A Hunger Most Dark novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Eleventh Step

We found her the next morning, under the willow at the Weir Gate, in the third row.

The stone was small and had no name on it, only a servant's mark cut into the face.

The grass had grown over it in a thick dark mat.

Lenore stood a pace behind me, with her hands in her sleeves and her breath white in the cold.

I knelt in the frost.

"I came," I said.

I did not know what else to say to a stone, so I told it the plain facts.

I told it I was twenty-nine and had a house.

I told it I had spent fifteen years hating the wrong thing, and that I had been loved by more people than I'd known.

"She sewed my name in my coats," I said.

"I know," Lenore said. "You told the whole hall."

I laughed, and it shook.

She came and knelt beside me in the frost, in her good green skirt, and put her left hand over mine on the cold stone.

"Hello," she said to the grave. "I'm the one who frightened him. I'm sorry. I'll do the rest of it better."

We stayed until my knees ached and the sun came up over the Weir Gate.

Ysmay was waiting in the kitchen when we got back, with her arms folded.

"Gerrick has the hammer," she said.

"What for?"

"The cellar room. I've had it in mind for fifteen years." She looked at Lenore. "If you don't mind, miss."

"I don't mind."

Gerrick came up the stairs from below with a wrecked iron bolt in one hand.

He had taken it off the oak door with a crowbar and two good swings, and he did not say a word about it.

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