Chapter 11 - The Hunt for Ashara

It had been a few godsdamned days of relative peace and sneaking into Lily’s bed every chance I got, and now this. Ashara had vanished without any drama, with no note pinned to a dagger and no cryptic message scrawled in blood. She was just gone, and all she’d left was a scrap of parchment with one line on it: Find me. Do not be seen.

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered, and shoved the note into my pocket. Ashara had beaten tracking skills into me, literally beaten them in with that riding crop of hers, but this was different. This was Ashara, a master rogue and a fox-woman with senses sharper than any human’s and a way of vanishing from a room while you were looking right at her.

This is ridiculous. She could be anywhere. She’s testing me again.

I started where she’d last been seen, her private chambers. Nothing was moved, nothing was missing, and the only thing left in there was her perfume hanging in the air, that musky smell of hers that always made me dizzy and stupid. Focus, Sam!

It took me three laps of the room to find it, a little smear of mud on the windowsill, so faint I almost missed it. She’d gone out the window. Of course she had.

I pulled my cloak tight and climbed out. It was snowing again, the flakes stinging my face and the wind cutting right through my clothes. My balls retreated so far north that I doubted they’d see daylight any time soon, and the wool cloak didn’t help much. I dropped down into the yard and crouched there squinting. The snow was already filling everything in, but I found the edge of a boot print, pointing towards the city. She wanted me to follow. It was a hunt, and a freezing one.

I cursed, my breath fogging in front of my face, and followed. That boot print was the last one I got. Ten steps on, the snow and every cart and drunk in Ashbourne’s evening crowd had trampled it to slush.

But she’d left me clues, the kind only somebody Ashara had drilled for months would ever spot. I found a snapped twig on a low branch and one silver-black hair stuck to a splintery fence post. Each clue was a breadcrumb, and every one was her rubbing my nose in how much better she was than me. I’d picked the lock on the Ravencrest study a few days ago, so how hard could it be to find my own teacher? Turns out it was hard.

“Damn you, Ashara,” I muttered, my fingers numb with cold. “You could have at least made this… enjoyable.” Though a part of me, the part that wasn’t freezing to death, had to admit chasing her was kind of fun, and I kept wondering what she’d do to me when I caught her.

Her trail led me through Ashbourne’s narrow alleys and across market squares that had emptied out in the snow, every stall keeper gone home to a fire, lucky bastards. I kept guessing where she’d go next and guessing wrong about half the time.

The tip of my nose probably looked like a cherry.

Block after freezing block, the trail led me to the Golden Lotus Bathhouse, where one more silver-black hair was caught on the doorframe. It was a fancy place I’d never had the coin to walk into, with warm light glowing in the entrance and laughter and splashing water spilling out into the cold. Steam rolled out of the open doorway, smelling of herbs I couldn’t name and warm skin, and after that walk I’d have followed that smell anywhere.

I hesitated. Why would Ashara come here? Was this part of the test, or was it a trap? But I couldn’t feel my toes anymore, and I’d have walked into a trap just to be warm.

I stepped inside, and the wet heat after the street nearly knocked me over. The air was thick with steam, and my cold face and hands were beaded wet in seconds.

And everyone was naked.

They were gloriously, unabashedly naked: men, women, a few others, all shapes and sizes, all glistening with water and steam. People were laughing and splashing, and the place smelled of jasmine and sandalwood with unwashed bodies underneath. I liked it more than I expected to.

The “cool, detached rogue” act I’d been working on died on the spot. I was eighteen, male, and surrounded by nakedness, and my cock was paying attention long before my brain caught up.

I moved deeper into the bathhouse, trying to look like I belonged and wasn’t staring, like I saw this every day. I failed. My eyes went everywhere, and I got an eyeful of more flesh than I’d seen in my whole life, searching for Ashara, or at least pretending to.

I stumbled into one of the smaller, private bathing rooms, figuring she might be hiding in one, and walked straight into a very large, very hairy, and very angry man, who was halfway through fucking someone over the edge of his tub.

“Get out!” he roared, his voice echoing through the small chamber. A slipper whizzed past my head and hit the wall with a wet slap.

I retreated, stammering apologies, and nearly collided with a group of giggling women, who shrieked and splashed water at me.

“Sorry! Sorry!” I blurted, my face burning, and backed away, only to bump into an enthusiastic couple who very much wanted their bath to themselves.

I tried another room and got another startled cry, this time a woman’s, followed by a well-aimed sponge that smacked me squarely in the chest.

“Gods damn it!” I hissed, dodging a bar of soap and retreating once more. I was starting to feel like a pinball in a particularly chaotic, and naked, pinball machine.

Across the steam, I saw her: Lily.

She was in one of the larger, less occupied pools, her white-blonde hair piled on top of her head, her skin pink from the heat. She was laughing with another woman, her head thrown back, her neck bare and wet, and my cock, which had been hiding from the cold all evening, came back to see what it had missed. Gods, she was beautiful. And thankfully she wasn’t bent over a tub with some hairy bastard behind her.

“Sam?” she said, surprised and grinning. “What are you doing here? You look like you’re about to freeze to death!” She wasn’t wrong.

Before I could answer, or come up with a decent reason for being in a naked bathhouse, she gestured to the pool. “Come in! The water’s perfect.”

“I, uh…” I stammered, looking from Lily’s grin to the water and back. And, okay, maybe my eyes spent a lot longer on Lily’s everything. She was naked and gorgeous. “Don’t mind if I do,” I finally managed to say, my voice a little higher-pitched than usual. My cheeks were burning hotter than the steam.

I stripped off my cloak, my boots, my outer layers, and every other piece of clothing I was wearing, dropped the pile with my dagger on top at the edge of the pool, and tried very hard not to make eye contact with anyone, especially Lily, as I did so. I slipped into the water. It was hot all the way through, and it fixed my bruised ego in about two seconds (and my balls, which finally came back down from wherever they’d gone). I sighed and sank into the heat.

“This is… amazing,” I admitted, and gave Lily the dumbest grin of my life. “Thanks.”

Lily introduced me to her friend, a redhead named Ennell, with tits I couldn’t stop looking at. Gods, Ashbourne is full of beautiful women. And I’m naked with two of them. We talked and laughed about nothing, and I tried to keep my mind on Ashara, on the mission, but every time Ennell laughed her tits bounced in the water, and the mission lost.

The warmth, the company, the water glistening on Lily’s skin, and, yes, all that nakedness had me rock hard, and the water was a lot clearer than I’d have liked. “So,” I said, trying to steer the conversation away from my cock, “this place is… popular?”

Smooth, Sam. Real smooth.

Lily laughed and slid over next to me, and kissed me, quick and wet, her tits pressed against my arm. “More,” I said into her mouth, before I could stop myself. Gods, I was hopeless.

Crack!

The sound bounced off every tile in the place, and half the bathhouse went quiet. I winced and grabbed at my hip for my dagger on instinct, but it was on the pile with my clothes, and I was naked in a pool.

I stood up and turned, water pouring off me and my cock sticking straight out for the whole bathhouse to see, and there she was, Ashara, standing on the tiles behind me with her riding crop held loosely in her hand and that smug little grin she got whenever I fucked up. Her silver-black hair was damp and stuck to her neck from the steam.

She was wearing her usual black leather, which, in this context, amounted to slightly more coverage than a strategically placed fig leaf.

“Looking for something, Samuel?” she asked, clearly enjoying herself, but her eyes were narrowed, and that disappointed look made me colder than the snow had.

“I, uh, well…” was all I got out. I was caught red-handed, red-assed, and totally screwed.

Ashara stalked closer, slow and smooth. She reached out with her free hand and tapped my chest, hard, with one sharp nail.

“When you follow someone, Samuel,” she said, her voice dropping low, the voice that always went straight to my cock, “you make sure you hide your tracks. You were the hunter tonight, and you left footprints everywhere and let half the bathhouse watch you walk in.” She let her eyes drift down, a long, slow look straight at my cock, which hadn’t gotten the message and was still pointing right at her.

“Your ass is on the line.”

Crack!

She reached around me and brought the crop down right across my ass, and it stung like hell.

She winked, and I’d swear she looked proud. She gave my welts one last pat with the crop, turned, and walked off with her leather-wrapped ass and that black tail swinging. Three steps into the steam, she was gone, same as she’d vanished from the compound.

I stood there for a long moment with my ass stinging and my cock still hard, which made no sense, since she’d just humiliated me in front of half the bathhouse. Gods, I was a mess.

Slowly, I turned back to Lily and Ennell, who were both staring at me with amusement and what looked a lot like pity.

I sank down into the water until only my head was above the surface, and wished I could stay under there until everyone forgot about me. I turned my face into Lily’s neck and breathed in the smell of her until my face stopped burning.

Ennell leaned forward, grinning, and her tits bobbed right up out of the water. “Was that your mistress, Sam?” she asked. “The infamous Shadow Fox?”

“Poor baby rogue,” Lily said, and scratched her fingers through my wet hair. She knew exactly who that was. Of course she did. She’d seen the bruises, the marks Ashara had left on me during our training sessions, more than once over the last weeks.

“So,” I said, my voice cracking a little, “I’m a rogue now?” I looked at Lily, hoping she’d say yes.