A Hunger Most Dark novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Third Drawer

Lenore's POV

The key to the Wool Street kitchen door was still under the third flowerpot.

Corwin had never changed it, because Corwin had never imagined that anyone he'd hurt would come back.

I let myself in at two in the morning, with my boots in my hand and Dav asleep on the hill behind me.

I had not woken him.

He would have come, and he would have walked into my brother's house with his hunger, his pride and every guild lantern in the street.

The letter was his mother's.

I wanted to be the one who put it in his hands.

The house smelled the same, of beeswax and cold ash and the lemon oil Corwin liked on the banisters.

I went up the back stairs in the dark without a candle.

I knew where every board creaked, because I had spent my girlhood learning which ones my father could hear.

My brother was at the Master's table until dawn, the maid had told me in the market. He liked to be seen being loyal.

The study door was not locked.

That should have warned me, but I was thinking about the drawer.

The third drawer of the writing desk was locked with a small brass lock.

I took the pin out of my hair.

A cashier across the border had taught me this, for a joke, when he lost his cashbox key.

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