A Hatred Most Pure novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: What He Is

Cora's POV

I woke in his bed with my arm bound to the elbow, and Ansel Rooke sitting in the chair by the window, watching me.

His left sleeve was rolled up.

There was a bandage on his forearm in the same place as mine, the same length.

It had been dark when I fell asleep. Now there was gray light on the floor.

"You sat there all night," I said.

"Yes."

"Tell me what that was."

"Dietrich's knife."

"Don't," I said. "Don't lie to me with a bandage on your arm. I watched it open."

He stood, and went to the hearth, and stood there with his back turned.

"There is a thing the Urekai have," he said, flat. "The elders call it the first-face. Once in a life, when one of us is about to die, our body picks a person. The first face we see. It's not a choice. It can't be undone."

I sat up slowly.

"You were in the ice house," I said.

"I was ten, and I saw you through the slats."

The room went very quiet.

"If you cut yourself, I bleed." He spoke to the wall. "If you are ill, I'm ill. If you die, I die with you, in the same hour. Eighteen years I've known which road you were on. I thought it was my hate that found you every time."

"It wasn't?"

"It was that." He turned, and his face was set and pale. "I want you to understand what that means. The punishment I built is a rope with both ends in my hands, and one of them is around my own neck. If you die, I die. So you will live, Cora, and you'll live here."

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