Written to Die for the Angel, So I Exposed Her First novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Lantern Room

They rode out to the breakwater at dusk, because neither of them could stand to be anywhere else.

Lucan sent a rider north first, a harbor guard on the fastest horse in the stable.

He carried a letter for the old keeper and orders to bring him home in a closed cart if he had to be carried.

Then he took Perrine out along the mole in the last of the light.

The tower stood at the end of the breakwater, a squat round column of black stone with a gallery of green glass at the top.

He had the key.

The door opened onto a spiral stair.

"Sixty-one steps," Perrine said, and stopped. "How do I know that?"

"You counted them. You were sixteen."

They climbed.

At the top the lantern room was a ring of salt-fogged windows around a great iron lamp as tall as a man, unlit.

A bare plank floor, and an old keeper's chair with a cushion eaten by mice.

The whole sea lay below them gone violet.

Perrine put her hands on the cold glass.

"I don't remember being brave," she said.

"You were."

"I'm not, now. I'm only angry," Perrine said.

"Perrine."

"I'm angry at her. At me, the other me. For stepping back."

Her breath fogged the pane.

"I want to go back and shake her. I'd have said, it was me, it was me, you idiot, look at my hands."

"You'd have been right."

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