A Hatred Most Pure novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Burned House

Ansel found me on the cold side of the bed, as I always was, with my back to the hearth.

"You haven't looked at that fire once," he said. "Not in all the nights you've been here."

"I look at it."

"You look at the wall beside it."

I said nothing, and he came and knelt on the rug in front of me.

He had spent the day with the heralds, arguing over seating and oaths, and he smelled of ink and horse.

"Tell me," he said. "It's not one of the wrongs. It's one of mine, isn't it."

I hadn't meant to say it.

It had been mine for nine years, and I had never told a living soul.

"The ninth year," I said. "I was in the south, in a village that had one road."

"I remember the village."

"There was a widow with a cottage at the edge of it.

She took me in for the winter and never asked my name."

His face didn't change.

"She kept a pot of barley on the hearth.

I'd come in off the ridge and sit by it, and she'd put a bowl in my hands."

I stopped.

He waited.

"Your riders came at night," I said. "Six of them."

"They kicked the door in and dragged her into the yard in her nightdress.

They asked where I was."

"Cora."

"She wouldn't say. She was sixty. She stood in her own yard and told them she'd never heard of me."

My hands had started shaking in my lap.

"I was on the ridge. I saw them ride her down.

They put a torch to the thatch, and I watched the whole roof go up.

One of them nailed a note to the gatepost."

"What did it say?"

"Your name."

The fire popped behind me.

I heard him breathe out slowly.

I made myself look at his face, because I had promised myself I would watch him hear it.

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