The procession from the feast hall to the bathhouses was a slow, silent march of the condemned. The other champions, flush with wine and the promise of luxury, walked with a relaxed gait, their laughter echoing softly in the gilded corridors. But for Leonotis and Low, every step was a deliberate, agonizing footfall toward their own unmasking. They were separated by the protocol of the guards, headed by one of King Rega's elite personal bodyguards. She was ensuring that nobody got lost on the way.
Leonotis was guided toward the southern wing, a path inlaid with mosaics of river nymphs and ocean spirits. Jacqueline, Amara, and Nurabia walked ahead of him. He followed, his head bowed, the clothes of his Lia disguise felt as heavy and as damning as a funeral shroud. His heart thrummed a frantic, desperate rhythm against his ribs: a drumbeat of pure, unadulterated terror.
As they approached the arched entrance to the women's bath, Jacqueline looked back to him. She met Leonotis's for a fraction of a second. Without a word, she gave a quick nod and turned, her purpose clear. She was not abandoning him; she was moving to intervene.
The scent of jasmine and hot, wet stone washed over Leonotis as he stepped through the archway. The royal bathhouse was a vast, cavernous sanctuary, its polished marble floors glistening with droplets that caught the torchlight like fallen stars. Carved columns rose like the trunks of petrified trees, their surfaces etched with ancient sigils of water and cleansing. A series of terraced pools stretched into the steam-filled gloom, some hot and bubbling with geothermal energy, others cool and tranquil as a mountain lake, all fed by hidden aqueducts that trickled with a constant, soothing rhythm.
But to Leonotis, it was no sanctuary. It was an execution chamber.
He stood just inside the entrance, clutching the folded linen towel provided by a silent attendant. The steam rose in soft, curling curtains, hiding faces, blurring shapes, creating a ghost-like intimacy that was terrifying. Every sound—the splash of water, a distant laugh, a hushed whisper—made him feel utterly exposed, a fraud in plain sight. The thought of undressing made his throat tighten until he could barely breathe.
Don't panic. Don't stumble. Just… be Lia, Leonotis thought to himself.
He took a hesitant step forward, his bare feet cold on the damp marble. The others had already undressed, and attendants were using water magic to cleanse them before they entered the bath. That was when she appeared, a solid, intimidating form materializing from the steam.
The King's personal guard stood in front of him.
The King's personal guard was tall, towering over the other women, her frame broad-shouldered and powerful, every movement carrying the weight of absolute discipline. She was usually fully clothed, but now her skin gleamed in the lamplight, her dark hair was tied back in tight braids, but her face was still covered by her white mask. Though her eyes behind the mask were fixed directly on him. Leonotis froze, the oppressive heat of the bathhouse suddenly becoming suffocating.
"You," the towering woman said, her voice a low command, accustomed to immediate obedience. "You fight strangely, Greenwater girl. And now, here, in a place of rest, you hesitate at the water's edge as if it were a bed of coals." She stepped closer, the steam parting around her like wary servants before a queen. Her gaze was an almost physical force. "Why?"
Leonotis's mouth went dry. His hand trembled, clutching the towel tighter against his chest, a pathetic shield. "I—" he began, but the word cracked, a strangled, unconvincing squeak.
Her eyes narrowed. She tilted her head, studying him not as a person, but as a formation, a strategic problem to be solved. "You are hiding something."
The silence in the chamber became a presence, pressing in from all sides. The other bathers, sensing the sudden, sharp tension, fell quiet. Leonotis could feel their eyes on him. The world was closing in. His pulse hammered in his ears, a frantic, panicked drum solo. If she pushed further—if she ordered him to disrobe, to prove he was who he claimed to be—his disguise, their mission, their lives, would shatter.
That was when the water moved.
The woman's hard gaze lingered for another moment, her mind trying to figure out the timid girl who now stood trembling before her. The hesitation to undress was a flaw in the story, a loose thread she felt compelled to pull.
"The steam hides much, girl. So does fear," the woman said, her voice dropping, losing its formal edge and taking on the hard cadence of a drill sergeant. The other women in the bathhouse fell silent, their eyes turning to the unfolding drama. "Enough hesitation. We are all warriors here, and we have all shed blood today. There is no room for maidenly shyness." She took a final, decisive step forward, her shadow falling over Leonotis. "Show us you are who you say you are. Disrobe."
The command was an iron spike, pinning Leonotis to the spot. His blood ran cold. This was it. The end. There was no lie, no excuse that could save him now. He was trapped, his back to the wall, with the King's most trusted guard demanding the one truth he could not give. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, trapped bird.
From her hidden alcove, Jacqueline's eyes widened in alarm. The situation had escalated beyond what a simple illusion in the water could fix. The demand was for physical proof. Her mind raced, calculations flying. A grand illusion, a sudden distraction—all too risky, all too loud. It had to be subtle. It had to be perfect.
Leonotis's hands, slick with sweat, moved with agonizing slowness to the clasp of his outer robe. He could feel the guard's unblinking stare, the weight of a dozen other pairs of eyes on him. This was the end of the line.
He closed his eyes, a silent apology to Low, to Jacqueline, to Gethii and Chinakah. With a trembling hand, he let the robe slide from his shoulders.
At that exact moment, a thick billow of steam rolled out from one of the hotter pools. It was not a natural drift of vapor; it moved with a quiet, deliberate purpose, clinging to Leonotis like a second skin.
From the shadows, Jacqueline's fingers were a blur, tracing intricate, desperate sigils in the air. Her focus was absolute, pouring every ounce of her concentration and àṣẹ into a single, desperate deception. The magic was an illusion of steam and light that wove itself around Leonotis's frame.
The robe fell to the marble floor with a soft, wet slap.
The woman's eyes narrowed, ready to expose the lie. But what she saw made her breath catch.
It was not the lean, muscled torso of a young man. The shimmering, steam-laced air bent the light, softening the lines of his shoulders, narrowing his waist. What stood before them was the slender, pale form of a girl. And across her chest, binding her breasts so tightly they were nearly flat, were layers of tightly wound linen wrappings. The mark of a warrior girl trying to conceal her femininity for the sake of the fight.
Leonotis opened his eyes, looking down at himself in a final, despairing surrender. He saw the illusion. He saw the shimmering veil of Jacqueline's magic clinging to his skin, saw how it cleverly used his own chest bindings as the foundation for its lie. For a split second, he saw what they all saw.
Understanding dawned in a flash of pure, adrenaline-fueled clarity.
He didn't hesitate. Acting on pure instinct, he let out a small, humiliated gasp and snatched the towel from the floor, wrapping it tightly around his chest. He hunched his shoulders, turning away, his movements a perfect pantomime of a shy, mortified girl who had just been forced to expose herself.
The tension in the chamber didn't just break; it shattered and reformed as a wave of collective, awkward guilt. The other women looked away, some with pity, others with embarrassment.
The guard stood frozen, the hard suspicion in her eyes collapsing into a look of profound regret. She had been wrong. So utterly, cruelly wrong. The girl wasn't a liar hiding her identity; she was a deeply modest young woman hiding her body. And she had just brutally stripped her bare in front of everyone. The shame of her own actions was a physical blow.
Slowly, as if releasing the tension from a drawn bowstring, her shoulders slumped.
"My apologies," she said at last, her tone dipping from steel to something more human, more weary. She reached up, undoing a clasp at her throat, and tugged free the lacquered wooden mask that covered the lower half of her face. Beneath it was not the hardened visage of a veteran warrior, but the soft, almost untested features of someone startlingly young. She couldn't have been much older than Leonotis himself.
"My name is Zuri," she said, her voice quieter now, stripped of its official authority. "I am sworn to the King, but I am also… like you. A girl that must hide her delicate features." She gestured to her own towering frame. "I was born in a clan where the women grow as tall and strong as men, sometimes taller. From the moment I could walk, I was told my body was a weapon. That I must be strong, a shield, a blade." Her eyes held a deep, ancient sadness. "Yet inside, I was still just a girl, struggling to be seen as more than the armor I was born into."
Her words struck something raw and resonant in Leonotis. The shimmering illusion Jacqueline held around him felt paper-thin against the sudden, shocking weight of Zuri's honesty. He felt naked, exposed in a way that had nothing to do with his disguise.
Zuri looked at him, not with suspicion now, but with the profound, aching recognition of a fellow soul trapped in a role they did not choose. "I judged you harshly. I know what it is to hide. To play the part others demand of you. Forgive me."
Leonotis swallowed hard, his throat aching. He forced himself to meet her gaze, the guilt of his own deception a sharp, coiling thing in his stomach. "There is nothing to forgive," he whispered, the voice of Lia now colored with a genuine, hoarse emotion. "I… I know what that is like. To wonder if you are only what others see."
The steam between them seemed to thicken, carrying the weight of their unspoken truths. Zuri studied him for a moment longer, then gave a single, understanding nod. "You fight well, Lia of Greenwater," she said, using the name with a new, deliberate acceptance.
She turned and stepped back into the steam, her tall figure vanishing among the other bathers, leaving Leonotis trembling by the water's edge, the fragile warmth of an unexpected connection warring with the cold, gnawing fear of his own lie.
The scent of cedar and damp stone in the men's bathhouse was a stark contrast to the cloying perfume of the feast. It was a boisterous, steaming chamber of male pride. Low, still trapped in the hulking, bearded form of Grom, stood at the edge of a vast, steaming pool, her heart a cold, hard knot in her chest.
Adebayo and Neema were already stripped down, their powerful, scarred bodies gleaming in the torchlight. Even Silas was there, an unnervingly still figure at the far end of the pool, the water seeming to avoid him, leaving a small, undisturbed circle around his waist. Zombiel had already jumped in the water, the bath deep enough to be a swimming pool to him. And at the pool's edge, disrobed and attended by servants, stood King Rega himself, a regal but intensely amused smile on his face, clearly savoring the intimacy and the inherent power of the moment.
Low took a deep, shuddering breath. This was it. The precipice. Her entire charade rested on this single, impossible moment.
With a dramatic, theatrical huff, she planted her fists on her hips. "Halt!" she boomed, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.
Every head turned toward her.
"It is against my dwarven religion to bathe naked in the presence of surface-dwellers!" she declared, her tone ringing with an absolute, unshakeable conviction she did not feel. "Our mountain gods, the spirits of the deep stone, demand modesty! To bare one's skin under an open sky is an affront to the sacred darkness of the deep holds!"
Without waiting for a single response, to the utterly bewildered stares of everyone present, she stomped to the edge of the pool and waded in, fully clothed in her rough tunic and breeches.
The splash she made was enormous. The hot water soaked her instantly, the heavy wool of her costume clinging to her like a lead weight. King Rega and the other champions stared, completely dumbfounded.
"I have… never heard of such a custom," Adebayo said slowly, his honorable nature forcing him to consider the outlandish claim with genuine seriousness.
Neema simply looked baffled. Silas, however, didn't react at all. His vacant eyes were fixed on the steam coiling from the water, as if the bizarre spectacle were beneath his notice.
King Rega, however, threw his head back and laughed. It was not a small chuckle; it was a hearty, booming sound that filled the entire bathhouse, a genuine peal of amusement from a boy who had just witnessed the most absurd thing he had seen all day.
"A religion of modesty!" he roared, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. "Master Grom, your people are more fascinating than the scribes have ever written! So be it! Bathe as your gods command!"
Low managed a stoic, grunting response, sinking up to her neck in the hot water, grateful for the King's surprising, if temporary, acceptance of her bizarre gambit. Her bold, outlandish move had worked. She had deflected suspicion with sheer, unbelievable audacity. The tension in the air remained, a palpable undercurrent beneath the steam, but she had bought them a moment of grace.
She was Grom, the unyielding, eccentric champion. And for now, in a bathhouse full of the most dangerous men in the kingdom, in her ridiculously soggy clothes, she was, impossibly, still in the clear.