The water was freezing.
I know this because a bit of it splashed onto my wrist when I dipped the cloth, and I nearly yelped. The king, however, sat in it like it was a warm spring. Steam rose from his shoulders anyway, because apparently even the cold couldn't compete with whatever furnace he had going on inside him.
Barbarian. Absolute barbarian.
"Your Majesty," I said, in the smallest, most respectful voice I owned, "shall I begin?"
"Did I not tell you to?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. Beginning now."
I pressed the cloth to his back, and immediately forgot how to breathe.
Up close, he was worse. Much worse. His back was a map of old battles: a long pale line across his left shoulder, a puckered mark near his ribs, and a few smaller ones scattered like footnotes. His muscles shifted under the cloth every time I moved my hand, and I realized that I was holding the cloth the way a person holds a very small, very frightened animal.
'Scrub,' I told myself sternly. 'You are a servant. A back is a back. Scrub it like a pot!'
So I scrubbed it like a pot.
"Gentler," he said.
I gentled.
"Not that gentle."
I found the middle ground and stayed there, silently praying for the night to end.
That was when the memory hit me, in the worst possible moment. Somewhere in the fog of my old playthrough, I recalled the villain's route. It was only a fragment, but it was a very vivid one: a throne room, a cold floor, and a line of text I had read with my chin in my hand, feeling smug because it wasn't my problem.
"The tyrant king met his end."
Not might meet his end. Met. As in, definitely, at some point, in some way, probably at the hands of someone in a very similar position to mine.
I nearly dropped the cloth.
Wonderful. So I wasn't just an extra with an extra appendage. I was an extra standing next to a man with a death flag the size of a banner, and I couldn't even remember when or how it would go off.
I made a mental note to be somewhere else when it did.
"You're trembling."
My hand froze.
"Your Majesty?"
"Your hand." He hadn't turned around. His voice was low and even, and it carried in the tiled room like a stone dropped down a well. "You have been trembling a lot more these days."
'Oh, no.'
'Oh, no, no, no.'
"It's the cold, Your Majesty," I said quickly. "The water is very... invigorating."
A pause.
"I did not ask you to touch the water."
"...Then it's the steam?"
"The steam is warm."
I closed my eyes. Three weeks of careful acting, and I was undone by the temperature of a bath.
"I am not afraid of Your Majesty," I lied.
"Good."
I opened one eye. He said nothing more, so I decided that was the end of it, and that I had somehow survived. I resumed my scrubbing with renewed, desperate enthusiasm.
I made it to his left shoulder blade before he spoke again.
"You used to look at me directly."
The cloth stopped.
"...Pardon?"
"Before." He tilted his head, only slightly, and a lock of wet black hair slid over his collarbone. "You used to look me in the eyes when I spoke to you. Whenever you brought me my wine, or my letters. You used to answer without lowering your head."
My heart dropped straight through the floor.
The old Olivier.
The original owner of this body, whom I knew nothing about except that he was apparently braver than I was, had looked the king in the eye. Of course he did. Of course he did. Some people are born fearless, and some people get hit by cars and end up in their bodies, terrified of anything and everything.
"I... apologize, Your Majesty," I said slowly. "If I have been rude."
"I did not say it was rude."
"Then I... apologize for the change?"
"I did not say that either."
I was beginning to feel like I was being interrogated by a very handsome wall.
"Then what would Your Majesty prefer?" I asked, and hoped that it sounded humble enough without revealing my desperation.
The silence stretched on. The water dripped somewhere behind us. I could hear my own pulse, loud as a drum in my ears.
Then, at last, he said, "Continue."
I did. What else could I do?
I washed his back in silence, and he let me, and neither of us said anything more about it. When I finished, I poured a bucket of water over his shoulders to rinse away the soap, and he sat perfectly still while it ran down his spine. For one moment I let myself think the worst was over.
Then he stood.
Water streamed off his shoulders, down that ridiculous waist, then over things I had promised myself I would not look at. I kept my eyes so firmly on the ceiling that I saw every crack in it, and I swear I felt the dignity leaving my body through my ears.
"Towel," he said.
I had it in my hands in half a second. I wrapped it around him with my eyes shut like a woman defusing a bomb, and I only opened them again when I heard him step out of the bath.
He paused at the door, one hand resting against the frame, and looked back at me over his shoulder. It was the first time he had looked at me directly all night. Dark eyes, sharp as a blade and very, very tired.
"Olivier."
"Yes, Your Majesty?"
"Tomorrow," he said, "you will look at me when I speak to you."
I opened my mouth, and nothing came out.
He didn't wait for an answer. He left me there, kneeling on the wet stone step with a soaked cloth in my hand and my heart going off like a war drum.
'Do not draw attention,' I reminded myself weakly.
Judging by how tonight had gone, I had already failed.