Henry groaned and shifted.

'Head hurts…'  So long as it wasn’t due to injury or alcohol, he didn’t care.  Everything hurt recently, and his head was just the latest stand-out.  Past that…he was wet.  And warm.

The air was thick with humidity.  He pried open his tired, sticky eyes and glanced around, the unfamiliar room—a space of stone floors and cedar walls, with a large pool set into the floor and filled with steaming water.

“Come to?”

Henry relaxed and ran a hand through his sweat-clotted hair.

“Where are we?”

“I found her.  The noxie.”  Roderick slipped into the bath with him and promptly dunked his head in the water for a quick scrub.  “She’s certainly something.  Wet your hair, I’ll scrub it for you.”

“I can wash my own hair, Rod.”

“I practically needed an apprenticeship to learn all her soaps and witchery.  Just turn around and let me handle it.”

“Is she a witch then?” Henry asked as he slid forward and eased his hair into the bath.  Once wet well and proper, he turned his back and allowed Roderick to scrub him with a particularly rough and potent bar of soap.

“No, she seemed opposed to the idea.  Nocticary, she called herself—a specialist in breaking curses.  Rinse.”  Henry followed orders, banishing the suds from his hair, only for Roderick to slick something like lotion over his head after.  “Let that sit, she said.”

“Does she have a solution for your curse?”  Roderick made a face as he slicked his own hair back and tied it away from his shoulders.

“There…is.  A distasteful one.  Here, this soap is for the body.”  Roderick tossed him a citrus- and mint-scented grey briquet and a span of soft cloth.

“You should—”

“Henry, use the soap first.  You can listen while you scrub, and then complain while I scrub.”

“You’re going to make me complain already?”

“Anything you have to say, I’ll have probably said it once already.”  He settled back as Henry suds up the washcloth and sighed as if he’d already resigned himself.  “The curse wasn’t specifically a love spell, but more of a challenge, or a jinx.  Lady Calanthe encountered one of the fair folk, and said ‘she loved me the most, so no one else should have me.’”

“I recall.”

“The request she made was for me to become hideous, such that none other but she would have me.”

Henry nodded.  That was, indeed, what Earl Wymond said.

“According to our dear host, the fae are exceedingly literal,” he said, yet another sigh escaping him.  “The curse is a challenge where someone must prove their love while I am transformed.  I need someone to love me…or rather, according to our host, I need a kiss from someone who truly loves me.”

Henry laughed brightly and tossed the soap to Roderick.

'How ridiculous.'

“Sounds like a lark is ahead, then!”

'How trite.  How pathetic.'

Henry wore a pleasantly satisfied smile as he scrubbed himself clean.

'How troublesome.'

“So then, my friend,” he asked gallantly, “How shall you woo a woman, then?  Or shall you woo me?”

“Pfft—!” Roderick coughed violently.  “Not you, too!  By the heavens, Henry, don’t say the same things she does.  It’s enough to hear it from one of you!”

“Haha!  Did we seem so close?  Does she sense our love?”

“She certainly sensed our familiarity.  I had to make some excuse for you drooling on her churn.”

No matter how this nocticary’s absurdities irked him, Henry’s heart lightened when Roderick laughed.  Rod looked happier than he had in months as he banished signs of travel and struggle into the bathwater.  His eyes weren’t as pinched, his posture more relaxed…certainly, Roderick sat before Henry as if his worries were being slaked away together with the grime.

'Do I need to worry about the soap?  Surely not.'