “How generous you are to your subjects.” She tried to free one of her hands from under Dumai’s grasp, but the other woman did not yield.
Dumai leaned further down, their noses now nearly touching.
She heard Nikeya’s shallow breaths, like she too was giddy with anticipation, though hidden behind her many faces.
Testing the waters, Dumai pressed a chaste kiss on her forehead, and she found herself trembling with the excitement of continuing – something that was mirrored in the way that Nikeya furled and unfurled her fingers, still caught in Dumai’s grasp.
Nikeya huffed underneath her and craned her neck to connect their lips herself. Dumai stilled for a moment before pressing back, lowering Nikeya into a comfortable position again; moving against the other woman’s lips.
Slipping her tongue between Nikeya’s lips made the kiss exceedingly messier. It felt unlike anything Dumai could have imagined. Thinking of Nikeya at night, laying in bed and touching herself between her thighs did not come close to the way Nikeya’s body moved against Dumai.
Breathy sounds spilled from both of them, harmonizing in a way. Dumai let go of her hands in favour of touching Nikeya everywhere she could; an action Nikeya gladly mirrored as well. Soft finger pads against bath-wet skin felt like heaven, pulling the string of warmth in Dumai’s body taut.
The more they moved in tandem like a wave slowly rolling towards the shore, the more Dumai became aware of the wetness between Nikeya’s thighs, and – unsurprisingly – her own. Whenever her leg caught Nikeya’s crotch in their movements, both of them let out moans, partially swallowed in each other’s mouths.
Dumai did not want this moment to end, wanted to stay nestled in this reprieve from court, from who she was supposed to be.
Nikeya let out a whimper as Dumai bit down softly on her lower lip. She fit a hand between their bodies and explored as far as the other woman would let her. A finger moved between Nikeya’s outer folds. Nikeya arched her back and whined into Dumai’s mouth.
In the quietude of the bathhouse, far from home, Noziken pa Dumai and Kuposa pa Nikeya were just Dumai and Nikeya. In here Dumai would not reel from guilt for drowning herself in the kisses and affection of a woman she liked.
Late at night – or rather, early in the morning – when the two of them had finally parted ways; cheeks rosy from the cold and the things they had shared, Dumai found she slept better than in the days before.