Bend Her novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Below the Bar

I promised to listen, and I listened to him say my name through three floors of stone.

Then I got out of the chair and put on my boots.

Bess did not stir.

I took the candle and went down the spiral stair in the dark, past the great hall and the kitchen and the stair door at the bottom, which stood open on its hinges.

I closed it behind me and shot its bolt myself.

If anything got past me tonight, it would not get past that.

The cellar door stood at the end of a short passage, black oak bound in iron, with a bar laid across it on the other side.

I could hear him breathing through it.

It was not a man's breathing.

"Ansel," I said.

The chains rang, and something struck the door so hard that dust fell from the ceiling.

I stood my ground.

"It's me."

A snarl answered, low and wet, and then a long, terrible silence.

Then his voice came through the wood, human and ragged. "Go upstairs."

"No."

"Linnet. I cannot hold it. Go."

"You held it twelve years with the door barred," I said. "I'm not going to let you hold it alone."

"I will kill you."

"You won't."

"You do not know that."

"I know you," I said. "And I know the bar is oak. Iron would dull me. Oak won't."

I laid my palm flat against the wood.

The current rose in my arm, the way he had taught me, slow and warm and obedient.

I pushed it through the door, found the bar on the far side, and lifted.

It was heavier than a candle and heavier than a cup of water.

My knees shook, and the bar rose off its brackets anyway and slid to the floor with a crash.

The door swung inward.

He was chained to the far wall by both wrists and both ankles, on iron rings the size of my head.

He was twice the size he had been in the daylight.

The horns had grown to a full curl, and black fur covered his arms, his chest and the back of his neck.

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